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Tuesday, November 25, 2014

UK Parliament debates money, QE, and banking

Last week, the UK Parliament held a debate on modern money, touching on banking, QE, interest rates, and inflation. This debate was almost certainly the result of the bold video and paper released by the Bank of England earlier this year. Many of the MMT talking points were spoken by MP's, to my great pleasure.

The debate was led off by Conservative MP Steve Baker. He got many things right at first, however later divulged into hyperbole about QE and inflation, while bringing up traditional Hayek talking points about 'price discovery.' Later comments by Labour MPs were more on point.

The UK Positive Money site picked up this debate and covered it here. 

Watch the entire debate here. Its certainly very depressing to see our friends across the pond having a honest, detailed debate about money. Meanwhile, many members of the US Congress are seriously considering impeachment of the sitting president.

3 comments:

  1. Its certainly very depressing to see our friends across the pond having a honest, detailed debate about money.

    There's not much point in having an honest debate about money if the men in charge then choose to ignore the reality, solely for political gain. This morning the chancellor George Osborne has been putting forward his plans for a balanced budget law, and no doubt the labour party will go along with it, because that's how they think they will look like they're part of the "serious people" who believe a government's finances are the same as a household.

    I'm afraid it's the blind leading the blind.

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  2. And it'll remain the blind leading the blind for at least as long as these people keep using the metonym "money" in these (alleged) technical discussions about state currency systems. ...

    The most basic problem continues to be our present human condition that lacks an adequate view of our authority and instead we have the current environment of out of control libertarianism and the associated wantonness and chaos we can see...

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  3. James,

    Osborne is a politician: he’ll do whatever brings him “political gain”. If re-introducing slavery brought him political gain, he’d back that.

    If we, the people, argue through various issues, and can get some sort of agreement on each issue, then the “political gain whores” (aka politicians) will follow.

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