At the moment, give or take a bit of quantitative easing, all money is conjured into existence by private banks, 85% of it as loans on existing residential property. It’s a recipe for unaffordable housing and unmanageable private debt, but it’s also undemocratic; writes Zoe Williams in the Guardian, 9th January 2017.  

Here’s a short extract:

The creation of money, which is essentially the creation of debt, affects all of us. There is no reason to surrender it to private banks, whose interests tend not to be the public good and whose accountability is pretty patchy.

Fran Boait, head of Positive Money, favours sovereign money, created by the government after public deliberation. The sine qua non is that the citizen is invited into the process, and understands enough to make the invitation relevant. A survey, now two years old, found that only one in 10 MPs understood how money was created; currently, we can’t even be bothered to educate our own legislature. There is an assumption of exclusivity, money as the preserve of the moneyed and nobody else’s business, a masonic code that leaves greed in charge.

You can read the whole article here.