Better ways to boost eurozone economy and employment (FT)

It is time for the European Central Bank and eurozone central banks to bypass the financial system and work with governments to inject newly created money directly into the real economy, reads the letter in Financial Times, 26th March 2015, signed by 19 prominent economists:

Victoria Chick, University College London

Frances Coppola, Associate Editor, Piera

Nigel Dodd, London School of Economics

Jean Gadrey, University of Lille

David Graeber, London School of Economics

Constantin Gurdgiev, Trinity College Dublin

Joseph Huber, Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg

Steve Keen, Kingston University

Christian Marazzi, University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland

Bill Mitchell, University of Newcastle

Ann Pettifor, Prime Economics

Helge Peukert, University of Erfurt

Lord Skidelsky, Emeritus Professor, Warwick University

Guy Standing, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

Kees Van Der Pijl, University of Sussex

Johann Walter, Westfälische Hochschule, Gelsenkirchen Bocholt Recklinghausen, University of Applied Sciences

John Weeks, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

Richard Werner, University of Southampton

Simon Wren-Lewis,University of Oxford

Here’s a short extract:

There is an alternative. Rather than being injected into the financial markets, the new money created by eurozone central banks could be used to finance government spending (such as investing in much needed infrastructure projects); alternatively each eurozone citizen could be given €175 per month, for 19 months, which they could use to pay down existing debts or spend as they please. By directly boosting spending and employment, either approach would be far more effective than the ECB’s plans for conventional QE.

You can read the whole letter here.

This approach is the same as Positive Money’s “Sovereign Money” proposal.