Showing posts with label private banks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label private banks. Show all posts

Monday, 28 April 2014

“Strip private banks of their power to create money”: Financial Times’ Martin Wolf endorses Positive Money’s proposals for reform



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Martin Wolf - Strip private banks of their power to create moneyPositive Money’s proposals have just been advocated by Martin Wolf, the chief economics commentator at the Financial Times, in an article entitled Strip private banks of their power to create money“:
“Printing counterfeit banknotes is illegal, but creating private money is not. The interdependence between the state and the businesses that can do this is the source of much of the instability of our economies. It could – and should – be terminated.”
Wolf highlights the fact that the ability of banks to create money requires governments and taxpayers to underwrite the banking system:
“Banking is therefore not a normal market activity, because it provides two linked public goods: money and the payments network. On one side of banks’ balance sheets lie risky assets; on the other lie liabilities the public thinks safe. This is why central banks act as lenders of last resort and governments provide deposit insurance and equity injections. It is also why banking is heavily regulated. Yet credit cycles are still hugely destabilising.”
“What is to be done? A minimum response would leave this industry largely as it is but both tighten regulation and insist that a bigger proportion of the balance sheet be financed with equity or credibly loss-absorbing debt. … A maximum response would be to give the state a monopoly on money creation.
The article then refers to Modernising Money, the book that we published in early 2013, and gives an overview of our proposals (summarised below):
  • The state, not banks, would create all money. Customers would own the money in transaction accounts (which would never be put at risk), and would pay the banks a fee for providing payments services.
  • Banks would also offer investment accounts, which fund loans. But banks could only lend money that was actively invested by customers. They would no longer be allowed to create new money out of thin air.
  • The central bank would create new money as is necessary to promote non-inflationary growth.
  • Decisions on how much money would be taken by a committee independent of government (much like the Monetary Policy Committee).
  • Finally, new money would be injected into the economy via a) government spending, b) tax cuts, c) to make direct payments to citizens, d) to pay down existing debts – national or public, or e) to make new loans through banks or other lending firms (such as peer to peer business lenders).
Wolf highlights some of the benefits of this reform:
“The transition to a system in which money creation is separated from financial intermediation would be feasible, albeit complex. But it would bring huge advantages. It would be possible to increase the money supply without encouraging people to borrow to the hilt. It would end “too big to fail” in banking. It would also transfer seignorage – the benefits from creating money – to the public. In 2013, for example, sterling M1 (transactions money) was 80 per cent of gross domestic product. If the central bank decided this could grow at 5 per cent a year, the government could run a fiscal deficit of 4 per cent of GDP without borrowing or taxing. The right might decide to cut taxes, the left to raise spending. The choice would be political, as it should be.”
He points out only 10% of UK bank lending actually goes to businesses, meaning that restricting the level of bank lending doesn’t have to mean that businesses will suffer. (Speculative credit to property bubbles and financial markets could be restricted whilst preserving credit to businesses).
Wolf summarises by saying that:
Our financial system is so unstable because the state first allowed it to create almost all the money in the economy and was then forced to insure it when performing that function. This is a giant hole at the heart of our market economies. It could be closed by separating the provision of money, rightly a function of the state, from the provision of finance, a function of the private sector.”
Wolf concludes that the although this change won’t come about immediately, we should remember the possibility of making these changes, because “When the next crisis comes – and it surely will – we need to be ready.”
Naturally, we’ll be working to try to bring about this change before the current system causes another crisis.

Monday, 25 November 2013

Ever wondered why there's so much debt?

 

Watch 10 year old Holly explain where debt and money come from - and what it means for you...
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Watch Holly (Video)

 


Positive Money is a movement to democratise money and banking so that it works for society and not against it.
Our current financial system has left us with the highest personal debt in history, unaffordable housing, worsening inequality, high unemployment and banks that are subsidised and underwritten with taxpayers’ money. We believe that these problems have a common root: money.

 



 

Many of the big social and economic problems that we're facing today are connected to money. If we want to solve these problems, we have to change the way that money is created. Most of us learn that only the government can create money, but in reality more than 97% of money is created by private banks - the same banks you see on the high-street every day.
The money banks create isn't the paper money you keep in your wallet. It's the electronic money that flashes up when you check your balance at an ATM. Find out How Banks Create Money...

Debt

Banks create this electronic money whenever they make a loan. That means for every pound in your bank account, someone else must have a pound of debt. The authorities find it very difficult to limit how much money - and debt - that banks can create. As a result personal debt is now higher than ever before.
MORE: Why is there so much debt?

 
      

Inequality

Since almost all of our money is 'on loan' from banks, someone must pay interest on nearly every pound in the UK. This interest redistributes money from the bottom 90% of the population to the top 10%. The money banks create also pushes up house prices, and blows up bubbles in financial markets - making the very rich even richer.       MORE: Why are the rich getting richer?

 
      

High House Prices

House prices have been pushed up and out of reach by the hundreds of billions of pounds of new money that banks created in the years before the financial crisis. It's not just that there's too many people and not enough houses..


MORE: Why are house prices so high?

 

Wednesday, 3 April 2013

Bleeding in Debt.Com................

LATEST NEWS

November 2011

How long can the world economy run like this? It has absolutely no chance of paying its debts accumulated and even if it could, there would be no money left for the world economies to run. The prospect of even servicing these debts is increasingly getting harder and harder in every country. The debt just gets bigger and bigger and eventually as it must, one nation after another will collapse.
 
The debt burden in Europe now threatens to break it apart and if it does it will throw massive shock waves to the world’s financial system. Forget about a double dip recession, a world depression is now on the cards.
 
Stimulus packages are no longer an option in most nations. Tough Austerity measures are now beginning to be forced on the nations of the world. We are trapped in a debt spiral, a massive black hole we cannot escape from. Expect massive unemployment, record bankruptcies, higher taxes and less government spending, rising homelessness and even food shortages. Yes, the money supply is running out !
 
The Great Depression of the 1930’s will look like a picnic against the one we are about to enter. Real Monetary Reform is badly needed now, to avert the one coming our way. Don’t wait for our politicians to do something about it, the past action of these people have contributed greatly to it.
 
It is up to us now to push for real monetary reform using social credit or similar ideas to remove debt and run a stable financial system that works for everyone.
 
 Get involved, share this site with others. The people need to see this information, they need to see the real reason of why we are in so much debt. We need to scream at our incompetent politicians to force them to make some positive changes in monetary reform. The banks have had their way and now it’s time to fight back. There is a solution to all this and we need to make it happen. We can not afford the alterative.
 

November 2010

The stimulus packages around the world are starting to run out. The IMF is now putting pressure on the worlds economies to reduce their debts and deficits. The only way they can attempt to do this is by taxing their people more or by spending less on government services. This of course will reduce the money supply and undermine any good the stimulus packages did in the first place.
In Europe, countries worst affected by the global recession are starting to go bankrupt.  One by one they are starting to fall. Financial aid from the European Union and even the Monetary Fund is holding these countries from  bankruptcy.  Europe as a whole is now weakened even more by these individual nations. The dominoes are starting to tumble.  America on the other hand is continuing to borrow more money to buy it's way out of the recession. They have no hope in paying this money back. It's only a matter of time before the obvious will happen, you can't keep borrowing money for ever.
The rest of the world is not much better. We are at the mercy of the banks. The world will continue to go bankrupt if the international bank's let it happen. One world currency is not far away. The world badly needs Social Credit, It is our only hope.


April 2010

What has changed since the last post?

Governments around the world have set up economic stimulus packages to help keep their economies going. While it is true that it has prevented the world economy from going into a depression it must be considered a temporary solution only. Why! These stimulus packages have come at a great cost.
This money has been borrowed and must be repaid back. The citizens of each country will have to face higher taxes to maintain the extra costs from these new stimulus loans. When this happens the money supply will reduce significtly (The money supply increased by these stimulus packages will run out unless further stimulus packages are received. Obviously we cannot keep going down this track.
Read more
Social Credit - The Debt Crisis