Note: Positive money is the organisation that made the "97% owned" documentary and it is important to understand who funded the documentary to get a clear idea about the motives
The solutions to the problems raised may already exist…starts with a B…
97% Owned
Seigniorage – a form of fund raising for the government by selling hard minted currency (bills and coins) to commercial banks.
It created bank notes for 4 pence, and sells the note to bank for 10 pounds, the profit goes straight to treasury and reduces tax burden.
In 10 years the Bank of England raised 18 billion pounds
In 1948 notes and coins were 17% of total money supply
Now notes and coins make up less than 3%. The rest of the money is digital and imaginary…97% owned.
Most money is now digital so it is not the central bank that creates the money it is the commercial/private banks that create the vast majority and decide how and to whom it is loaned to.
Banks create money, they don’t lend it. When you get a loan, the bank just pretends you have deposited the money. It has to invent the liability.
If everyone starts saving, the amount of money in the economy shrinks. We have a recession.
Whoever creates the electronic money gets the proceeds. It is much more profitable than creating cash in the form of notes and coins as with digital money there is zero expense.
Commercial banks have created 1.2 trillion pounds in same time it took the central bank to create 18 billion pounds with hard currency.
Banks create new money by extending credit, buying an existing asset or by making payments on their account.
When a bank buys a company’s bond it adds the bond to it’s assets and increases the company’s deposits by the corresponding amount. In other words, the bank just types in the figure it just bought the bond for on the company’s account and it has acquired the asset. So it has created new money to the value of the bond out of thin air.
People think their personal or household economy works the same way as the national economy.
That is incorrect.
The money is distributed based on the priorities of the banking sector.
If you let bankers control money supply, they will keep creating it. Why would you stop when you are creating it from thin air? And it is their prerogative to acquire more loans.
Until there is so much debt that it can’t be paid back.
Money in the current system is debt. So the only way we can have money is if we have borrowed it all from the banks.
We think money is created from hard work, from working in a job. But in reality you would never have got that job without a loan / credit in the first instance.
Then people get over-indebted and cannot repay their debt.
Banks go insolvent and stop lending which causes a recession. People lose jobs and become more indebted to the banks.
If we didn’t bail out the banks it would be a total and complete killer of economic growth or the whole economy, but now there is more debt from bailout.
The only way to stop this is for banks to stop creating money. Private profit seeking banks creating 200 million pounds a year and pumping that into the economy. These private profit seeking banks are putting money into housing bubbles making houses more expensive, making their loans bigger and making more money out of thin air.
Central bank reserves is an electronic version of cash (not the imaginary numbers or bank money the general public use), it is how banks pay each other.
A High street bank will create a bond which is effectively government debt and give it to the central bank and then the central bank will type some numbers into the account for that bank at the bank of england.
So the central bank is creating these reserves out of nothing.
Before the credit crisis if a bank was short of central bank reserves, it could loan reserves from other banks with interest.
When transactions take place they use special money central bank reserves, so you buy a house from another bank they tell central bank to change values of reserves.
If they don’t have enough central bank money, then they can’t make payments and the whole system seized up. So bank must ensure this doesn’t happen.
Banks were allowed to set their own reserve targets each month.
Quantitative easing, is the process of giving commercial banks the reserve currency for free.
So central reserve money is considered real money, but fact is banks can have as much of this as they want now. It is also FIAT money, backed by nothing.
History of money
After world war 2, the UK and USA came together to manage world economies with the IMF and the world bank. At that time there was still a gold standard – Dollars was pegged to gold. And all currencies pegged to the dollar so long as americans played the roll as oversight. Preventing countries not being able to pay their bills / currency collapses. Then Americans started inflating the value of their own currency (to pay for the Vietnam war).
The French got worried and sent a gun boat to ask for their gold back
FIAT currency – medium of exchange where issuer does not promise to redeem in a commodity and holds its value based on confidence alone.
We believe it is worth something.
Growth and Inflation
A growing economy requires growing debt.
Politicians (and many finance and economic professionals) do not realise this.
Money supply can be used to drive growth but it can also be used to inflate asset prices and for market speculation.
Inflation is the general rise in prices of goods and services. It means that each unit of currency is worth less as time passes.
When money supply grows there is more money for investments and growth but there is also more money for market speculation and buying of goods.
Inflation is caused by too much money chasing too few goods and services. When money supply is growing at a faster rate than goods and services.
Recorded / Measured is flawed
CPI is a measure of the increase in price of basket of goods and services over time. It is deemed to provide a consistently lower figure for inflation. This is because house prices, mortgage repayments and council tax are excluded from the calculation.
RPI retail price index is deemed a better representation of inflation.
The biggest expenditures one makes should be taken into account, like house or car / school fees.
The increase in mortgage/loan on a house does not increase the economic output of a naction. It just increases money supply and hence does not enhance GDP, causing inflation. Banks creating money leads to more speculative credit and higher valuations on safe assets.
You can give a loan to a small business, is more risky as there is less collateral. Giving a Loan to a house, on the other hand, there is collateral. Not productive investments.
Bubbles
High inflation on a specific good or service.
The Tulip mania. The money system is not abstract it has alot to do with nations, power, trade and how they interact.
The ideal attributes for bubble creation: Luxury and Necessity.
Inflation can be avoided if money supply or creation does not exceed the economic output
Argument for government to guide where money should be invested (war economy)
People are getting poorer all the time, money is distributed from the poor to rich.
Every pound of money, has a pound of debt.
Debts from the poor to the rich are set in stone and are now sacred.
The reason the poor are in debt is because the prices have gone out of control and when the system breaks the poors are the ones owing.
Bank Run
You can withdraw all your cash from bank, but this does not reduce digital money supply.
You can stop the monopoly by moving your money into local community banks, not these massive private banks.
International bank run – withdraw from one currency to another, reserve currency shifts from reserve currency to international bank. But not part of their local central bank.
Currency Wars
It will get a trade imbalance.
Spending more than they are earning = trade deficit. Ability to repay debts is questioned. You can devalue your currency so exports increase. Domestic industry demand has grown.
Central bank can sell reserve currency in the market to devalue currency (this reserve is created from nothing, typed into a computer).
Belief is the thing holding up a currency.
Third world debt is used as a form of colonialism, having power of the economy controlling what they do.
IMF tells 3rd world countries that they can pay back their debt by increasing exports so they are earning more dollars so you can pay off your debt. Which is all a lie.
In reality countries cut their government spending and hence they stop growing. So they paid their debts but their own economy was not being developed. So the country becomes poorer and then big corporations come to exploit its natural resources.
These rules imposed by IMF actually destroys local industry and makes more dependent on foreign loans.
Also tell countries to lower tax in multinational corporations.
Also means profits made in country go out and do not help locals.
To manage risk on this unbacked currency you needed derivatives, futures and new markets. Hedging = insuring against your risk.
Derivatives based not on real products were essentially gambling, which changed in the 1960.
Efficient market hypothesis, The theory is that a market regulates itself better than if a government interferes.
The 2008 credit crisis caused that belief to end. Anyone who still believes the market is self regulating is a pencil neck.
Credit default swaps – insurance against companies from going bust – inflated from 1 trillion to 60 trillion in 5 years. But it turns out they don’t provide stability and the maths inside them is completely borked.
Cash is backed up by government debt and government debt is backed up by the ability of government to get money from the public through tax.
System is designed to make a few people very rich at the expense of taxpayers and citizens.
It Lowers standard of living of majority.
Currency Reform
So what can we do…
One hypothesis it to back a currency by renewable energy, which will increase investment in that space.
Banks should have to ask you what they do with your money. They shouldn’t be able to gamble with it.
A safe account and an investment account so banks don’t need to be bailed out by government.
Person to person banking.
We should not ask the banks for advice on how to improve the money system, they are the last people to ask.
You wouldn’t ask a bad house builder advice on how to build a house.