Thursday, August 28, 2014

Tim Johnson — A short comment on money and independence

During the (now ironically labelled) 'Arab spring' I read Alistair Horne's A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962. Reading the introductory chapters describing the state of the French Departments of Algeria in the first half of the twentieth century it struck me that control of the financial system was essential for a political entity to be truly democratic....
Fundamentally I think the whole focus on the currency issue is an expression of the alienation of people from money. If people appreciated money as a social relationship, the significance of the currency would be obvious but the debate would be on the nature of the relationship between England and Scotland, not the embarrassing, unproductive slanging match that, unfortunately, has been the reality of the independence debate….
Money, Maths and Magic
Tim Johnson | Lecturer (associate professor) in the Department of Actuarial Mathematics and Statistics, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh

1 comment:

Matt Franko said...

Tim: "It seems absurd that an independent Scotland would wish to be shackled to the Bank of England, because the people must own their currency to have their freedom."

yeah but Tim you have a PhD in Math to be able to see this and 99.999% of others don't my friend.... rsp,