LSE Lecture on Fractional Reserve Banking

Date: Thursday 28 October 2010
Time: 6.30-8pm
Venue: Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building
Speaker: Professor Jesús Huerta de Soto

A growing number of people are realising that our current money system, which gives commercial banks a monopoly on the supply of money to the economy and throws much of the population into unnecessary debt, is defective and urgently needs reforming. On Thursday 28th October the following lecture is being held at the typically mainstream London School of Economics, and is worth attending if you’re in the area. It’s free.

Prof Huerta de Soto comes from the Austrian school of economics, which has a very unique approach to the analysis of money, and which you may or may not agree with. We’re particularly interested in this:

“Prof Huerta de Soto will also unveil his proposal for similar legislative change that the “Peel Act” or Bank Charter Act of 1844 achieved with regards to the over issue of promissory notes to gold, but with respect to the over issue of credit. The consequences of doing this should create a climate of financial stability and an opportunity to totally restructure the national debt (potentially pay it off).”

The 1844 Act made it illegal for commercial banks to issue their own bank notes. Prior to the Act, the banks had been issuing so many bank notes that they caused inflation and destabilised the economy (this should sound familiar). Unfortunately the legislation never made it illegal for banks to create bank deposits (the numbers in your bank account). Since then, bank deposits (digital money) has become 97% of all the money in the economy. Between 2000 and 2009 along, banks created £1.2 trillion of this digital money – a major contributing factor to the house price boom and subsequent bust.

The Positive Money team believe this loophole was at the root of the financial crisis, and needs to be dealt with urgently, so we’re very keen to see what Prof de Soto is going to say on Thursday 28th October.

Full details are below:

http://www2.lse.ac.uk/publicEvents/events/2010/20101028t1830vSZT.aspx

If you’re going, let us know (email info@positivemoney.org) and we can all meet up for a post-lecture drink.