Saturday, April 21, 2012

Ralph Musgrave reports on the Edinburgh banking conference


Ralph gives the conference high marks. The participant roster is quite impressive.

Read his summary at Ralphonomics
Edinburgh banking conference
by Ralph Musgrave

2 comments:

Leverage said...

* A recent survey showed that about 80% of the population think money is created by governments / central banks. The interviewees were biased towards the more educated section of the population, so a realistic figure would be over 80%. 90% were against letting private banks create money.

As I said in other thread, it's almost like a conspiracy. Amazing how bankers keep perpetuating this false idea that public institutions have control over money supply.

To add to the injury, monetarist rabbles only perpetuate this status quo that money is controlled and/or created by public institutions.

On the other side, the disconnect the population has between the idea of "governments create money" and "governments can run out of money/ go broke" is amazing. The "government as households" analogies are pretty bad in perpetuating this too.

Leverage said...

Chris Cook.

(This fellow is clever, articulate, and knows his stuff. His ideas are very unconventional. I haven’t yet worked out whether he is a genius or is right off the rails.)
* He wants to seek solutions to banking problems from centuries ago even a thousand years ago. In particular, he wants a return to the tally stick system, but done in a high tech way.
* Pointed to the municipal banks that exist in some areas in Scotland.


I'm a follower of Cook comments, he knows his stuff and IMO is brilliant. I agree on most issues with him (on oil, energy, banking/money, etc.).

I also favour a return to tally stick system and untangling the current banking system. Current banking/monetary system is a burden for humanity, it probably has run its cycle and its time to move on We left commodity money cycle, now we are entering in a period of pure credit money system (as Graeber would say) with deep public control over it (if we want to). The 'pure fiat monetary system' (like tally sticks) is a good enough system for credit accounting and macro stability for proper wealth creation & distribution.

This sort of system is, partially, what made Europe prosper from Middle Ages to Renaissance and have an explosion on the increase of both material and cultural wealth.

IMO, if we change the system towards this new path we will be able to untangle the natural capital depletion and energy problems and stop the destructive production-consumption growth cycle. There is no reason why humanity can have a prosper steady-state system if we achieve financial stability (in the broad sense: debt burdens and financial costs, incomes, etc.), technically and technologically we can work out the problems without much disturbance.

IMO this is key to avoid the next world war and/or civil wars even in developed nations.