Friday, August 28, 2015

Yannis Palaiologos — Parallel currency would have led to Grexit, says Jeffrey Sachs


Jeffrey Sachs confirms Yanis Varoufakis's side of the story.

ekathimerini
Parallel currency would have led to Grexit, says Jeffrey Sachs
Yannis Palaiologos
ht Clonal

17 comments:

Matt Franko said...

http://www.moneyobserver.com/news/27-08-2015/bitcoin-roundup-bitcoin-xt-goes-live-1000-atms-greece

"Greek exchange BTCGreece is teaming up with service provider Cubit to install 1,000 bitcoin ATMs across Greece. BTCGreece founder Thanos Marinos comments: 'We are creating the ecosystem of bitcoin and blockchain solutions in the Greek market.'

It is no accident that in Argentina, for example, where the population has weathered successive shocks to the financial system, bitcoin has taken root. Greece could be moving in a similar direction."

Ideologue boobs jerking off meanwhile technocrats are moving forward.... this will be interesting to see what happens with this 'parallel currency'...

Ignacio said...

There are probably more parallel unofficial currencies circulating in Greece right now. In Europe parallel currencies or pseudo-currencies have a long history to counter the deflationary bias of financiers and central bankers. Here in Spain we had some small initiatives started, even in Barcelona the elected populist party will probably launch it's own official complementary currency at the image of the Chiemgauer in Germany.

A case study is the WIR, know to help small and mid business absorb shocks created by the main financial system.

The problem with bitcoin though is that is gold standard on steroids. Not only is a massive waste of resources to create currency (in form of electricity and computer components), something than Greece cannot afford, it's not flexible enough to provide liquidity on demand, and the currency itself is harder to produce with time. However it could work as a substitute for a payment system, which is much needed in Greece now.


BTW the Chiemgauer is worth studying as it works similarly in some ways to what Plato trade system suggested and you have pounded several times in this blog Matt.

Joe said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Joe said...

Why would anyone care what Jeffrey Sachs has to say? The man is responsible for millions of deaths in Russia. He was still pushing austerity as recently as a few years ago. What a loser.

Matt Franko said...

I,

Im with you it would be much better if the govt institution would do the job... but maybe this is the best we can do right now... who knows if it takes off, maybe some synapses will start to fire within the skulls of people in key positions...

Hey... wouldnt it be wild if this stuff takes off and people start to use it instead of the govt administered currencies?!!?! LOL! the govt morons would be like "WTF happened???" ha!

Like Uber vs. the Taxi racket....

That Plato stuff Ryan here has described closely as "bilateral trade only... in the currencies of the two nations only...."

I'll look at that Chiemgauer... rsp,

Greg said...

Bitcoin ATMs???!!! WTF!!

Bitcoin is a completely electronic currency what is the point of an ATM? Is it gonna spit out some electrons for you to hold onto?

Matt Franko said...

Greg probably multi function terminals bill pay, xfers etc.... rsp

Random said...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namecoin
Alternative.
It serves Public Purpose.

Greg said...

But Matt, cant all that be done from a smartphone or computer?

I suppose there may be people without access to either but that would seem like a small number.

Matt Franko said...

Old folks might not have smartphones ?

Unknown said...

Varoufakis Plan B was not a plan to Grexit (though it could have been used if a Grexit had been forced on Greece) but rather a plan to maintain liquidity in case a Cyprus type banking crisis was forced upon Greece. It used tax payer ID's - the (in)famous hacking (treason charges) and tax credit denominated in Euros, where taxes could be paid in advance (at a discount) and the money collected could be credited to government instituted payments - which could be accessed by the banking system, or a cell phone type payment system. These payments could be all kinds of transfer payments. Until a Grexit occurred, and the payments were denominated in Euros, the government had more constraints. After a Grexit, the Government could be freer in non Euro denominated new domestic currency.

NeilW said...

None of this is every going to be resolved until the analysts stop seeing currencies and countries as co-incident.

The country based, three sector view is the problem. It's the Procrustean bed of economic analysis.

Greg said...

Im not sure what you are getting at Neal when you use the term coincident.

Are you saying that currency areas and national borders are often in conflict, especially in the case of large countries with a variety of cultures? That having a monetary union without a fiscal union is a recipe for failure?

Random said...

Greg, view as a closed system split into multiple currency areas. A Russian holding US dollars and an American are in the same area.
Banks in multiple areas.
And untaxed Russian oil pipelines might as well be in a foreign currency.
Exporters have to pay taxes and wages in domestic currency.

NeilW said...

"Im not sure what you are getting at Neal when you use the term coincident. "

I'm saying that currencies operate with different borders to countries and the currency area borders are constantly moving as people use that currency and stop using it.

Once you start looking at it like that, it eliminates the external sector. Then you see that somebody holding GBP in Dubai is the same as somebody holding them in Doncaster. Both are saving in Sterling. No difference.

Matt Franko said...

USD/GBP/EUR zombies know no borders.....

Greg said...

Got ya. Thanks for the clarification.