Friday, September 14, 2012

1% Pulling Cash From Denmark & Switzerland?

commentary by Roger Erickson

The only thing worse would be mathematicians pulling numerals from the Strategic Numeral Reserve. :)  Don't think we have one?  Ask the NSA & CIA which specific Fed accounts they pull their cash from.

Surreal. We're trying to reduce ourselves to the madness of hoarding fiat while wasting coordination. That's far, far worse than mixing up pennies & dollars.  The onset of virtual psychosis can be even faster and just as bad as organic psychosis.

What's the opposite of a tax haven?  A tax ogre?   The impact of currency-tax ogres? Warren Mosler suggests that "they probably go to actual vault cash."

There are 3 sides visible in this process. One side involves those few bankers who are just trying to do their job - and are not yet crooks. Another side involves the 1% of people who mindlessly sequester fiat currency from their communities, and hoard it. The 3rd side involves all the rest of us citizens, letting such silliness persist.

Personally, it's staggering to think that there actually are a fair # of people who literally have more currency than they know what to do with. So they hire personal bank advisors, to avoid losing 0.02 % of what they'll never use anyway.

Yet which of these 3 sides is more stupid?  The situation is rather like that involving a deranged mathematician, who has to hire people to hoard his stash of numerals for him. That alone is a bit comical.  Yet something that stupid wouldn't matter if the rest of us weren't dumb enough to believe there aren't other sources of and pathways for expressing "fiat."  If you, yourself had to put 2 + 2 together, would YOU go complain to that mathematician, saying "Look here, sir.  It's fine for YOU to hoard, but out here, we're running out of numerals!"  At that point, just who is kidding whom?

How much longer can this madness go on?  If we let the 1% employ bankers & politicians the same way they do gardeners, maids & nannies ... are we all doomed?

Currency can't become more important than the real assets and the clever transactions which currency denominates, when used at will by smart people. The scale, alone of modern fiat currency, after all, increasingly makes it only virtual record keeping. How did we get to the surreal state where transaction records became more important than the real transactions being tracked, and the people making those transactions?  Why are we still stuck trying to yoke our necessarily dynamic currency supply to static assets, instead of yoking it to the dynamic value of our own level of coordination ... i.e., to our organizational state, and hence to our adaptive rate?

Fiat currency value has to float, and depreciate, if a populous with increasing capabilities is going to accelerate the rate of pursuing their growing options ... not just hoard the virtual unit of exchange. One analogy would be the day when carpenters quit building houses, and instead only hoard tape measures - or "inches" themselves.  At this rate, someday we'll have a war over the exchange rate between inches and centimeters!

If a nation viewing emerging options waits for someone to tell 'em who "owns" the virtual methods for exploring those options ... it'll be too late.  They won't even get the license # of the real truck that drives off with their former options.

What part of "quality [including tempo]" of distributed decision-making don't hoarders understand? You can't hoard group agility, or adaptive rate.

We can hoard coordination capabilities ... but precisely by hoarding it distributed throughout our communities, not under the micro-management of any arbitrary subgroup.

31 comments:

googleheim said...

Europe "prints" to bail out Greece and Spain > Euro gains

USA "prints" > U$D loses

Ain't it rigged or what ?

googleheim said...

At least this time it occurs in the Fall when Europeans get back to work after their 8 week paid vacations by their federal government.

Usually the Euro gains when they want to go OUT on vacation

Anonymous said...

Erickson, most people are too lazy to think for themselves. They just want to go home and turn on the TV and let the cable shows wash over them and their problems.

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/9/13/islamic_scholar_tariq_ramadan_on_the

Watch this, he says even muslims and islamic countries were ignorant to their own rising "movements" in thier nations and communities, so how can the west hope to perceive all the complexity when the locals familiar with far more factors can't perceive it?

I think your problem Erickson is you say why don't these 7 billion people WAKE UP and we have some return-on-coordination wet dream?

My chess teacher told me 7 billion people, all combined, in a roger erickson return on coordination wet dream, could not beat 1 garry kasparov or 1 deep blue.

100 trillion people of average intelligence, all combined, will not beat 1 bobby fischer of superior intelligence.

If the collective hive mind doesn't have an IQ beyond 130, they will never be able to outmaneuver the 200+ IQ people (bankers, hedge funders, politicians) etc etc

What you wish for is impossible. I once saw howie mandell play the "chat with charlie" character in the TV movie "harrison bergeron" and then when in REAL LIFE howie mandell made a tv show called Deal or No Deal, I realized how phucked people like you are that think you are ever going to wake up the masses, you are FREAKING DOOMED and wasting your time and annoying all the pigs you think you can teach to fly! LOL!

SDVan

Lori Franko said...

I am pissed off about all this invasion of my privacy and then I watched this video. WW3 is certain, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5N_huInM0k

Erickson what are you doing to help the phoenix to rise out of the ashes, for post ww3? You need to make a mental leap and go forward, how do we rebuild, you are not going to stop the collapse.

Bob Roddis said...

It's nice to know that you MMTers are so clear and unambiguous about your bizarre insistence that people do not actually own their own money, that their money actually belongs to the Assaultive Keynesian State and that it can and ought to be seized by the Assaultive State at any time based upon the slightest of your totalitarian whims.

Edmund said...

100 trillion people of average intelligence, all combined, will not beat 1 bobby fischer of superior intelligence.

There are actually many known instances where random crowds display a mean accuracy greater than any individual member of the group. It's been observed at least as far back as Francis Galton.

Not always applicable, but sometimes.

Edmund said...

It's nice to know that you MMTers are so clear and unambiguous about your bizarre insistence that people do not actually own their own money

It was the opinion of one dude.

googleheim said...

Libertarians love their peaceful no war stance ...

but still back Republican global bullying ...

and would love to go to a Gold standard that would never cover the assets that are already built here in the USA and the reserves of U$D held by UK, Jap, OPEC, China, BRICs ...

said Gold standard return would result in a lot of war

a lot of war

For Matt and Mike and Tom :

Is there enough gold even to cover for all the assets already built in the USA alone ?

The assets ( buildings, people, infrastructure, etc ) give value to gold and or fiat currency - not the opposite.

The currency markets are still rigged after all.

y said...

Bob, the constitution gives the government the power to tax and issue money. Does that make the constitution "assaultive", "keynesian" or "totalitarian"?

Bob Roddis said...

Bob, the constitution gives the government the power to tax and issue money.

The constitution gives the federal government 17 or 18 very specific powers and therefore any taxes laid need to be limited to the assertion of those limited and specific powers. The constitution gives the federal government the power to COIN MONEY, not “issue money”. The power “to emit bills of credit” (issue paper money) which had been granted under the Articles of Confederation was specifically deleted from an early draft of the constitution. The constitution grants no power to the federal government to have or enforce a monopoly on the ability to coin money. The constitutional dollar is very specifically a coin containing 371.25 grains (troy) of fine silver. The government is not in a position to “never run out of dollars” or to issue as many “dollars” as it feels like.

http://www.fame.org/HTM/Vieira_Edwin_What_is_a_Dollar_EV-002.HTM

Matt Franko said...

goog,

(glad to see you back here!)

"Is there enough gold even to cover for all the assets already built in the USA alone ?"

doesnt look like it goog.

This from wiki:

"It has been estimated that all the gold mined by the end of 2009 totaled 165,000 tonnes.[2] At a price of US$1900 per troy ounce, reached in September 2011, one tonne of gold has a value of approximately US$61.1 million. The total value of all gold ever mined would exceed US$10.1 trillion at that valuation."

Certainly not enough to "cover assets", but.... could there be enough for this metal's use as solely a "medium of exchange"?

I say no way also...

rsp,

Tom Hickey said...

@ SDVan

Right. the level of collective consciousness must rise, or the world must be ruled by heroes instead of demons.

Historically, this is a cyclical developing process not a linear one, rising and falling in waves.

That doesn't mean that it is useless to go for the scenario that Roger lays out tho. It's part of the dialectical process in which fundamental forces are not mutually exclusive but complementary and history is the working out of the dynamic interaction, often involving conflict to get to the next moment of resolution, which itself is only temporary in a system of increasing complexity.

Tom Hickey said...

@ Bob Roddis,

The US under the rule of law, with the Constitution as the supreme law of the land, and judicial precedent the arbiter of the meaning of the Constitution. Your view is counter to precedent and the judiciary right up to SCOTUS would have to reverse a long history of established precedent. While it is not impossible that precedent would be reserved in favor of your interpretation, the likelihood seems unfavorable for your position.

Tom Hickey said...

There are actually many known instances where random crowds display a mean accuracy greater than any individual member of the group. It's been observed at least as far back as Francis Galton. Not always applicable, but sometimes.

Democracy is an experiment with the wisdom of crowds. It's worked relatively well in small groups before, but never really tested on a scale of this size.

Someone recently asked one of the top Chinese officials what he thought of the "Great Experiment" in democracy. He said, it's only been going on for a couple of hundred years, so it is too early to tell what the outcome is going to be.

For example, the US is now encountering serious problems of scale and government is becoming dysfunctional, with democratic institutions under severe duress. This is a crucial period in the experiment.

Tom Hickey said...

Is there enough gold even to cover for all the assets already built in the USA alone ?

Not without the price of gold rising substantially, creating humongous global distortion and almost certain war.

y said...

So you agree that taxation is perfectly constitutional.

The supreme court has ruled that paper money is constitutional so I guess you should probably take that up with them.

The constitution specifically denies individual states the power to "emit bills of credit", but places no such restriction on Congress.

Banks create money (most money in existence is commercial bank money, also known as deposit money, or credit). Local currencies also exist, as well as things like bitcoin and digital gold. Under counterfeiting laws however, private companies can not issue coins or notes intended to be used as money which look like US coins and notes.

"The constitutional dollar is very specifically a coin containing 371.25 grains (troy) of fine silver."

This is completely false. There is no factual basis for your assertion.

Edmund said...

Someone recently asked one of the top Chinese officials what he thought of the "Great Experiment" in democracy. He said, it's only been going on for a couple of hundred years, so it is too early to tell what the outcome is going to be.

I *though* that was Kissinger asking Zhou Enlai what he thought of the French Revolution back in the Nixon administration. IIRC, "too soon to tell" became an iconic example of the "Chinese mindset", but in reality it was a problem of translation: Zhou thought Kissinger was asking about the '68 unrest.

Tom Hickey said...

Edmund, I don't have a ready reference for the statement, nor do I recall the official. But I do recall that it was recently. IIRC, it was specifically about democracy as an experiment initiated by the US. I remarked on it to myself, since it typifies the Chinese conception of historical time, which is ancient and much different from the US, since it only came into being in "recent" memory, after Europeans secured enough territory from the indigenous inhabitants of thousands of years.

y said...

Bob, the Supreme Court disagrees with you on the matter of tax and the "general welfare clause".

Bob Roddis said...

Bob, the Supreme Court disagrees with you on the matter of tax and the "general welfare clause".

I'm shocked. So I guess the constitution really is "assaultive", "keynesian" and "totalitarian" after all.

y said...

Ok, maybe from now on I'll start referring to propertarian "libertarianism" as "assaultive" and "totalitarian" too. Heck, why not?

So, for example I might say "the assaultive and totalitarian propertarian "libertarian" agenda", or something like that.

How does that sound?

jeg3 said...

The King's Court (government) always needs a jester, let it be the libertarian austrians.

Let a countries macroeconomy be represented by a football game. The real action is on the football field, and the scoreboard is an account to keep score. An intelligent economic system says watch the game on the field to make sure the economic resources benefits everyone. The scoreboard is used to keep score and watched to prevent fraud.

The libertarian austrians say watch the scoreboard because that is the real economy, and is so important it needs to be made of gold. If fraud happens, too bad for you. Which is an attitude that helps the fraudsters greatly.

Bob Roddis said...

So, for example I might say "the assaultive and totalitarian propertarian "libertarian" agenda", or something like that.

How does that sound?


Gosh, you are so right. I’ve been so wrong for so long. I finally get MMT!

So when one of Obama’s drug war SWAT teams shows up at the wrong house, knocks down the door and the old black lady inside tells them to get the hell out of her house, she actually assaulted them in the form of their home invasion and when they shoot her, her sister and their miniature schnauzers.

I don’t know what took me so long to get MMT. You guys have an interesting way with the English language.

y said...

How does that have anything to do with MMT?

Does anyone here ever advocate sending swat teams to shoot old ladies and their dogs?

How is your comment relevant to anything being discussed here?

Bob Roddis said...

How is your comment relevant to anything being discussed here?

You implied that owning property and living by the non-aggression principle were assaultive behaviors. Thus, a victim of a government assault on their body and property in the bass-ackwards "progressive" bizarro world of MMT is itself deemed to be assaultive behavior.

y said...

You want to take away people's democratic rights, their employment rights, their public services, their public schools, their health insurance, disability insurance, unemployment insurance, retirement benefit, you want to privatise all public property, you want to impose a system of law based solely on your personal beliefs which can never be changed by anyone, ever.

Anonymous said...

Seems to me you can't have it both ways. You want more money to circulate but I'm sure if you took a poll on this website that a large majority would be in favor of increasing taxes while you rant and rave that the idiots shouldn't hoard. This is convoluted beyond belief.

Anonymous said...

Test of MMT bias: Would you favor the government mailing out a check in the amount of $2500 to every citizen without means testing? This is progressive in the sense that $2500 means little to a millionaire, but plenty to someone scraping by. However again, I'm sure MMTers on this board would opt for means testing.

paul meli said...

"a large majority in favor of increasing taxes while you rant and rave that the idiots shouldn't hoard. This is convoluted beyond belief."

Not sure who you are addressing here.

If you are saying that increasing taxes and re-spending an equal amount back into the economy doesn't alleviate hoarding you are mistaken.

Taxing excess saving that will likely never, ever be spent in the foreseeable future and spending an equal or greater amount back into the economy is guaranteed to be stimulative.

If you disagree, please state why.

Anonymous said...

Oh my god Bob Roddis,couldn´t you stop with absurd analogies and general stupidities,you just,MMT or Chartalism,is accounting indententity description of how an modern monetary system works, and have his earliest roots in the works of such as Georg Friedrich Knapp and Knut Wicksell.If you claim that MMT would bring in the Gestapo, you really need to calm down and take a reality check.Outside Rothbarville.

y said...

Anonymous,

people have different views regarding taxation, spending, and distribution of income, depending on their politics. There is some disagreement among the main MMT proponents on these issues.