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Premiere Reading
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This is a nation of inconsistencies. The Puritans fleeing from oppression became oppressors. We fought England for our liberty and put chains on four million of blacks. We wiped out slavery and our tariff laws and national banks began a system of white wage slavery worse than the first. Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master. The West and South are bound and prostrate before the manufacturing East. Money rules, and our Vice-President is a London banker. Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags. The [political] parties lie to us and the political speakers mislead us. We were told two years ago to go to work and raise a big crop, that was all we needed. We went to work and plowed and planted; the rains fell, the sun shone, nature smiled, and we raised the big crop that they told us to; and what came of it? Eight-cent corn, ten-cent oats, two-cent beef and no price at all for butter and eggs-that’s what came of it. The politicians said we suffered from overproduction. Overproduction, when 10,000 little children, so statistics tell us, starve to death every year in the United States, and over 100,000 shopgirls in New York are forced to sell their virtue for the bread their niggardly wages deny them… We want money, land and transportation. We want the abolition of the National Banks, and we want the power to make loans direct from the government. We want the foreclosure system wiped out… We will stand by our homes and stay by our fireside by force if necessary, and we will not pay our debts to the loan-shark companies until the government pays its debts to us. The people are at bay; let the bloodhounds of money who dogged us thus far beware.
New Reading and Introduction
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How Much honesty can there be in the world.
Usury, Hells Fuel , mans oppressor.
Dear Reader,
We meet our Economy in its repose,
we see its citizens and see their polity.
One community under usury,
a life under the liberty of the yoke.
A country Estate.
Around a fireside after a day of work and sport,
a father and two sons talk and reflect.
A loved first Son speaks.
”Tell me this wise father how much money is there in the world. Tell me where it comes from and where it goes to die?”
”Son I can not answer your questions, for truly I do not believe that any man has the answers. Men have pursued money and in the pursuit lost sight of the prey, for it seems that one mans pursuit seems frustrated in the victory and another’s object of pursuit, is only real during the chase?”
”Father I am your second son. I also wonder as my elder brother does, what is the meaning of money.
Should I lay suit for it and pay its high price, when we have all that we want and need here on your estates?”
”Dear second Son we have our life and family here and we have the extra hands and mouths that all help to feed ourselves and each other. In these treasures we have no need of money. Others have been divorced from their estates and live in cities this is where we send our surpluses. ”
” Our Neighbours also help to feed the cities the king asks us that we accept tokens from the citizens in return. Our tokens buy the favours of the king and pay the dues he calls taxes. In this we may as well act willingly, as in truth we have no choice.”
The Bakers Kitchen Table.
Around a fireside an artisan baker sits with his two daughters after a long day.
1st Daughter. ”Tell me this wise Father. How much money is there in the world and how do customers
who buy our Bread get their money. What of citizens without a token for a loaf ?”
Father Baker . ”The money we are paid is a token from the Government treasury with Authority from the king. These are the same tokens with which we buy our flour from the Estates and our firewood for the ovens.”
2nd Daughter . ”Father this Bakery has been with the family for generations how would a new Oven and a new Shop be possible for the Orphaned Son of the bakery that burnt in the other village, destroying the family and the Shop . Somehow the Young boy survived, now he starts from nothing,how can he hope to provide his needs in the future?”
Father Baker. ”That poor boy will be alone with nothing in the world , a sad case and a story told a thousand times. No one to teach his trade to him and no family business left to carry on, no plot of land from which to raise sustenance and a surplus to trade.”
In the Soldiers House.
A soldier sits alone he is of high rank and of proud deportment he is served by his batman. Both bachelors and both veterans of many campaigns.The soldier has returned from the palace where he has received another decoration the Medal and the prize are being admired by the Batman.
Batman. ´´General, the king is very grateful for our campaign abroad this past year, a medal of solid gold encrusted with valuable jewels and many tokens in the prize. Enough to buy all the bread in all the bakeries in the kingdom.”
General. ” Yes the King is pleased his campaigns re furnish the treasury, to repay the usurers his international debts and interest.”
In the Bankers House.
The Banker sits in luxury footmen in attendance and Wife and mother seated in equal pomp and finery. Business is being discussed…
Wife, ”Tell me dear, didn’t the king look un-well at the ceremony this afternoon ?”
Mother. ”He always was a nervous boy. When your Father and I used attend the Old Kings ceremonies, the Young prince as he was then, never seemed as right.”
Wife. ”Mother in Law when you and father in law knew the old king and we were not as rich as we are now. Now my husband has prospered as the new kings ambitions have overstretched his purse and I wondered if my Banker Husband had such concerns.”
Banker. ”My Father did much service to the old king, the new king does much service for us now in return”.
Wife. ”Tell me my banker husband where did your father and his fathers father, find the wit to have the king grant you privilege to create the tokens, how many of them do you have where were they found?”
Banker. ”Its a long story, let us take our leisure in the drawing room, that I might Smoke and have a brandy. My great Great Grandfather Sailed away to Xanadhu the year was 1249 and the Captain on board ship ship was Marco Polo…”
”We lived in venice when Marco Polo returned
He told of Kubla khans riches.
Khans riches flowed from a strange Alchemy,
Money from Trees, Bark from Mulberry´s.
Denominated and sizes, under seal of the Khan.
Fein deafness to the khans bark on pain of death!
They serve as good as gold, a fraction of the weight.
All foreign merchants sell to khans monopoly,
the merchants trade with paper in the kingdom”
Such power as this with a twist of usury,
we innovate Marco Polos discovery.
Creating the money but not the means to meet the usury
all wealth guaranteed to flow back to the issuer.
Money newly grown on trees, with usury sportingly absent.
Surely a creature who´s Bark is not worse than its bite?
kings now borrowed for rivals to smite.
Bankers became emperors. Usury were the real fangs.´´
In the priests House.
The priest sits at high table with the other clergy of the court.
Deacon, to the priest. ” Holy Father the King seemed distracted today, the General seemed well rewarded from the latest campaign, how though do we reconcile the kings distraction with the claimed success?”
Parish Priest. ”Yes holy father an orphaned child in my parish will be without hopes of starting afresh without usurious debt. How are the people to bear the costs , the bounties of their labours are ever increasing and yet for want of money there is no traffic in the market square. Yet people are cold and hungry in the workhouses.
The Holy Father . ”The King is seduced ! my office is no longer to hear confessions and give guidance. But we are grew rich in the indulgences we must proffer on our monarch and his aide the banker.”
”For usury makes a gain out of money itself.
Not used merely for exchange but increasing at interest.
A price paid for nothing exchanged for something.
The price of the receipt eats the value of the thing exchanged.”
In the Courtroom. A usurer demands his deserts.
When shylock petitions the Duke
can he exact a pound of flesh and spill no blood.
The Judge must honour the contract,
how many others does the forfeiture doom?
Neither brassy bosoms, rough hearts of flint
nor stubborn Turks and tartars feel obliged
to temper the harshness of usury or forfeiture, when the price can not be met.
The Quality of mercy is most definitely strained.
It flattens crops like hail.
Truly only the usurer is twice blessed
and the throned monarch is unthroned.
Usury the usurers crown of gold, our crown remains of thorns.
New suitors of title ´Masters of the Universe´.
Not Belmont’s fair Portia sought.
Porches and financial instruments of many more horse power,
torque of Twisted vigour.
No longer metaphors of Gold for gaining mans desire,
Or of Silver and its just deserts.
Always Lead and usurious alchemy,
hearts now made of stone.
failed suit of Morocco,
return and count revenues from the Sookes.
Failed suit of Aragon,
beware robbers from Flanders with heavy dennier stockinged masques.
Seek inside your own Bossanio,
rejecting usury´s gold, hard food of Midas.
Tween Man and man no usury.
Plain lead and recognise moneys deceit.
As Portias counterfeit, redeemed in marriage.
So too should all value tokens declare the
facsimile of exchange they truly be.
Money a true handshake in honour alone.
The courtiers of the Exchequer address the king;
We economists beholden as we are to the princes of usury and as the false prophets of usury.
We fit the horse foot to the shoe that suits us best. It matters not that the horse becomes lame and less furlongs are ploughed. As we deny the poison in our own usurious medium. We also deny that what ills our patient, could be from any panacea concocted in our own alchemists crucible.
Our unit of account, that is to say this store of value.
Not to leave unsaid, this medium of exchange.
Our scarlet pimpernel which no one quite pins down.
We say; ”we give you something , always the same
fungible with each the other. The one whole. Held in safe keeping, returned. What we call these claims or, definitions of claims. These bundles of demands, is money.
Insinuated into civil intercourse,
ubiquitous in the machinery of community,
deployed as a lever and pulley in affairs of state.
A measure of nothing, conjured to divine what’s important.
Counsel for the people charge usury of its crimes.
This baron abstract that claims fruit.
This heavy invisible burden,
a yoke. Fashioned in language,
felt but never seen.
inflicting scars as deep as any lash,
claiming lives as real as any canon.
This nightmare device of imagination.
Who are the slayers of this mythical dragon?
Coleridge saw beauty in nature where sweet amaranths bloom. And Shakespeare compared his summers day.
What of this hamlets ghost of a spectre?
something is rotten in the danegeld,
many more promises are written than can be kept.
So much nectar strained from thin broth,
which bargains can be made?
When the music stops and the dancers
sit down. Chairs are our metaphor for the real.
Always too few.
Rascals become clothed in robes
and honesty is reduced to rags.
Elisabeth lease had a purchase on truth.
”When people starve how can overproduction stand charged. It is money promises, kept short in supply that causes starvation. The consumption in the lungs of the community, is the usurers confection.
A counterfeit Nobel laureate, theres an irony.
Denies that in money there can be a place that gertrude stein called there, home once but no longer there , there in Oakland. A precursor to some sub prime heritage.
A speaker of truth to power could follow Pauli ´Das ist nicht nur nicht richtig, es is nicht einmal falsh!
Not even wrong, not even there.
All counterfeit, yet to counterfeit the counterfeit? a crime.
What of the shepherd of this unruly nothing,
where will they pen and fence this pack of wolves.
Will they dress this pack of cards in sheep’s clothing.
Limit the herd a need for Golden standards.
Prudence of sound Money and even sounder usury.
Fix the price and patronise those who will honour the thievery. A mechanism to harmonise silent ballot boxes.
A gentlemen from belgium would complement his single currency. Unruled and unruly sets a course for austerity on a continent many times at war. A fight of 11 rounds.
Spread like a cancer through the development of continents, enabling the killing called wars. That increase the debt and centralise the money power.
Quiggly shewed the tragedy, little hope it seemed,
blind faith in capitalisms harlot. That babylonian whore.
At first a mere money trick for ragged trousered philanthropy. With usury, take away whats not even yet been paid. Ruskin would see wealth as that which is valuable in the hands of the valiant. Real goods sustain and wealth succours. Usurious money is but an unmade claim and worse. No banker has earned that newly minted note that hangs discordant in the air, as apt to rob as to pay.
How obscure this obscurant cult of mammon.
What smoke screened hall of mirrors.
How obese and gluttonous the leviathan of usury.
Austerity for the likes of you and I.
More banqueting and evacuated vomit spews from the sceptred top table. Corrupt in patronage and jealousy of power. Overstuffed with greed and thirsty for more.
How mean the jealousy of greed grows.
As more wants more and demands all.
The truly poor are those who desire much,
oppressive wealth no longer is, it only has.
Usury consumes the usurer, no self just an exponential nothing. Growing ever more grotesque in a shadow of what never was and never could be.
A doom laden ring of the nibelungs slained by teutonic nobles and routed by heroic Norsemen.
The paper money shrouds the rock of prometheus and
still he forgets in whose promises the usurers truck.
A Semiotic Turn Wenzels genuinely fake.
A language of abstract form commemorates brotherhood.
Van Meegrans supper at Emmaus implies Vermeer’s intention for experts to divine. A counterfeit of that which never had been, claimed as real and must be from the brush of the master. A looting tyranny coveting the genuine fakery like so much gold pulled from the mouths of corpses. Like so many rabbits out of so many hats and the goldfish does not know the water it swims in until the surface is broken.
The beauty of dying lilies, the artist petrifies the fleeting moment and time is solidified.A promise solidified in time measured in life and non existence. Celebrate Les miserables of L’Argent . Hugo, Zola and Proudhon scream.
A promise wrapped up in a lie claiming existence where no air remains to breathe or, food to sustain. Asking everything for giving nothing. A mountebank by nature, a swindle made official by the state. To enslave the masses and keep them in want.
Concluding prayer.
A central lack of fibre. Either moral or physical around which myths of debt are spun. As spiders spin webs and weavers warp clothe. Spartan Ephors of prudence pass judgement on all and stand above and astride the law. Dispensing injustice and taking clothes off the backs of The freezing and food out of the mouths of the hungry. Passing judgement on those who perform real work, asking always for more and demanding to pay less.
So draw the bow of truth with intentness in the eye,
Seek out the irreducible posits, the epistemological gods of homer. If there be one free miracle let the ephors explain the rest. What is this power of usury? Where did this power come from ? Who is it exercised for and to whom do you ephors of usury answer to ? And now let me ask. How do we take this power away? Only then we shall see good faith and brotherhood restored to the commons.
©RogerG Lewis 2016
Boijmans TV episode 4. Genuinely fake. from Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen on Vimeo.
Notes with links to sources.
Boijmans TV episode 4. Genuinely fake. from Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen on Vimeo.
Notes with links to sources.
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How Much Money is there in the world.
A country Estate.
Around a fireside after a day of work and sport a father and two sons talk and reflect.
Ist Son . ”Tell me this wise father how much money is there in the world
Tell me where it comes from and where it goes to die.”
”Son I can not answer your questions for truly I do not believe that any man has the answers
Men have pursued money and in the pursuit lost sight of the prey for it seems that one mans pursuit seems frustrated in the victroy and anothers object of pursuit is only real during the chase?”
”Father I am your second son I also wonder as my elder brother does what is the meaning of money
should I lay suit for it and pay its high price when we have all that we want and need here on your estates.”
´´”Dear second Son we have our life and family here and we have the extra hands and mouths that all help to feed ourselves and each other in these treasures we have no need of money. Others have been divorced from their estates and live in cities this is where we send our surpluses. Our Neighbours also help to feed the cities the king asks us that we accept tokens from the citizens in return our tokens buy the favours of the king and pay the dues he calls taxes in this we mau as well act willingly as in truth we have no choice.”
The Bakers Kitchen Table.
Around a frieside an artisan baker sits with his two daughters after a long day.
1st Daughter, ‘Tell me this wise Father how much money is there in the world,and how do customers
who buy our Bread get their money. What of citizens without a token for a loaf.
Father Baker . The money we are paid is a token from the Government treasury with Authority from the king these are the same tokens with which we buy our flour from the Estates and our firewood for the ovens.
2nd Daughter . Father this Bakery has been with the family for generations how would a new Oven and a new Shop be possible for the Orphaned Son of the bakery that burnt in the other village destroying the family and the Shop . Somehow the Young boy survived now he starts from nothing how can he hope to provide his needs in the future.
Father Baker. That poor boy will be alone with nothing in the world , a sad case and a story told a thousand times. No one to teach his trade to him and no family business left to carry on, no plot of land from which to raise a sustenance and a surplus to trade.
In the Soldiers House.
A soldier sits alone he is of high rank and of proud deportment he is served by his batman, both bachelors and both veterans of many campaigns.The soldier has returned from the palace where he has received another decoration the Medal and the prize are being admired by the Batman
Batman. ´´General the king is very grateful for our campaign abroad this past year, a medal of solid gold encrusted with valuable jewells and many tokens in the prize enough to buy all the bread in all the bakeries in the kingdom.
General. Yes the King is pleased his campaigns re furnish the treasury for his international debts and interest.
In the Bankers House.
The Banker sits in luxury footmen in attendence and Wife and mother seated in equal pomp and finery, Business is being discussed.
Wife, Tell me dear didn´t the king look un well at the ceremony this afternoon ?
Mother. He always was a nervous boy when your Father and I used attend the Old Kings ceremonies the Young prince as he was then never seemed as he right
Wife. Mother in Law when you and father in law knew the old king we were not as rich as we are now, My Husband has prospered as the new kings ambitions have overstretched his purse and I wondered if my Banker Husband had such concerns.
Banker. My Father did much service to the old king the new king does much service for us now in return.
Wife. Tell me my banker husband where did your father and his fathers father find the wit to have the king grant you privelidge to create the tokens, how many of them do you have where were they found.
Banker. Its a long story let us take our leisuure in the drawing room, that I might Smoke and have a brandy, My great Great Grandfather Sailed away to Xanadhu the year was 1249 and the Captain on board ship ship was Marco Polo.
”Now that I have told you in detail of the splendour of this City of the Emperor’s, I shall proceed to tell you of the Mint which he hath in the same city, in the which he hath his money coined and struck, as I shall relate to you. And in doing so I shall make manifest to you how it is that the Great Lord may well be able to accomplish even much more than I have told you, or am going to tell you, in this Book. For, tell it how I might, you never would be satisfied that I was keeping within truth and reason!
The Emperor’s Mint then is in this same City of Cambaluc, and the way it is wrought is such that you might say he hath the Secret of Alchemy in perfection, and you would be right! For he makes his money after this fashion.
He makes them take of the bark of a certain tree, in fact of the Mulberry Tree, the leaves of which are the food of the silkworms,–these trees being so numerous that whole districts are full of them. What they take is a certain fine white bast or skin which lies between the wood of the tree and the thick outer bark, and this they make into something resembling sheets of paper, but black. When these sheets have been prepared they are cut up into pieces of different sizes. The smallest of these sizes is worth a half tornesel; the next, a little larger, one tornesel; one, a little larger still, is worth half a silver groat of Venice; another a whole groat; others yet two groats, five groats, and ten groats. There is also a kind worth one Bezant of gold, and others of three Bezants, and so up to ten. All these pieces of paper are [issued with as much solemnity and authority as if they were of pure gold or silver; and on every piece a variety of officials, whose duty it is, have to write their names, and to put their seals. And when all is prepared duly, the chief officer deputed by the Kaan smears the Seal entrusted to him with vermilion, and impresses it on the paper, so that the form of the Seal remains printed upon it in red; the Money is then authentic. Any one forging it would be punished with death.] And the Kaan causes every year to be made such a vast quantity of this money, which costs him nothing, that it must equal in amount all the treasure in the world.
With these pieces of paper, made as I have described, he causes all payments on his own account to be made; and he makes them to pass current universally over all his kingdoms and provinces and territories, and whithersoever his power and sovereignty extends. And nobody, however important he may think himself, dares to refuse them on pain of death. And indeed everybody takes them readily, for wheresoever a person may go throughout the Great Kaan’s dominions he shall find these pieces of paper current, and shall be able to transact all sales and purchases of goods by means of them just as well as if they were coins of pure gold. And all the while they are so light that ten bezants’ worth does not weigh one golden bezant.
Furthermore all merchants arriving from India or other countries, and bringing with them gold or silver or gems and pearls, are prohibited from selling to any one but the Emperor. He has twelve experts chosen for this business, men of shrewdness and experience in such affairs; these appraise the articles, and the Emperor then pays a liberal price for them in those pieces of paper. The merchants accept his price readily, for in the first place they would not get so good an one from anybody else, and secondly they are paid without any delay. And with this paper-money they can buy what they like anywhere over the Empire, whilst it is also vastly lighter to carry about on their journeys. And it is a truth that the merchants will several times in the year bring wares to the amount of 400,000 bezants, and the Grand Sire pays for all in that paper. So he buys such a quantity of those precious things every year that his treasure is endless, whilst all the time the money he pays away costs him nothing at all. Moreover, several times in the year proclamation is made through the city that any one who may have gold or silver or gems or pearls, by taking them to the Mint shall get a handsome price for them. And the owners are glad to do this, because they would find no other purchaser give so large a price. Thus the quantity they bring in is marvellous, though these who do not choose to do so may let it alone. Still, in this way, nearly all the valuables in the country come into the Kaan’s possession.
When any of those pieces of paper are spoilt–not that they are so very flimsy neither–the owner carries them to the Mint, and by paying three per cent, on the value he gets new pieces in exchange. And if any Baron, or any one else soever, hath need of gold or silver or gems or pearls, in order to make plate, or girdles, or the like, he goes to the Mint and buys as much as he list, paying in this paper-money.[1]Now you have heard the ways and means whereby the Great Kaan may have, and in fact has, more treasure than all the Kings in the World; and you know all about it and the reason why. And now I will tell you of the great Dignitaries which act in this city on behalf of the Emperor………
In the priests House.
The priest sits at high table with the other clergy of the court.
Deacon; to the priest.” Holy Father the King seemed distracted today, the general seemed well rewarded from the latest campaign, how though do we reconcile the kings distraction with the claimed success?
Parish Priest. Yes holy father an orphaned child in my parish will be without hopes of starting afresh without usurious debt how are the people to bear the costs , the bounties of their labours are ever increasing and yet for want of money there is no traffic in the market square yet people are cold and hungary in the workhouses.
The Holy Father . The King is seduced my office is no longer to hear confessions and give guidance but we are grew rich in the indulgences we must profer on our monarch.
There are two sorts of wealth-getting, as I have said; one is a part of household management, the other is retail trade: the former necessary and honorable, while that which consists in exchange is justly censured; for it is unnatural, and a mode by which men gain from one another. The most hated sort, and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from the natural object of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of an modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural.
Since they [usurers] sell nothing other than the expectation of money, that is to say, time, they sell days and nights. But the day is the time of clarity, and the night the time of repose. It is, therefore, not just for them to receive eternal light and eternal rest.
-
Tabula exemplorum, (13th century) as quoted by Till Düppe, The Making of the Economy: A Phenomenology of Economic Science
In the Judges Chambers.
DUKE.
Make room, and let him stand before our face.
Shylock, the world thinks, and I think so too,
That thou but leadest this fashion of thy malice
To the last hour of act; and then, ’tis thought,
Thou’lt show thy mercy and remorse, more strange
Than is thy strange apparent cruelty;
And where thou now exacts the penalty,–
Which is a pound of this poor merchant’s flesh,–
Thou wilt not only loose the forfeiture,
But, touch’d with human gentleness and love,
Forgive a moiety of the principal,
Glancing an eye of pity on his losses,
That have of late so huddled on his back,
Enow to press a royal merchant down,
And pluck commiseration of his state
87
From brassy bosoms and rough hearts of flint,
From stubborn Turks and Tartars, never train’d
To offices of tender courtesy.
We all expect a gentle answer, Jew.
Porsche disguised as young Lawyer ( Balathazaar)
The quality of mercy is not strain’d;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
94
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
Gold Siler and Lead, Cash money, Checking bank money and High powered Central Bank Money.
PORTIA.
Go draw aside the curtains and discover
The several caskets to this noble prince.
Now make your choice.
PRINCE OF MOROCCO.
The first, of gold, who this inscription bears:
‘Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire.’
The second, silver, which this promise carries:
‘Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves.’
This third, dull lead, with warning all as blunt:
‘Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.’
How shall I know if I do choose the right?
‘All that glisters is not gold,
Often have you heard that told;
Many a man his life hath sold
But my outside to behold:
Gilded tombs do worms infold.
Had you been as wise as bold,
Young in limbs, in judgment old,
Your answer had not been inscroll’d:
Fare you well, your suit is cold.’
Aragon-
‘The fire seven times tried this;
Seven times tried that judgment is
That did never choose amiss.
Some there be that shadows kiss;
Such have but a shadow’s bliss;
There be fools alive, I wis,
Silver’d o’er, and so was this.
57
Take what wife you will to bed,
I will ever be your head:
So be gone; you are sped.”
Bossanio.
The seeming truth which cunning times put on
To entrap the wisest. Therefore, thou gaudy gold,
Hard food for Midas, I will none of thee;
Nor none of thee, thou pale and common drudge
‘Tween man and man: but thou, thou meagre lead,
Which rather threaten’st than dost promise aught,
Thy plainness moves me more than eloquence,
And here choose I
What find I here? [Opening the leaden casket.]
Fair Portia’s counterfeit!
so far this shadow
Doth limp behind the substance. Here’s the scroll,
The continent and summary of my fortune.
You that choose not by the view,
Chance as fair and choose as true!
Since this fortune falls to you,
Be content and seek no new.
If you be well pleas’d with this,
And hold your fortune for your bliss,
Turn to where your lady is
And claim her with a loving kiss.
The courtiers of the Exchequer address the king;
We economists beholden as we are to the princes of usury and the false prophets of usury fit the horse foot to the shoe that suits us best it matters not that the horse becomes lame and less furlongs are ploughed. As we deny the posion in our own usurious medium we also deny that what ills our patient could be from any panacea concocted in our own alchemists crucible.
”Money is usually defined
from a functional perspective as a “unit of account, store of value
and medium of exchange.” However, this definition does not take into account the quintessential attribute of money that money always trades at par on demand and the institutional arrangements that underpin this attribute.Money claims are also hierarchical (see Mehrling, 2012),
in the sense that not all money claims are equally strong in their par on demand promise in all states of the world, and that always and everywhere money is something different for central banks, banks, shadow banks and all other participants in the financial ecosystem.
Shadow Banking
: The Money View
Zoltan Pozsar
Put more bluntly, the hybrid character of banking – always a joint venture between private capital and governmental liquidity safety nets – is morphing more and more towards government-sponsored banking. Yes, I know that is harsh, but sometimes the truth is harsh. Capitalism and banking may not be divorced, but certainly are engaged in some form of trial separation.
Paul McCulley
”The monetary and financial system of an economy are part of the socio-politico-economic control mechanism used by every state to connect the economy with the polity and society. This neural network provides the administrative means to collect taxes, direct investment, provide public goods, trade. The money measures provide a crude but serviceable basis for the accounting system which in turn, along with the codification of commercial law and financial regulation are the basis for economic evaluation and the measurement of trust and fiduciary responsibility among the economic agents. A central feature of a control mechanism is that it is designed to influence process. Dynamics is its natural domain. Equilibrium is not the prime concern, the ability to control the direction of motion is what counts.
Money and financial institutions provide the command and control system of a modern society. The study of the mechanism, how they are formed, how they are controlled and manipulated and how their influence is measured in terms of social, political, and economic purpose pose questions not in pure economics, not even in a narrow political economy, but in the broad compass of a political economy set in the context of society. ”
Martin Shubik
7th April 1823.
The national debt has, in fact, made more men rich than have a right to be so, or, rather, any ultimate power, in case of a struggle, of actualizing their riches. It is, in effect, like an ordinary, where three hundred tickets have been distributed, but where there is, in truth, room only for one hundred. So long as you can amuse the company with any thing else, or make them come in successively, all is well, and the whole three hundred fancy themselves sure of a dinner; but if any suspicion of a hoax should arise, and they were all to rush into the room at once, there would be two hundred without a potato for their money; and the table would be occupied by the landholders, who live on the spot.
http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8489/pg8489.html
The national debt has, in fact, made more men rich than have a right to be so, or, rather, any ultimate power, in case of a struggle, of actualizing their riches. It is, in effect, like an ordinary, where three hundred tickets have been distributed, but where there is, in truth, room only for one hundred. So long as you can amuse the company with any thing else, or make them come in successively, all is well, and the whole three hundred fancy themselves sure of a dinner; but if any suspicion of a hoax should arise, and they were all to rush into the room at once, there would be two hundred without a potato for their money; and the table would be occupied by the landholders, who live on the spot.
http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8489/pg8489.html
Wall Street Owns The Country
A Speech by Mary Elizabeth Lease (circa 1890)
This is a nation of inconsistencies. The Puritans fleeing from oppression became oppressors. We fought England for our liberty and put chains on four million of blacks. We wiped out slavery and our tariff laws and national banks began a system of white wage slavery worse than the first. Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master. The West and South are bound and prostrate before the manufacturing East. Money rules, and our Vice-President is a London banker. Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags. The [political] parties lie to us and the political speakers mislead us. We were told two years ago to go to work and raise a big crop, that was all we needed. We went to work and plowed and planted; the rains fell, the sun shone, nature smiled, and we raised the big crop that they told us to; and what came of it? Eight-cent corn, ten-cent oats, two-cent beef and no price at all for butter and eggs-that’s what came of it. The politicians said we suffered from overproduction. Overproduction, when 10,000 little children, so statistics tell us, starve to death every year in the United States, and over 100,000 shopgirls in New York are forced to sell their virtue for the bread their niggardly wages deny them… We want money, land and transportation. We want the abolition of the National Banks, and we want the power to make loans direct from the government. We want the foreclosure system wiped out… We will stand by our homes and stay by our fireside by force if necessary, and we will not pay our debts to the loan-shark companies until the government pays its debts to us. The people are at bay; let the bloodhounds of money who dogged us thus far beware.
As Paul Krugman the Riechsbank prize holder in Economics in honour of Alfred nobel has remarked regarding another Ecomonists views from the hetrodox school steve Keen, ”There is No There There.”
- “What was the use of my having come from Oakland it was not natural to have come from there yes write about if I like or anything if I like but not there, there is no there there.” -Gertrude Stein, Everybody’s Autobiography (1937), ch. 4
- Keen may well equally have replied to Krugman that he was not even wrong?
Pauli remarked sadly, ‘It is not even wrong’.”[2] This is also often quoted as “That is not only not right, it is not even wrong.” or “Das ist nicht nur nicht richtig, es ist nicht einmal falsch!“ in Pauli’s native German.
p.49 Tragedy and HOPEThe Two Major Goals of Bankers
Hundreds of years ago, bankers began to specialize, with the richer and more
influential ones associated increasingly with foreign trade and foreign-exchange
transactions. Since these were richer and more cosmopolitan and increasingly concerned
with questions of political significance, such as stability and debasement of currencies,
war and peace, dynastic marriages, and worldwide trading monopolies, they became the
financiers and financial advisers of governments. Moreover, since their relationships with
governments were always in monetary terms and not real terms, and since they were
always obsessed with the stability of monetary exchanges between one country’s money
and another, they used their power and influence to do two things: (1) to get all money
and debts expressed in terms of a strictly limited commodity—ultimately gold; and (2) to
get all monetary matters out of the control of governments and political authority, on the
ground that they would be handled better by private banking interests in terms of such a
stable value as gold.
These efforts … [were accelerated] with the shift of commercial capitalism into
mercantilism and the destruction of the whole pattern of social organization based on
dynastic monarchy, professional mercenary armies, and mercantilism, in the series of
wars which shook Europe from the middle of the seventeenth century to 1815.
Commercial capitalism passed through two periods of expansion each of which
deteriorated into a later phase of war, class struggles, and retrogression. The first stage,
associated with the Mediterranean Sea, was dominated by the North Italians and
Catalonians but ended in a phase of crisis after 1300, which was not finally ended until
1558. The second stage of commercial capitalism, which was associated with the Atlantic
Ocean, was dominated by the West Iberians, the Netherlanders, and the English. It had
begun to expand by 1440, was in full swing by 1600, but by the end of the seventeenth
century had become entangled in the restrictive struggles of state mercantilism and the
series of wars which ravaged Europe from 1667 to 1815.
Supremacy of Charter Companies
The commercial capitalism of the 1440-1815 period was marked by the supremacy of
the Chartered Companies, such as the Hudson’s Bay, the Dutch and British East Indian
companies, the Virginia Company, and the Association of Merchant Adventurers
(Muscovy Company). England’s greatest rivals in all these activities were defeated by
England’s greater power, and, above all, its greater security derived from its insular
position.
Industrial Capitalism 1770-1850
Britain’s victories over Louis XIV in the period 1667-1715 and over the French
Revolutionary governments and Napoleon in 1792-1815 had many causes, such as its
insular position, its ability to retain control of the sea, its ability to present itself to the
world as the defender of the freedoms and rights of small nations and of diverse social
and religious groups. Among these numerous causes, there were a financial one and an
economic one. Financially, England had discovered the secret of credit. Economically,
England had embarked on the Industrial Revolution.
p.57
The Key International Banking Families
The names of some of these banking families are familiar to all of us and should he more so. They include Raring, Lazard, Erlanger, Warburg, Schroder, Seligman, the Speyers, Mirabaud, Mallet, Fould, and above all Rothschild and Morgan. Even after these banking families became fully involved in domestic industry by the emergence of
financial capitalism, they remained different from ordinary bankers in distinctive ways:
-
they were cosmopolitan and international;
-
they were close to governments and were particularly concerned with questions of government debts, including foreign government debts, even in areas which seemed, at first glance, poor risks, like Egypt,
Persia, Ottoman Turkey, Imperial China, and Latin America;
(3) their interests were
almost exclusively in bonds and very rarely in goods, since they admired “liquidity” and
regarded commitments in commodities or even real estate as the first step toward
bankruptcy;
(4) they were, accordingly, fanatical devotees of deflation (which they called
“sound” money from its close associations with high interest rates and a high value of
money) and of the gold standard, which, in their eyes, symbolized and ensured these
values; and
(5) they were almost equally devoted to secrecy and the secret use of
financial influence in political life. These bankers came to be called “international
bankers” and, more particularly, were known as “merchant bankers” in England, “private
bankers” in France, and “investment bankers” in the United States. In all countries they
carried on various kinds of banking and exchange activities, but everywhere they were
sharply distinguishable
International Bankers Felt Politicians Could Not Be Trusted
With Control of the Monetary System
The influence of financial capitalism and of the international bankers who created it
was exercised both on business and on governments, but could have done neither if it had
not been able to persuade both these to accept two “axioms” of its own ideology. Both of
these were based on the assumption that politicians were too weak and too subject to temporary popular pressures to be trusted with control of the money system; accordingly,
the sanctity of all values and the soundness of money must be protected in two ways: by
basing the value of money on gold and by allowing bankers to control the supply of
money. To do this it was necessary to conceal, or even to mislead, both governments and
people about the nature of money and its methods of operation.
Money Power Is More Concerned With Money Than Goods
The obsession of the Money Power with deflation was partly a result of their concern
with money rather than with goods, but was also founded on other factors, one of which
was paradoxical. The paradox arose from the fact that the basic economic conditions of
the nineteenth century were deflationary, with a money system based on gold and an
industrial system pouring out increasing supplies of goods, but in spite of falling prices
(with its increasing value of money) the interest rate tended to fall rather than to rise. This
occurred because the relative limiting of the supply of money in business was not
reflected in the world of finance where excess profits of finance made excess funds
available for lending.
The Money Power—Controlled by International Investment Bankers—
Dominates Business and Government
In the various actions which increase or decrease the supply of money, governments,
bankers, and industrialists have not always seen eye to eye. On the whole, in the period
up to 1931, bankers, especially the Money Power controlled by the international
investment bankers, were able to dominate both business and government. They could
dominate business, especially in activities and in areas where industry could not finance
its own needs for capital, because investment bankers had the ability to supply or refuse
to supply such capital. Thus, Rothschild interests came to dominate many of the railroads
of Europe, while Morgan dominated at least 26,000 miles of American railroads. Such
bankers went further than this. In return for flotations of securities of industry, they took
seats on the boards of directors of industrial firms, as they had already done on
commercial banks, savings banks, insurance firms, and finance companies. From these
lesser institutions they funneled capital to enterprises which yielded control and away
from those who resisted. These firms were controlled through interlocking directorships,
holding companies, and lesser banks. They engineered amalgamations and generally
reduced competition, until by the early twentieth century many activities were so
monopolized that they could raise their noncompetitive prices above costs to obtain
sufficient profits to become self-financing and were thus able to eliminate the control of
bankers. But before that stage was reached a relatively small number of bankers were in
positions of immense influence in European and American economic life. As early as
1909, Walter Rathenau, who was in a position to know (since he had inherited from his
father control of the German General Electric Company and held scores of directorships
himself), said, “Three hundred men, all of whom know one another, direct the economic
destiny of Europe and choose their successors from among themselves.”
The Power of Investment Bankers Over Governments
The power of investment bankers over governments rests on a number of factors, of
which the most significant, perhaps, is the need of governments to issue short-term
treasury bills as well as long-term government bonds. Just as businessmen go to
commercial banks for current capital advances to smooth over the discrepancies between
their irregular and intermittent incomes and their periodic and persistent outgoes (such as
monthly rents, annual mortgage payments, and weekly wages), so a government has to go
to merchant bankers (or institutions controlled by them) to tide over the shallow places
caused by irregular tax receipts. As experts in government bonds, the international
bankers not only handled the necessary advances but provided advice to government
officials and, on many occasions, placed their own members in official posts for varied
periods to deal with special problems. This is so widely accepted even today that in 1961
a Republican investment banker became Secretary of the Treasury in a Democratic
Administration in Washington without significant comment from any direction.
The Money Power Reigns Supreme and Unquestioned
Naturally, the influence of bankers over governments during the age of financial
capitalism (roughly 1850-1931)
The Development of Monopoly Capitalism
This conflict of interests between bankers and industrialists has resulted in most
European countries in the subordination of the former either to the latter or to the
government (after 1931). This subordination was accomplished by the adoption of
“unorthodox financial policies”—that is, financial policies not in accordance with the
short-run interests of bankers. This shift by which bankers were made subordinate
reflected a fundamental development in modern economic history—a development which
can be described as the growth from financial capitalism to monopoly capitalism. This
took place in Germany earlier than in any other country and was well under way by 1926.
It came in Britain only after 1931 and in Italy only in 1934. It did not occur in France to a
comparable extent at all, and this explains the economic weakness of France in 1938-
1940 to a considerable degree.
The Monetary Tactics of the Banking Oligarchy ( TO 1933)
The inability of the investment bankers and their industrial allies to control the
Democratic Convention of 1896 was a result of the agrarian discontent of the period
1868-1896. This discontent in turn was based, very largely, on the monetary tactics of the
banking oligarchy. The bankers were wedded to the gold standard for reasons we have
already explained. Accordingly, at the end of the Civil War, they persuaded the Grant
Administration to curb the postwar inflation and go back on the gold standard (crash of
1873 and resumption of specie payments in 1875). This gave the bankers a control of the
supply of money which they did not hesitate to use for their own purposes, as Morgan
ruthlessly pressurized Cleveland in 1893-1896. The bankers’ affection for low prices was
not shared by the farmers, since each time prices of farm products went down the burden
of farmers’ debts (especially mortgages) became greater. Moreover, farm prices, being
much more competitive than industrial prices, and not protected by a tariff, fell much
faster than industrial prices, and farmers could not reduce costs or modify their
production plans nearly so rapidly as industrialists could. The result was a systematic
exploitation of the agrarian sectors of the community by the financial and industrial
sectors. This exploitation took the form of high industrial prices, high (and
discriminatory) railroad rates, high interest charges, low farm prices, and a very low level
of farm services by railroads and the government. Unable to resist by economic weapons,
the farmers of the West turned to political relief, but were greatly hampered by their
reluctance to vote Democratic (because of their memories of the Civil War). Instead, they
tried to work on the state political level through local legislation (so-called Granger
Laws) and set up third-party movements (like the Greenback Party in 1878 or the
Populist Party in 1892). By 1896, however, agrarian discontent rose so high that it began
to overcome the memory of the Democratic role in the Civil War. The capture of the
Democratic Party by these forces of discontent under William Jennings Bryan in 1896,
who was determined to obtain higher prices by increasing the supply of money on a
bimetallic rather than a gold basis, presented the electorate with an election on a social
and economic issue for the first time in a generation. Though the forces of high finance
and of big business were in a state of near panic, by a mighty effort involving large-scale
spending they were successful in electing McKinley.
Money Power Seeks to Control Both Political Parties
The Growth of Monopolies and the Excesses of Wall Street
The agrarian discontent, the growth of monopolies, the oppression of labor, and the
excesses of Wall Street financiers made the country very restless in the period 1890-
1900.The Primary Goal of Capitalism The third notable feature of the whole development is closely related to this special nature of capitalism. Capitalism provides very powerful motivations for economic activity because it associates economic motivations so closely with self-interest. But this
same feature, which is a source of strength in providing economic motivation through the
pursuit of profits, is also a source of weakness owing to the fact that so self-centered a
motivation contributes very readily to a loss of economic coordination. Each individual,
just because he is so powerfully motivated by self-interest, easily loses sight of the role
which his own activities play in the economic system as a whole, and tends to act as if his
activities were the whole, with inevitable injury to that whole. We could indicate this by
pointing out that capitalism, because it seeks profits as its primary goal, is never primarily
seeking to achieve prosperity, high production, high consumption, political power,
patriotic improvement, or moral uplift. Any of these may be achieved under capitalism,
and any (or all) of them may he sacrificed and lost under capitalism, depending on this
relationship to the primary goal of capitalist activity—the pursuit of profits. During the
nine-hundred-year history of capitalism, it has, at various times, contributed both to the
achievement and to the destruction of these other social goals.
Commercial Capitalism
The different stages of capitalism have sought to win profits by different kinds of
economic activities. The original stage, which we call commercial capitalism, sought
profits by moving goods from one place to another. In this effort, goods went from places
where they were less valuable to places where they were more valuable, while money,
doing the same thing, moved in the opposite direction. This valuation, which determined
the movement both of goods and of money and which made them move in opposite
directions, was measured by the relationship between these two things. Thus the value of
goods was expressed in money. and the value of money was expressed in goods. Goods
moved from low-price areas to high-price areas, and money moved from high-price areas
to low-price areas, because goods were more valuable where prices were high and money
was more valuable where prices were low.
Money and Goods Are Different
”Thus, clearly, money and goods are not the same thing but are, on the contrary,
exactly opposite things. Most confusion in economic thinking arises from failure to
recognize this fact. Goods are wealth which you have, while money is a claim on wealth which you do not have. Thus goods are an asset; money is a debt. If goods are wealth;money is not wealth, or negative wealth, or even anti-wealth. They always behave in opposite ways, just as they usually move in opposite directions. If the value of one goes up, the value of the other goes down, and in the same proportion.”
Merchants Became Concerned with Lending of Money
In the course of time, however, some merchants began to shift their attention from the
goods aspect of commercial interchange to the other, monetary, side of the exchange.
They began to accumulate the profits of these transactions, and became increasingly
concerned, not with the shipment and exchange of goods, but with the shipment and
exchange of moneys. In time they became concerned with the lending of money to
merchants to finance their ships and their activities, advancing money for both, at high
interest rates, secured by claims on ships or goods as collateral for repayment.
The New Bankers Were Eager for High Interest Rates
In this process the attitudes and interests of these new bankers became totally opposed
to those of the merchants (although few of either recognized the situation). Where the
merchant had been eager for high prices and was increasingly eager for low interest rates,
the banker was eager for a high value of money (that is, low prices) and high interest
rates. Each was concerned to maintain or to increase the value of the half of the
transaction (goods for money) with which he was directly concerned, with relative
neglect of the transaction itself (which was of course the concern of the producers and the
consumers).
The Operations of Banking and Finance Were Concealed So
They Appeared Difficult to Master In sum, specialization of economic activities, by breaking up the economic process,had made it possible for people to concentrate on one portion of the process and, by maximizing that portion, to jeopardize the rest. The process was not only broken up into producers, exchangers, and consumers but there were also two kinds of exchangers (one concerned with goods, the other with money), with almost antithetical, short-term, aims.The problems which inevitably arose could be solved and the system reformed only by reference to the system as a whole. Unfortunately, however, three parts of the system,concerned with the production, transfer, and consumption of goods, were concrete and clearly visible so that almost anyone could grasp them simply by examining them, while the operations of banking and finance were concealed, scattered, and abstract so that they
appeared to many to be difficult. To add to this, bankers themselves did everything they could to make their activities more secret and more esoteric. Their activities were reflected in mysterious marks in ledgers which were never opened to the curious outsider.
The Relationship Between Goods and Money Is Clear to Bankers
In the course of time the central fact of the developing economic system, the
relationship between goods and money, became clear, at least to bankers. This relationship, the price system, depended upon five things: the supply and the demand for goods, the supply and the demand for money, and the speed of exchange between money and goods. An increase in three of these (demand for goods, supply of money, speed of circulation) would move the prices of goods up and the value of
money down. This inflation was objectionable to bankers, although desirable to producers and merchants.On the other hand, a decrease in the same three items would be deflationary and would please bankers, worry producers and merchants, and delight consumers (who obtained more goods for less money). The other factors worked in the opposite direction, so that an increase in them (supply of goods, demand for money, and slowness of circulation or exchange) would be deflationary.
Inflationary and Deflationary Prices Have Been a Major Force in History for 600 Years
Such changes of prices, either inflationary or deflationary, have been major forces in
history for the last six centuries at least. Over that long period, their power to modify
men’s lives and human history has been increasing. This has been reflected in two ways.
On the one hand, rises in prices have generally encouraged increased economic activity,
especially the production of goods, while, on the other hand, price changes have served to
redistribute wealth within the economic system. Inflation, especially a slow steady rise in
prices, encourages producers, because it means that they can commit themselves to costs
of production on one price level and then, later, offer the finished product for sale at a
somewhat higher price level. This situation encourages production because it gives
confidence of an almost certain profit margin. On the other hand, production is
discouraged in a period of falling prices, unless the producer is in the very unusual
situation where his costs are falling more rapidly than the prices of his product.
Bankers Obsessed With Maintaining Value of Money The redistribution of wealth by changing prices is equally important but attracts much less attention. Rising prices benefit debtors and injure creditors, while falling prices do the opposite. A debtor called upon to pay a debt at a time when prices are higher than when he contracted the debt must yield up less goods and services than he obtained at the earlier date, on a lower price level when he borrowed the money. A creditor, such as a bank, which has lent money—equivalent to a certain quantity of goods and services—on
one price level, gets back the same amount of money—but a smaller quantity of goods
and services—when repayment comes at a higher price level, because the money repaid
is then less valuable. This is why bankers, as creditors in money terms, have been
obsessed with maintaining the value of money, although the reason they have
traditionally given for this obsession—that “sound money” maintains “business
confidence”—has been propagandist rather than accurate.
The Two Major Goals of Banker
Hundreds of years ago, bankers began to specialize, with the richer and more
influential ones associated increasingly with foreign trade and foreign-exchange
transactions. Since these were richer and more cosmopolitan and increasingly concerned
with questions of political significance, such as stability and debasement of currencies,
war and peace, dynastic marriages, and worldwide trading monopolies, they became the
financiers and financial advisers of governments. Moreover, since their relationships with
governments were always in monetary terms and not real terms, and since they were
always obsessed with the stability of monetary exchanges between one country’s money
and another, they used their power and influence to do two things:
(1) to get all money
and debts expressed in terms of a strictly limited commodity—ultimately gold; and
(2) to
get all monetary matters out of the control of governments and political authority, on the
ground that they would be handled better by private banking interests in terms of such a
stable value as gold.
These efforts … [were accelerated] with the shift of commercial capitalism into
mercantilism and the destruction of the whole pattern of social organization based on
dynastic monarchy, professional mercenary armies, and mercantilism, in the series of
wars which shook Europe from the middle of the seventeenth century to 1815.
Commercial capitalism passed through two periods of expansion each of which
deteriorated into a later phase of war, class struggles, and retrogression. The first stage,
associated with the Mediterranean Sea, was dominated by the North Italians and
Catalonians but ended in a phase of crisis after 1300, which was not finally ended until
1558. The second stage of commercial capitalism, which was associated with the Atlantic
Ocean, was dominated by the West Iberians, the Netherlanders, and the English. It had
begun to expand by 1440, was in full swing by 1600, but by the end of the seventeenth
century had become entangled in the restrictive struggles of state mercantilism and the
series of wars which ravaged Europe from 1667 to 1815.
Supremacy of Charter Companies
The commercial capitalism of the 1440-1815 period was marked by the supremacy of
the Chartered Companies, such as the Hudson’s Bay, the Dutch and British East Indian
companies, the Virginia Company, and the Association of Merchant Adventurers
(Muscovy Company). England’s greatest rivals in all these activities were defeated by
England’s greater power, and, above all, its greater security derived from its insular
position.
Industrial Capitalism 1770-1850
Britain’s victories over Louis XIV in the period 1667-1715 and over the French
Revolutionary governments and Napoleon in 1792-1815 had many causes, such as its
insular position, its ability to retain control of the sea, its ability to present itself to the
world as the defender of the freedoms and rights of small nations and of diverse social
and religious groups. Among these numerous causes, there were a financial one and an
economic one. Financially, England had discovered the secret of credit. Economically,
England had embarked on the Industrial Revolution.
FORM AND MONEY IN WAGNER’S RING AND
GREEK
TRAGEDY
13
the business of my admirers to give me as much money as I want, to do my work in a cheerful mood'(3/10/1855) In 1881 he wrote Clever though be the many thoughts expressed by mouth or pen about the invention of money and its enormous value as a civiliser, against
such praise of it we should consider the curse to which it has always
exposed in saga and poetry.If gold here appears as the demon strangling
the innocence of humanity, our greatest poet shews at last the invention of
paper money as devil’s’ mischief. The doom-laden ring of the Nibelungs might as a stock-exchange portfolio(Börsenportefeuille) bring to completion the gruesome picture of the ghostly master of the world.
37
Genuinely FAKE
ANNE WENZEL
Fake Rolex Says Fake More interested?
Magicians Club Rotterdam Or Association Name of the club?
Faded Beauty of rotting tulips
Paulime Oltheten Two Mortor Bikes called Nice if two pairs of legswalk in sync for a moment
Was it a trick or was it real or is it unknown. ?
Magician pulls eggs from behind the ears of the children ( Inceredulity)??
It pretends to be a monument as if something is being commemorated
No clue to what is being commemorated its really justy Hot air
Is remmebering also hot air?
Rememberance day is different for Anne Wenzel in Holland because she is German and not Dutch
I examined the langauge of forms
This is a heroic monument that has been imposed from above
The question is how you relate to it
I wanrt to ask the visitors to the museum;
How do you relate to this monument?
It is clearly a structure that has been imposed from above
But can I be a part of this remembering?
The Supper at emmaus
Supoposed to be a vermeer forgery by Van Meegeren composed to fool art historians as a missing link.A transitional work in his known cataougue Van Meegren workewd out what would fill the gap in his outputand then made a painting that would fit within the chronology of orthodox art history.
Not only did he forge materials so that scientific analysis could not at the time detect the age of the painting as a forgery what makes it genius is that the duplicate could not be discovered it had never existed as a vermeer but becomes a vermeer in the minds of the historians as it fits into the historic narrative reinforcing their own analysis of what vermmer could have done.
Anna Wenzel,
Is a monument important.
I don´t know Ido know it has an important channeling function
I am very immpressed by them , many of the russian monuments are really grand and that’s fantastic
but I know how they are made so that is what is fantasticBecaus I know exactly what composition you can analyse the form langauge and how monuyments are contructed . If you analyse it , you end up with a form that has been designed to impress me. So, to what extent is this credible?
Moral of the tale Van Meegren,
The supper at emmanuus and a few iother van meegrens were sold to Hermann Goring added to other Looted works of arts from across Europe .
After the war Van meegren was prosecuted for collaborating with the Germans and he was idscovered to be a forger.
Asked whether the Magicians thought less of the painting as a piece of art knowing it is fake and not by the master Vermeer but by the master forger Van meegren, answer
´´people always want to examine a false bank note.
People want to believe if you ‘give them what they want that is not necessarily a bad thing?
The artist Anna Wendt says in the film ..
In making a monument ….
´´You petrtify the fleeting of a moment … You also Solidify Time thats what I like about it .
You Solidify Time ?´´ Nice.
In fact, the choice of Žižek as our theoretical foundation may be understood as a concession to the undecidability of money as an inherent feature of the phenomenon itself. Paraphrasing Lacan’s infamous slogan that ‘The woman does not exist’, our analytical approach to Bitcoin is underpinned by the following assumption: ‘Money does not exist’.This obviously does not mean that there is no actual money in the world but rather that money has no transhistorical essence, which would lend it to a general theoretical definition.Such approach to the study of money also puts us in line with Dodd’s recent invitation to ‘[embrace] all of the various empirical forms of money without lapsing into an arbitrary nominalism’
“As Paul Ricoeur has”“noted:”“It is striking that Plato contributed to the construction of Euclidian geometry”“through his work of denominating such concepts as line, surface, equality, and the similarity of figures, etc., which strictly forbade all recourse and all allusion to manipulations, to physical transformation of figures. This asceticism of mathematical language, to which we owe, in the last analysis, all our machines since the dawn of the mechanical age, would have been impossible without the logical heroism of Parmenides denying the entirety of the world of becoming and of praxis in the name of the self-identity of significations. It is to this denial of movement and work that we owe the achievements of Euclid, of Galileo, modern mechanism, and all our devices and apparatus (Ricoeur 1970:201-202; also in Sahlins 1976:81-82n.21)”
Magician conjures a gold fish swimming in a bowl. An often made metaphor that we do not know the familiar which makes up our being except when its not there. With money when something that isnt there in the first place isn´t believed to be there in the second place
“The moment of commemoration itself is entirely stage-managed and proceeds according to strict protocols. Briefly, there is talk of fellowship. Only after everyone has gone, and just the withered wreaths remain, do you have the space to ask yourself how you want to relate to that imposed heroism. Do you allow yourself to be swept along by it or not? Everyone knows that the sites where memorial services are held and the rituals they involve are contrived and designed in order to stir people’s emotions. I am interested in the personal choice that the individual makes in regard to these mechanisms. I do not wish to condemn, but I do want to say to people: know that you are being manipulated, understand what you see. Moreover, I find the contrast between the transience of the flowers and the heroism of the monument very beautiful.”
(Bjerg 2014, 96
–
100). With Žižek, we can understand the commodity theory of
money as an effort to found the value of money in the dimension of the real by pointing to the intrinsic value of gold as the ultimate support of the currency. It is crucial to note how Žižek’s definition of the real is anything but straightforward and even varies throughout his writings. At some points, the real is located in a positive existence beyond the sphere of symbolization. He defines the real as ‘that which resists symbolization’ and ‘as the rock upon which every attempt at symbolization stumbles’ (1989, 69, 169). At other points, the real is located in a negative existence, i.e. as merely a void or an aporia inherent in the symbolic
15
order. Žižek states that: ‘the symbolic order itself, is …
barré, crossed-out, by a fundamental impossibility, structured around an impossible/traumatic kernel, around a central lack’ (1989, 122). This lack is the real.
Credit money plays a crucial role in Schumpeterian theoretical analysis of economic development.
Recollection of the famous passage in The Theory of Economic Development
(Schumpeter, 1934,p. 74) should suffice:The banker […] is not so much primarily a middleman in the commodity ‘purchasing power’ as a producer of this commodity […] He stands between those who wishto form new combinations and the possessors ofproductive means. He is essentially a phenomenon of development, though only when no central authority directs the social process. He makes possible the carrying out of new combinations, authorizes people, in thename of society as it were, to form them. He is the ephor of the exchange economy. In other words – as Schumpeter wrote in his ambitious and unlucky
Business Cycles credit creation is the monetary complement of innovation
(Schumpeter, 1964, p. 110):
Recollection of the famous passage in The Theory of Economic Development
(Schumpeter, 1934,p. 74) should suffice:The banker […] is not so much primarily a middleman in the commodity ‘purchasing power’ as a producer of this commodity […] He stands between those who wishto form new combinations and the possessors ofproductive means. He is essentially a phenomenon of development, though only when no central authority directs the social process. He makes possible the carrying out of new combinations, authorizes people, in thename of society as it were, to form them. He is the ephor of the exchange economy. In other words – as Schumpeter wrote in his ambitious and unlucky
Business Cycles credit creation is the monetary complement of innovation
(Schumpeter, 1964, p. 110):
Soddy
”A wit once defined an economist as someone who, when shown that something works in practice, replies “Ah! But does it work in theory?”
Steve Keen Quoted here today http://www.globalresearch.ca/a-loophole-allows-banks-but-not-other-companies-to-create-money-out-of-thin-air/5501623
Quines Two Dogmas of empiricism gives many insights to the limitations of technocratic faith systems.
´´ As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in the light of past experience. Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries — not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits18b comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer. Let me interject that for my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer’s gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise.´´
Most of all I like Rupert Sheldrakes, ” 6 mins 50 quoting Thomas Mc Kenna he says
”Give us one free miracle and we´ll explain the rest”
And the Pragmatist in me inspired by C S Pierce my favorite modern philosopher and one of the finest logicians that has come down to us says this.
CHARLES SANDERS PEIRCE: In order to
reason well …. it is absolutely necessary to possess … such virtues
as intellectual honesty and sincerity a
nd a real love of truth (2.82). The cause [of the success of scientific
inquirers] has been that the motive which has carried them
to the laboratory and the field has been a craving to
know how things really were … (1-34).
[Genuine inquiry consists I in diligent inquiry into truth for truth’s sake
(1.44), … in actually drawing the bow upon truth with in
tentness in the eye, with energy in the arm (1.235).
[When] it is no longer the reasoning which determines wh
at the conclusion shall be, but … the conclusion which
determines what the reasoning shall be … this is sham
reasoning…. The effect of this shamming is that men
come to look upon reasoning as mainly decorative….
Tony Benn once said this
“The House will forgive me for quoting five democratic questions that I have developed during my life. If one meets a powerful person–Rupert Murdoch, perhaps, or Joe Stalin or Hitler–one can ask five questions: what power do you have; where did you get it; in whose interests do you exercise it; to whom are you accountable; and, how can we get rid of you? Anyone who cannot answer the last of those questions does not live in a democratic system.”
Tony Benn Commons Hansard [16 Nov 1998: Column 685] Volume 319 Debate on: European Parliamentary Elections Bill , from 7.20 pm
Satisfying the demands of the persona is the fundamental human enterprise
Wells endorses Jung’s concept of the persona, which he regards as susceptible of education. “Beneath the material processes of economics lies the social idea; its driving force is will. The clearer the idea, the better organized the will in the personas of our species, the more hopeful and successful the working of the human ant-hill.”[10]
Wells proposes that there are three fundamental types of persona that differ in many ways, but in particular in their attitude toward property: (1) the peasant; (2) the nomad; (3) the priest. “The first type is acquisitive, tenacious, and preservative; the second is rapacious and consumes; the third professes to be more or less aloof from possession and gain, and to carry on the service of the community for satisfaction of a quite different type.”[11] Wells seriously entertains the proposal of Frederick Soddy that the “money manipulator” may be “a new type whose primary delight is domination and oppression through relative gain” but concludes that if this is so, “the conception pervading this book . . . is unsound” and “[t]here is nothing for it but . . . a class war against the rich and the able . . . and beginning again upon a different ground plan, with whatever hope is left to us, amidst the ruins.”[12]
see also berg new class war is thewar of debtor class against credit class.
“What is this peculiar phenomenon we call scientism? It is not science, any more than the shadow is anything identical with the substance of a thing. Nor is science ever evidence of scientism. At most, science merely serves to heat up the imagination of certain minds – and they are not few – who are too prone to sweeping and unqualified generalizations in the first place. Scientism is pseudoscience or misinterpreted science. Its conclusions are sweeping and large, and therefore sometimes pretend to be philosophical. But it is not a part of philosophy, if by philosophy we mean the effort to think soberly within the restrictions that human reflection must impose for itself. No, scientism is a malady – an ideology. And as such, along with other ideologies that beset us, it has become a permanent part of our modern culture.” – William Barrett, Death of the Soul.
At the start of this talk Schumacher tells a joke, it goes like this,
A Surgeon and Architect and an Economist are discussing whose is the oldest of their three profession. The Surgeon starts stating well gentlemen surely it is mine after all God when he created Adam then made Eve by taking a Rib from Adam a surgery I would say.
The Architect speaks he frowns and laughs, surely dear Mr Surgeon you must see that God at first created The World and he did this out of Chaos surely you must admit that this precedes surgery and is indeed an act of Architecture.
The Economist shakes his head and thumps the table around which they sit triumphantly. And who do you suppose created the Chaos?
”The value of goods,
expressed in money, is called “prices,” while the value of money, expressed in goods, is
called “value.” p.49 (Commercial Capitalism) Quiqqley shows how Bankers make the distinction and real power lays in the Value of money and not the prices of goods.
expressed in money, is called “prices,” while the value of money, expressed in goods, is
called “value.” p.49 (Commercial Capitalism) Quiqqley shows how Bankers make the distinction and real power lays in the Value of money and not the prices of goods.
Money is about surplus, it is designed so that surpluses can be traded. A surplus denotes or implys that the necessary required to meet need has been satisfied.
Fundamentally this is the root of the objection to usury if we have more than we need we can donate it as it would be wrong to waste it how much we give away would depend on how much could be laid down as a store insuring against future shortages, ( every 7th year grain storage?)
Universal income proposed by Thomas paine and Napolean Bonaparte amongst others addresses the point Money and finance capitalism should only be morally permitted where all necessities are met so that only surplus is eyither traded or stored.
Early origins
From ancient times grain has been stored in bulk. The oldest granaries yet found date back to 9500 BC[1] and are located in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A settlements in the Jordan Valley. The first were located in places between other buildings. However beginning around 8500 BC, they were moved inside houses, and by 7500 BC storage occurred in special rooms.[1] The first granaries measured 3 x 3 m on the outside and had suspended floors that protected the grain from rodents and insects and provided air circulation.[1]
These granaries are followed by those in Mehrgarh in the Indus Valley from 6000 BC. The ancient Egyptians made a practice of preserving grain in years of plenty against years of scarcity. The climate of Egypt being very dry, grain could be stored in pits for a long time without discernible loss of quality. The silo pit, as it has been termed, has been a favorite way of storing grain from time immemorial in all oriental lands. In Turkey and Persia, usurers used to buy up wheat or barley when comparatively cheap, and store it in hidden pits against seasons of dearth. In Malta a relatively large stock of wheat was preserved in some hundreds of pits (silos) cut in the rock. A single silo stored from 60 to 80 tons of wheat, which, with proper precautions, kept in good condition for four years or more.
We are thus aligned with the
position pointedly formulated by Graeber: ‘money has no essence. It’s not
“really” anything; therefore
, its nature has always been and presumably always
will be a matter of political contention’ (Graeber 2011, 372). As demonstrated by
Ingham ‘the mainstream, or orthodox, tradition of modern economics does not
attach much theoretical importance to money’ (
Ingham 2004, 7).
Studying this paper on the ontological aspects of Bitcoin, today I will be reading some of Olegs other work on FIAT money as well.
Sourced from this blog here for anyone else who is interested.
Such is, substantially, Socialism’s theory of Capital and Interest.
DOI-IV-3.52
Not only do we affirm, in accordance with this theory (which, by the way, we hold in common with the economists) and on the strength of our belief in Industrial development, that such is the tendency and the import of lending at Interest; we even prove, by the destructive results of economy as it is, and by a demonstration of the causes of poverty, that this tendency is necessary, and the annihilation of Usury inevitable.
DOI-IV-3.53
In fact, Rent, reward of Capital, Interest on Money, in one word, Usury, constituting, as has been said, an integral part of the price of products, and this Usury not being the same for all, it follows that the price of products, composed as it is of Wages and Interest, cannot be paid by those who have only their Wages, and no Interest to pay it with; so that, by the existence of Usury,
Labor is Condemned to Idleness and Capital to Bankruptcy.
DOI-IV-3.54
This argument, one of that class which mathematicians call the reductio ad absurdum, showing the organic impossibility of lending at Interest, has been repeated a hundred times by Socialism. Why do not the economists notice it?
DOI-IV-3.55
Do you really wish to refute the ideas of Socialism on the question of Interest? Listen, then, to the questions which you must answer: –
DOI-IV-3.56
1. Is it true that, though the loaning of Capital, when viewed objectively, is a service which has its value, and which consequently should be paid for, this loaning, when viewed subjectively, does not involve an actual sacrifice on the part of the Capitalist; and consequently that it does not establish the right to set a price on it?
DOI-IV-3.57
2. Is it true that Usury, to be unobjectionable, must be equal; that the tendency of Society is towards this equalization; so that Usury will be entirely legitimate only when it has become equal for all, – that is, nonexistent?
DOI-IV-3.58
3. Is it true that a National Bank, giving Credit and Discount gratis, is a possible institution?
DOI-IV-3.59
4. Is it true that the effects of the gratuity of Credit and Discount, as well as that of Taxation when simplified and restored to its true form, would be the abolition of Rent of Real Estate, as well as of Interest on Money?
DOI-IV-3.60
5. Is it true that the old system is a contradiction and a mathematical impossibility?
DOI-IV-3.61
6. Is it true that Political Economy, after having, for several thousand years, opposed the view of Usury held by theology, philosophy, and legislation, comes, by the application of its own principles, to the same conclusion?
DOI-IV-3.62
7. Is it true, finally, that Usury has been, as a providential institution, simply an instrument of equality and progress, just as, in the Political sphere, absolute monarchy was an instrument of liberty and progress, and as, in the Judicial sphere, the boiling-water test, the duel, and the rack were, in their turn, instruments of conviction and progress?
DOI-IV-3.63
These are the points that our opponents are bound to examine before charging us with scientific and intellectual weakness; these, Monsieur Bastiat, are the points on which your future arguments must turn, if you wish them to produce a definite result. The question is stated clearly and categorically: permit us to believe that, after having examined it, you will perceive that there is something in the Socialism of the nineteenth century that is beyond the reach of your antiquated Political Economy.
P. J. PROUDHON.
http://praxeology.net/FB-PJP-DOI.htm
Quite !
Jack Fitzgerald
Review of The Tyranny of Usury
value. Practically all nations to-day have adopted the free coinage of gold-through the special laws passed by the world’s financiers ,but this free and unlimited coinage of gold would cease almost instantly upon news of any vast and hitherto unexpected gold discoveries. The repeal of the Silver Coinage Laws in most countries was occasioned by the great silver discoveries in the Western States of America, because financiers found that they would not be able to control the supply, and therefore money would become a much cheaper commodity than it is, and serve to reduce the necessity of purchasing bankers’ credit.
Money, having been made compulsorily a scarce article, it would appear to any intelligent person that………etc.etc
It is small wonder that the history of Brit!sh com mence and industry is but a recital of misery, distress, panic, and industrial unrest, the horrors of which have hardly ever been exceeded in the history of warfare!
Failure to see this as the root cause of labour troubles lias led to a series of extravagant and futile remedies. Karl Marx, who understood a good many things, did not understand the science of money, and he saw no remedy for industrial unrest save the State ownership of all industries and the establishment of the Servile State. Mr. Henry George could see no evil in society save what the private ownership of land produces, and even went so far as to justify interest, the very exist ence of which depends upon the legal restrictions re garding the issuing of money.
Among the various reformers of the past century, one name stands pre-eminent as having unerringly
pointed at the root of social misery. P. J. Proudhon,
the great French philosopher, saw that the basis of
monopoly was in the world’s monetary systems, and fought desperately to overthrow them. All his eforts were at last concentrated on rthis one important reform, and whilst Karl Marx was receiving the plaudits of mankind as the discoverer of the only way by which labour could extricate itself from modern capitalism, Proudhon was neglected and almost forgotten.
The last few years, however, have shown clearly that the more intelligent among the Socialists are realising that the salvation .of mankind cannot be effected by any system of State Bureaucracy, and that the l\1arxian remedy would prove worse than the disease. After all, what is the fundamental criticism of modern capitalism except that it is a legalised system under which the few are permitted to take from the masses all their surplus wealth under the method of rent, interest, and profits? And what other means are there for overthrowing the system than by repealing the laws which maintain these legal claims? This is what Proudb,:Jn aimed at, and it is the only way in which industrial peace will be finally secured.
ARTHUR KITSON.
pretence to knowledge.
And certainly this so-called ” Study in the Economics
of Monopoly ” gives some grounds for such criticism. The author commences with a preparatory note on
” Currency Cranks.”
“ Currency cranks,” says our Fabian Oracle, “ are the most foolish of theorists, and their schemes the most futile of Utopias.” We are then informed that the author’s speculations about ” the place of gold in the machinery of commerce are put forward with diffidence
precisely because of his distrust of the company he is keeping.”
We are next informed that these ” speculations lead
Shakespeares tragic sequence, by Kenneth Muir p.173
We are accounted poor citizens, the patricians good. What authority surfiets on, would relieve us; if they would yield us but the superfluity, while it were wholesome, we might guess they relieved us humanely; but they think we are too dear:The leanness that afflicts us, the object of our misery, is an invenory to particularize their abundance; our sufference is a gain to them.
Let us revenge this with our pikes, lest we become rakes;for the gods know I speak this in hunger for bread, not in thirst for revenge. Li. 14-23
see Gloucester in lear that ´´distribution should undo excess´´
When Menenius claims that the patricians care for the citizens like fathers the citizens are grimly sardonic.
Care for us! True indeed they neér cared for us yet ; suffer us to famish, and their store houses crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to support userers, repeal daily any wholesome act established against the rich; and provide more piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and theres all the love they bear us.
L.i,77-84
-
126 ff
The Great Money Trick
From
The book advocates a socialist society in which work is performed to satisfy the needs of all rather than to generate profit for a few. A key chapter is “The Great Money Trick”, in which Owen organises a mock-up of capitalism with his workmates, using slices of bread as raw materials and knives as machinery. Owen ’employs’ his workmates cutting up the bread to illustrate that the employer — who does not work — generates personal wealth whilst the workers effectively remain no better off than when they began, endlessly swapping coins back and forth for food and wages. This is Tressell’s practical way of illustrating the Marxist theory of surplus value, which in the capitalist system is generated by labour.
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave.
Steve Keen in Forbes again
I do agree with this comment though.
Jon Cloke a month ago
Unusual for Forbes to have an economist who actually knows what he’s talking about! Steve Keen is the original economic Cassandra, a man whose clear vision and massive understanding makes him extremely unpopular with the men and women of establishment economics.
If he has one flaw, though, Steve continues to be a rational functionalist in that he believes that capitalism can be made to work properly if the mainstream of economics can be brought to its’ sense and heterodoxy and modern monetary theory can achieve its’ rightful status as the victor over the graven idols of neoclassical economics generally and the gibberish of austerity in particular.
But it isn’t that mainstream economics is incapable of thinking rationally, it’s that it’s well-paid not to by the power structures that make a lot of money out of the system as-is; banks as intermediaries, pareto optimalities, supply and demand, equilibria, are and always have been unworkable theoretical abstracts that hide the inequalities of power which renders the system unworkable. Banks are not only powerful originators, they work on the IWBHYWBH principle, I Won’t Be Here You Won’t Be Here. So the powerful financial incentives of the managerial super-classes to keep destabilizing the system in pursuit of short-term financial interests will eventually overwhelm any and all efforts to stabilize it…
97% Owned – Economic Truth documentary – Queuepolitely cut
QueuePolitely
This whole film was discussed here a year or two back there are various cuts in circulation including a Positive money one I am not sure if an MMT representative made a cut too. Anyway it starts in this link at 13 minutes watch it up to the Ben Bernanke AIG quote.
https://youtu.be/XcGh1Dex4Yo?t=13m
QueuePolitely
This whole film was discussed here a year or two back there are various cuts in circulation including a Positive money one I am not sure if an MMT representative made a cut too. Anyway it starts in this link at 13 minutes watch it up to the Ben Bernanke AIG quote.
https://youtu.be/XcGh1Dex4Yo?t=13m
Blogger Toby said…
”The funny thing is that the money system is both simple and complex. The complexity is, to my eyes, the famous curtain behind which the Wizard hides. The complexity is also embedded in or emerges from the fact that the system does not make sense. We have been told, in whispers and via loudly echoing propaganda, that money is a thing, that it is wealth, and that we earn it to live. The truth is the opposite. It is a Nothing controlled by those managing the system they built in their interest, to keep us non-elites in our hamster wheels. Once we can get it through our brain-washed minds that this is a system of control and nothing else we can begin to push for sensible and lasting change.”
September 8, 2011 at 11:01 PM
http://thdrussell.blogspot.se/2011/08/money-equals.html
http://thdrussell.blogspot.se/2011/08/money-debt-reserves-money-and-debt.html
http://thdrussell.blogspot.se/search/label/MMT
”The funny thing is that the money system is both simple and complex. The complexity is, to my eyes, the famous curtain behind which the Wizard hides. The complexity is also embedded in or emerges from the fact that the system does not make sense. We have been told, in whispers and via loudly echoing propaganda, that money is a thing, that it is wealth, and that we earn it to live. The truth is the opposite. It is a Nothing controlled by those managing the system they built in their interest, to keep us non-elites in our hamster wheels. Once we can get it through our brain-washed minds that this is a system of control and nothing else we can begin to push for sensible and lasting change.”
September 8, 2011 at 11:01 PM
http://thdrussell.blogspot.se/2011/08/money-equals.html
http://thdrussell.blogspot.se/2011/08/money-debt-reserves-money-and-debt.html
http://thdrussell.blogspot.se/search/label/MMT
-
Theory of Interest , Etymology.
-
Consider case Barclays football, prenier leaugue.
-
Is Interest ever questioned? Is it conflated with Inflation
BIS Papers No 65
51
Keynes’s monetary theory of interest
Geoff Tily
1
in my view it is most useful to approach the theory of liquidity preference directly as a theory of money as a store of value, a distinction that is hard and fast. This essential distinction allows the separation from a theory of money as a means of exchange, founded on a theory of bank money, with the role of private banks, central banks and the sovereign authority understood. Under such conditions, money is normally supplied endogenously, according to the rate of interest, the wider demands of the various institutional sectors, and any restraints within the system. The theory of money as a store of value concerns matters that occur after the creation of bank money, and belongs sequentially after that theory. This follows from the work of Victoria Chick and Sheila Dow, who argue that for liquidity preference theory the quantity of bank money should be taken as “given”.
14
Following this, the quantity of income should be taken as given also.
- “cause to be interested, engage the attention of,” c. 1600, earlier interesse (1560s), from the noun (see interest (n.)). Perhaps also from or influenced by interess’d, past participle of interesse.
- interest (n.)
- mid-15c., “legal claim or right; a concern; a benefit, advantage, a being concerned or affected (advantageously),” from Old French interest “damage, loss, harm” (Modern French intérêt), from noun use of Latin interest “it is of importance, it makes a difference,” third person singular present of interresse “to concern, make a difference, be of importance,” literally “to be between,” from inter- “between” (see inter-) + esse “to be” (see essence). The sense development to “profit, advantage” in French and English is not entirely clear.
The earlier Middle English word was interesse (late 14c.), from Anglo-French interesse “what one has a legal concern in,” from Medieval Latin interesse “compensation for loss,” noun use of Latin interresse (compare German Interesse, from the same Medieval Latin source).
Financial sense of “money paid for the use of money lent” (1520s) earlier was distinguished from usury (illegal under Church law) by being in reference to “compensation due from a defaulting debtor.” Sense of “personal or selfish consideration” is from 1620s. Meaning “business in which several people are interested” is from 1670s. Meaning “curiosity, feeling that something concerns one, appreciative or sympathetic regard” is first attested 1771. Interest group is attested from 1907; interest rate by 1868.
- usury (n.)
- c. 1300, “practice of lending money at interest,” later, at excessive rates of interest, from Medieval Latin usuria, alteration of Latin usura “payment for the use of money, interest,” literally “a usage, use, enjoyment,” from usus, from stem of uti (see use (v.)). From mid-15c. as “premium paid for the use of money, interest,” especially “exorbitant interest.”
The threat from the Irrational
I suggest the new label will be ‘Irrational’. “He’s irrational!” “You’re being irrational.” “That’s irrational.” Irrational is already a term of abuse. What’s needed is to suggest that being irrational can be much more than a personal intellectual short-coming.
A Crank on February 27 1913 wrote this
http://library.brown.edu/pdfs/1140814185593570.pdf
value. Practically all nations to-day have adopted the free coinage of gold-through the special laws passed by the world’s financiers ,but this free and unlimited coinage of gold would cease almost instantly upon news of any vast and hitherto unexpected gold discoveries. The repeal of the Silver Coinage Laws in most countries was occasioned by the great silver discoveries in the Western States of America, because financiers found that they would not be able to control the supply, and therefore money would become a much cheaper commodity than it is, and serve to reduce the necessity of purchasing bankers’ credit.
Money, having been made compulsorily a scarce article, it would appear to any intelligent person that…any system which tended to the exportation of the money-material must be injurious to home trade, whilst one under which money could not travel and lose its nationality, would be the most satisfactory. In the kingdom of the inanimate there is no greater coward or traitor than gold ! The moment danger is scented it runs away
……etc.etc Arthur Kitson .