A History of Sovereign Money Proposals from Patrizio Laina
25 October, 2015Patrizio Laina, a PhD candidate at the University of Helsinki, has written a short but very comprehensive overview of the history of proposals to take the power to create money away from banks. Laina traces the ideas back right to … Continue reading
Adair Turner’s New Book: Between Debt and the Devil
7 October, 2015Adair Turner became the chairman of the UK’s Financial Services Authority the day after Lehman Brothers collapsed. He was one of the most senior banking officials from 2008 until 2013, so it’s fair to assume that he’s seen more chaos … Continue reading
Bank of England’s chief economist hints towards a digital form of central bank money to compete with bank-issued money
30 September, 2015Last week Andrew Haldane, the Bank of England’s chief economist hinted that current monetary policy might be broken, and that other policies might be needed. He briefly hinted that one policy might involve the central bank issuing a form of digital … Continue reading
A Response to Richard Murphy’s Concerns
5 June, 2015Tax campaigner and writer Richard Murphy outlines his concerns with Positive Money's proposals to prevent banks from creating money here. This is our response. When is a bank not a bank? Richard first point is a semantic argument about the … Continue reading
Why the failure of Kaupthing Edge teaches us nothing about full reserve banking (A response to Dow, Johnsen and Montagnoli)
1 April, 2015In their paper "A critique of full reserve banking", Professor Sheila Dow, Alberto Montagnoli and Gudron Johnsen argue that the failure of one of the Icelandic bank's subsidiaries is evidence that full-reserve banking would not make the financial system safer. Here we … Continue reading
Would stripping banks of their power to create money cause a shortage of money, high unemployment and an economic decline? (Report)
15 January, 2015Some economists and commentators have claimed that Positive Money’s proposals for a sovereign money system, in which banks are not permitted to create money, would leave the economy with a money and credit supply that is rigid, inflexible and unresponsive … Continue reading
Increasing Competition in Payment Services (Report)
10 December, 2014Since the crisis the government has been keen to encourage more competition between banks. Their main focus has been making it easier for people to switch their current account between different banks. But we think this misses a bigger opportunity: … Continue reading
Former FSA boss Lord Turner close to arguing for debt-free money creation
14 June, 2014[first]Lord Turner, former chairman of the Financial Services Authority, is moving ever closer to advocating that the state should issue money and spend it into the economy, in the public interest.[/first] In an interview with the Independent he proposes a (very) … Continue reading
Positive Money proposals simply force banks to work like any other financial sector business
2 May, 2014Economics blogger Frances Coppola writes that "Martin Wolf proposes the death of banking", in response to his article last Friday advocating the Positive Money proposals for reform of the banking system. She rightly points out that there are some significant differences betwen the … Continue reading