The causes of unemployment make it a moral issue. Radical solutions are required. In an earlier post I noted some features of unemployment from a UK perspective. The main thrust was that a fairly constant proportion of the population in employment (around 72% of those of working-age) hides a serious decline in the availability of […]
Category: Money and Banking
Tim Worstall v. PositiveMoney I note an interesting little discussion between Tim Worstall and Ralph Musgrave on money creation in the context of the Northern Rock bank crisis of 2007. Essentially Tim was claiming, against the PositiveMoney view, that the failure of the bank was evidence that it was not possible for banks to create […]
Banking as Fraud I’ve got involved with one or two on-line debates recently in which the issue of money in commercial banking is seen as a fraudulent process by which value is stolen from citizens. Usually the central bank is seen as the government’s enabler in this process, and so to blame for the resultant […]
Long piece today by the Guardian’s economics leader writer, Aditya Chakrabortty, on the cost of the banking crisis, bank misconduct and what should be done about it. I agree wholeheartedly with the thrust of this piece, and indeed said much the same two and half years ago in my piece on the Guardian Cif site. Aditya’s piece concludes […]
David Malone, a documentary film maker, perhaps better known these days as blogger on the financial crisis and its causes – operating under the name GolemXIV – gave a talk in Edinburgh on the 6th of December. He’s quite a charismatic guy and gave an effective talk in a church with no aids other than […]
There was an intriguing juxtaposition last week, as the chief executive of Barclays, John Varley, penned an article on banking reform in the Financial Times the day before Paul Volcker, 82 year-old former Federal Reserve chairman and now chair of the US Economic Recovery Advisory Board, made a speech to the Federal Reserve Bank of […]
The 2001 winner of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, Professor Joseph Stiglitz, was in Edinburgh last week to give two talks as part of the Edinburgh International Book Festival. He is a pioneer of the economics of information, showing how markets can produce unexpected outcomes because information is […]
Well, if I ever doubted the wisdom of my Guardian on-line piece about bankers and their remuneration, here’s a bit more evidence from Prof Randall Wray in Kansas City! When a firm approaches an investment bank to arrange for finance, the modern investment bank immediately puts together two teams. The first team arranges finance on […]
As I have mentioned in previous posts, I have been having some interesting discussions on the Chris Martenson Crash Course website. Chris wasn’t very pleased with me because I (presumably quite effectively) challenged one of his core tenets – that the monetary system is intrinsically doomed. In his post asking me never to darken his […]
I ruffled a few feathers at www.chrismartenson.com (more info here) – so much so that the eponymous Chris eventually asked me to cease and desist! You can view the ‘naughty thread‘ here! He accused me of not addressing his points. I don’t accept that, but I do intend to respond in detail to his last […]