Thursday, January 10, 2013

How to "Pay" for What We Need

commentary by Roger Erickson

Congress could create money, as it did during the Civil War, funding public projects that shock the economy back to life (American Scholar journal).

It's comical to keep seeing how much "novel" information was once common.

As an example, it was once common, over 100 years ago, that sensible farmers understood liquidity, yet now that topic is considered a part of specialized & esoteric "economic" knowledge that is too hard for most citizens to understand! Go figure. What caused sense to become so uncommon?  The data didn't go away, but people's practice at utilizing that data did.  Didn't Walter Shewhart say that "Data is meaningless without context?"

The American Scholar journal is confusing liquidity with static value, but it's at least a start.

Is the following a good starting point for re-introducing commons sense? A Fiat Currency Issuer is market-maker for all participants in all REAL transactions among currency users - i.e., the issuer allows unlimited distribution of re-buyers & re-sellers into infinitely flexible transaction patterns. What's so difficult about that concept? It just separates bookkeeping credits from physical barter or clumsy ledger books, and guarantees agility and reliability of the bookkeeping.  That concept, which economists and bankers call liquidity, is what allows the quality (including agility) of distributed decision-making that military officer training programs say is crucial for the success of any organized system.

Hat tip to Stephanie Kelton

2 comments:

Unknown said...

"What caused sense to become so uncommon?"

hyperinflations.

Inflation isn't just a 'real constraint'. Taken to excess, it can destroy all confidence in, and understanding of, 'fiat money'.

That's why it needs to be taken very seriously.

John Zelnicker said...

y -- maybe hype-inflations.