BBC: Anti-cuts march: Tens of thousands at London protest
More than 250,000 people attended a march and rally in central London against public spending cuts.
BBC political reporter Brian Wheeler, in central London, said there were lots of families and older people, and the atmosphere was good-natured but the anger was real.
"The noise in Whitehall was deafening as thousands of protesters banged drums, blew whistles and shouted anti-cut slogans, slowly making their way towards Trafalgar Square.
"The crowds were booing as they went past Number 10, but the demonstration was good-natured and friendly.
"There are hundreds of trade union banners, but we have also spoken to public sector workers who have come to make their voices heard."
My latest news from the Guardian is that >500.000 people took to the streets of London.
ReplyDeleteMarch for the alternative
Tom Mike Matt John :
ReplyDeleteJust would like to ask the following question.
My intuition is asking for clarity on the expansion of the monetary base.
When the crisis hit the banks around the world in 2008, Bernanke inflated the reserves ( which Mike pointed out in charts later for different analysis as well as before to dispute that Bush II was printing money at 15% per year to the chagrin of the grandchildren thing ).
The reserves swelled to make sure that there would not be a run on the banks which was possible and happening in the East coast as well as a world wide 50 yard dash to the dollar in foreign banks which would have crippled and destroyed them.
So my question is if MMT expands the monetary base to such a degree, does that build into the economy a vaccination effect against market crashes as such a economic capacitor would ?
Goog,
ReplyDeleteI believe in Warren Mosler's proposals he calls for unlimited lending to any bank with acceptable collateral by the central bank if need be.
Here is a link to an 'oldie' if you remember Mike was working with Warren at the time trying to get these proposals out. This covers some of the issues you raise.
I dont know if I would say it was the stock measures of reserves that would prevent crashes.. but it rather would be good policy and regulation that would prevent the crashes. If in the conduct of such policy, reserve levels would rise, then so be it. But it would be actually the competent policy and regulation that would be the operative mechanism.
Resp,
Swelling reserves is a part of elastic currency theory and historically was used to prevent crashes by having more than enough money on hand.
ReplyDeleteIf you look at when Bernanke did this, you basically catch him red handed before market reacted in 2008, maybe before Lehman ?
In other words that he could have known what was to come / coming. Then the stimulus was an overt reaction that played to the masses and the massless ( har ).
swelling of the reserves was almost invisible to the masses.
ReplyDeleteand what about Warren Buffett supposedly owning the ratings agencies and then turned around used that position to short them going up and down.
does Warren Buffett really deserve to be investigated for that ?
did he also advance china's treasury holdings in USA as well as investing in the Chinese companies that were ultimately held in ownership by the Chinese government who were subsidizing the extraction of oil out of Sudan, thereby supporting the oppressive regime ?