Neither profit-seeking bankers nor vote-seeking politicians can be trusted with the power to create money
2 May, 2014Jeremy Warner claims in his Telegraph article "Bankers have done a good job of creating money" from 2nd May 2014 that transferring the power to create new money from banks to the state would mean that "politicians can print money to their hearts’ content": In a system of 100 per cent reserve banking, the ability to create [...]
A Response to Paul Krugman on “Is Banning Banking the Answer?”
28 April, 2014Paul Krugman, the Nobel-prize* winning economist has written a commentary on Martin Wolf's article "Strip banks of their power to create money", in which Wolf advocates the policies that I and my co-author Andrew Jackson proposed in Modernising Money. Krugman writes: "The basic idea both writers share is that banks as we know them — institutions that issue promises [...]
Bitcoin’s 3 Fatal Design Flaws
5 April, 2014This Saturday I'm giving a talk in a panel debate on Bitcoin at the O2. I've been asked to be the critic of an alternative currency that has some very enthusiastic fans. For those that don't know, Bitcoin is a digital currency (known as a cryptocurrency) that is not issued by governments or banks. Instead [...]
Creating Money – What Purpose? Adair Turner’s Latest Speech
26 March, 2014On Friday 21st I saw Lord Adair Turner speaking at a high-profile conference at the London School of Economics. The title was simply "Creating Money: What Purpose?" Turner summarised his recent speeches in Stockholm ("Credit, Money and Leverage - What Wicksell, Hayeck and Fisher knew and Modern Macroeconomics forgot") and Frankfurt ("Escaping the Debt Addiction" Text [...]
Dirk Bezemer on Positive Money: A Response
17 April, 2013This is a more detailed response to the interview with Prof Dirk Bezemer on The Icelandic National Broadcasting Service, RUV (the interview starts at 38:56 min). (The first response written by Graham Hodgson can be found here.) We’re fans of Prof Dirk Bezemer’s work (we particularly like this and this and gang8, of which he is [...]
Dirk Bezemer on Positive Money
15 April, 2013The Icelandic National Broadcasting Service, RUV, interviewed Dirk Bezemer about Positive Money on its Sunday lunchtime current affairs programme Silfur Egils. The interview with Dirk Bezemer, in English, starts almost 40 minutes into the programme at 38:56. Dirk supports our analysis that banks abuse their powers to create money to feed asset price bubbles and [...]
Detlev Schlichter on Positive Money: A Response
2 February, 2013Detlev Schlichter has written a thought-provoking and critical piece on Positive Money’s analysis here. Schlichter is very clear on the workings of the current monetary system and the process by which money is created, which is rare amongst many economic commentators in the press: Most of what we use as ‘money’ today is deposit-money and thus [...]
Full Reserve Banking Is No Bailout
30 October, 2012A recent blog by Frances Coppola describes full-reserve banking as ‘the largest bank bailout in history’. In the interests of mutual understanding and accuracy, the following clarification and response addresses a few points that are unclear. We accept culpability for potential confusion here - the submission to the Independent Commission on Banking, which Frances links to, [...]
If banks can create money, how come Northern Rock went bust?
16 July, 2012Banks obviously can't create money, says Tim Worstall in his blog 'Ms Orr succumbs to the Positive Money loons', in response to Deborah Orr's article in the Guardian. [sws_blockquote_endquote align="left" cite="Tim Worstall" link="http://timworstall.com/2012/07/14/ms-orr-succumbs-to-the-positive-money-loons/" quotestyle="style02"]Now, how to show that banks do not in fact just create money? Well, if they did then Northern Rock would not have gone [...]