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‘they who the gods despise they first (call) make mad´´

Richard Werner
‏@ProfessorWerner

First empirical test in 5000 years of banking on whether each individual bank can create money out of nothing is out http://ac.els-cdn.com/S1057521914001070/1-s2.0-S1057521914001070-main.pdf?_tid=781b835e-8880-11e4-8cf9-00000aacb35f&acdnat=1419104788_bcaee65302916a2bab37a5cf7f63c992 …

Since the tenets of this theory are never stated in Eatwell et al. (1989), the chapter on ‘Cranks’ ends up being a litany of ad hominem denigration, defamation and character assassination, liberally distributing labels such as ‘cranks’, ‘phrase-mongers’, ‘agitators’, ‘populists’, and even ‘conspiracy theorists’ that believe in ‘miracles’ and engage in wishful thinking, ultimately deceiving their readers by trying to “impress their peers with their apparent understanding of economics, even though they had no formal training in the discipline” (p. 214). All that we learn about their actual theories is that, somehow, these ill-fated authors are “opposed to private banks and the ‘Money Power’ without their opposition leading to more sophisticated political analysis” (p. 215). Any reading of the highly sophisticated Soddy (1934) quickly reveals such labels as unfounded defamation.

To the contrary, the empirical evidence presented in this paper has revealed that the many supporters of the financial intermediation theory and also the adherents of the fractional reserve theory are flat-earthers that believe in what is empirically proven to be wrong and which should have been recognisable as being impossible upon deeper consideration of the accounting requirements. Whether the authors in Eatwell et al. (1989) did in fact know better is an open question that deserves attention in future research. Certainly the unscientific treatment of the credit creation theory and its supporters by such authors as Keynes, who strongly endorsed the theory only a few years before authoring tirades against its supporters, or by the authors in Eatwell et al. (1989), raises this possibility.
5.4.2. Implications for government policy

There are other, far-reaching ramifications of the finding that banks individually create credit and money when they do what is called ‘lending money’. It is readily seen that this fact is important not only for monetary policy, but also for fiscal policy, and needs to be reflected in economic theories. Policies concerning the avoidance of banking crises, or dealing with the aftermath of crises require a different shape once the reality of the credit creation theory is recognised. They call for a whole new paradigm in monetary economics, macroeconomics, finance and banking (for details, see for instance Werner, 1997, Werner, 2005, Werner, 2012, Werner, 2013a, Werner, 2013a and Werner, 2013b) that is based on the reality of banks as creators of the money supply. It has potentially important implications for other disciplines, such as accounting, economic and business history, economic geography, politics, sociology and law.
5.4.3. Implications for bank regulation

The implications are far-reaching for bank regulation and the design of official policies. As mentioned in the Introduction, modern national and international banking regulation is predicated on the assumption that the financial intermediation theory is correct. Since in fact banks are able to create money out of nothing, imposing higher capital requirements on banks will not necessarily enable the prevention of boom–bust cycles and banking crises, since even with higher capital requirements, banks could still continue to expand the money supply, thereby fuelling asset prices, whereby some of this newly created money can be used to increase bank capital. Based on the recognition of this, some economists have argued for more direct intervention by the central bank in the credit market, for instance via quantitative credit guidance ( Werner, 2002, Werner, 2003b and Werner, 2005).

The view of the author, based on more than twenty-three years of research on this topic, is that it is the safest bet to ensure that the awesome power to create money is returned directly to those to whom it belongs: ordinary people, not technocrats. This can be ensured by the introduction of a network of small, not-for-profit local banks across the nation. Most countries do not currently possess such a system. However, it is at the heart of the successful German economic performance in the past 200 years. It is the very Raiffeisen, Volksbank or Sparkasse banks – the smaller the better – that were helpful in the implementation of this empirical study that should serve as the role model for future policies concerning our monetary system. In addition, one can complement such local public bank money with money issued by local authorities that is accepted to pay local taxes, namely a local public money that has not come about by creating debt, but that is created for services rendered to local authorities or the community. Both forms of local money creation together would create a decentralised and more accountable monetary system that should perform better (based on the empirical evidence from Germany) than the unholy alliance of central banks and big banks, which have done much to create unsustainable asset bubbles and banking crises (Werner, 2013a and Werner, 2013b).