A tiny detail from the UK election

I have largely kept my personal party politics out of this blog. But as many of you know I am running as the parliamentary candidate for the Green Party  in Scarborough and Whitby. I hope you will forgive me this one post. If people think it out of place please just say so and I will remove it.  But I thought it had a greater import than purely party political and that some of you might be interested in it.  I wrote this on my FaceBook page.  

 

I had the most wonderfully heartening experience today at the husting at the 6th form college.

When I walked in it was clear, at least if the front row of students was anything to go by, that many of them were already decided in favour of Labour. Going to be tough I thought. But I said what I had to say. I tried to counter slogans with facts. And made it plain that I thought our political and financial system was broken and it was time to stop tinkering and time – long past time – to find the courage to build something new, something that actually works.

At first when I spoke the students whispered to each other with what seemed to be surprise. Later they began to clap. And at the end I was surrounded by young people who had questions and ideas bubbling out of them. It made my day, my week, my election.

What apathy? I didn’t see any at all. What I saw was hope! Lots of irrepressible hope.

And then apparently they held a vote. Here are the results I was just sent.

None of the above: 1
Sam Cross UKIP: 5
Michael Beckett Liberal Democrats: 8
Robert Goodwill Conservative: 13
Ian McInnes Labour: 23
David Malone Green: 73

Tell me again that we cannot be elected.

 

Perhaps there is still some hope for Democracy?

123 thoughts on “A tiny detail from the UK election”

  1. Young people tend to resonate to the truth when it is spoken. Unfortunately the system is organized to create mental confusion and most people then vote for the status quo out of fear for change.

    1. My pension scheme is inflation linked, but my colleague who joined my company 25 years ago is not inflation linked. He missed out by only a few months to join my scheme . Because of his arthritis he would like to retire early, but he can’t afford it.

      He is politically aware, but many ordinary people aren’t, and may read the Sun or the a Express, or the Star. Years ago lots of people had pension scheme like mine but now most people have pension schemes like my colleague. Lots of people vote Conservative and have no idea how much they have been scammed. I can afford to retire early on a reduced pension, but my friend can’t. And the banking class are richer than ever because of it.

      1. People who have worked for my company for many years are on£15 per hour, but newcomers are on £8 an hour doing the same job. But I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the newcomers voted Tory in the last election.

  2. I would vote for you if I lived in your constituency, as you combine reasonable (and questioning) environmentalism with deep financial literacy. However, I will not vote for Green in my area because the candidate is, frankly, stupid. I’m afraid it’s none of the above. Again.

  3. If I was there I would also vote for you. Green is the way to go with principle in this election. I do not find your putting this on the blog a problem – you said where you were coming from with clarity, so I felt I could agree or disagree and that there was no sly intention to persuade or confuse.
    In other words – you show transparency. Would that more did the same.

  4. Bagehot-by-the-Bay

    David:
    Congratulations. After you win, I hope you put your talents to work fashioning a Green economic platform.

  5. It’s important for old codgers like myself to know that the young can respond as you describe. After all it’s their future & surely it keeps alive the hope that one day, we as a species will stop making the same old mistakes before it’s too late to do so.

  6. Sorry to rain on your parade but this was just a small bunch of people. The problem is you cant reach them all like this. Will the BBC or Channel 4 or whatever mainstream media provide you a platform to reach millions?

    1. Of course you’re right it was just a small group. And no the main media haven’t given us a platform yet.

      But I think the tide is running fast in our direction and I think we will get such a platform within a couple of years – in time for the next election which I feel will only be a couple of years away.

      In the mean time we will reach more than people think.

  7. I’m very impressed that people that young went to a political meeting. At their age I knew nothing about nothing. I had absolutely no interest in politics, economy and whatnot. I had my life before me, I would find a way.

    I was well into my thirties when I started looking around me, questioning society and all. I remembered a quote from a Truffaut movie (I’m not sure which one). I think it’s a prostitute who says to her costumer: “Si tu ne t’occupes pas de politique, la politique va s’occuper de toi.”

    The defining moment for me was really 2008. It was as if for a short period of time, the Matrix had a glitch and you could see the reality behind the appearances. You could see the bankers feeding on you like parasites. Then Obama was elected and everything went back to normal. But from that moment on, I progressively mistrusted the mainstream media. I learned about the Chomsky book, I started reading blogs such as “Naked Capitalism” (which introduced me to golem xiv). I have some friends who followed a similar evolution. But what amazes me is that the majority, who went through the 2008 shenanigans just like everybody, still cling to the mainstream. They still recite the neoliberal cant imprinted on us by the media. To me it just looks like willful blindness.

    1. Try this documentary by a British historian, called a JFK to 9/11 Everything is a Rich Man’s Trick. Did 60 million people die in WW2 because it was big business?

      The libertarians say let the market decide, because the market knows best? They say that charity and government provision fails to adequately provide, but if left to the market, profits will unsure that the poor will get fed. It’s all propaganda of course?

      But as war is one of the most profitable things there is, do we really want to leave everything to the market to decide?

      JFK to 9/11 Everything is a Rich Man’s Trick.

      https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U1Qt6a-vaNM

  8. I can well imagine their surprise at hearing a prospective MP talking in a refreshingly honest way – very different fro the vacuum-packed same old same old we get from nearly everybody else. Well done David.

  9. Congratulations on the effect you achieved at that college, David. Bravo!

    Keep up the good work and never doubt that these individual instances, and many more by an increasing number of people, all accumulate to become the tidal waters we live in. As we’ve said a few times to each other, the direction of that tide has already changed but it will take a little while longer for many to realise it and a little more time than that for the old sand castles to be washed away.

    But it will happen.

  10. Excellent and encouraging, David. I think you referred to it previously, but please do push yourself forward for a spokesperson role of some sort within the Green Party. We do need good communicators who can articulate this stuff well, and it really is such a strong attribute of yours. I’ve already shared the recent TTIP video you posted and will probably do so again, it’s that good.

    And if you don’t mind me sharing something with you, here’s a little Green pop song I’ve just recorded. (Link is to a lyric video.) https://youtu.be/mlMaX4XzRfo

    Very best wishes,

    Mark

  11. I must confess that I did read this on your Facebook page. It is though quite relevant to your blog as a lot of what you talk about is not necessarily party political. The people are, as others have intimated, rarely presented with the truth (especially by our MSM). When people are exposed to that truth it does tend to switch on a little light in our brains, and everything starts to become a bit clearer. The key element is that having seen the truth you start to see the possibilities and that brings hope to those who probably had given up already, even at such a young age.

    1. I read that the Right have been so powerful with their onslaught against the left since Reagan and Thatcher, that many leftwing academics did finally give up and wilt and just got back into their hobbies or academia. The ruling class pumped £millions into their propaganda machine, the onslaught was relentless, the majority of ordinary people fell the propaganda, we’re were outgunned. But now their economic system has collapsed, we can see their neoliberal model as the propaganda that it is.

  12. I believe people have been voting for their own families’, communities’, and nations’ best interests for a long time. We need a provable democracy.

    http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8889 By Brad Friedman

    Recommended #OWS Demand: Let ALL Citizens 18 and Older Vote, On Paper Ballots, Count Them in Public

    I offer the following simple “demand” for consideration by OWS, as this one likely underscores almost every other. Or, at least, without it, all other demands may ultimately be rendered moot. Every U.S. citizen 18 years of age or older who wishes to vote, gets to vote. Period. Those votes, on hand-marked paper ballots, will be counted publicly, by hand, on Election Night, at the precinct, in front of all observers and video cameras.

    …………

    If you are voting on electronic voting machines, or your ballots are counted by electronic scanning machines, then the above is your solution to a provable democracy. Else wise:

    Via: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/26754-computerized-election-theft-and-the-new-american-century

    Computerized Election Theft and the New American Century
    By Jonathan D. Simon, Truthout | News Analysis

    In comments: Election Statistician Richard Charnin at http://richardcharnin.com/

    In the 1968-2012 Presidential elections, the Republicans won the average recorded vote by 48.7-45.8%. The 1968-2012 Recursive National True Vote Model indicates the Democrats won the True Vote by 49.6-45.0% – a 7.5% margin discrepancy.

    In the 1988-2008 elections, the Democrats won the unadjusted state exit poll aggregate by 52-42% – but won the recorded vote by just 48-46%, an 8% margin discrepancy. The state exit poll margin of error was exceeded in 126 of 274 state presidential elections from 1988-2008. The probability of the occurrence is ZERO. Only 14 (5%) would be expected to exceed the MoE at the 95% confidence level. Of the 126 which exceeded the MoE, 123 red-shifted to the Republican. The probability P of that anomaly is ABSOLUTE ZERO (5E-106). That is scientific notation for

    P= .000000000 000000000 000000000 000000000 000000000 000000000 000000000 000000000 000000000 000000000 000005.
    ……………..

    http://freepress.org/departments/display/19/2012/4719

    Who owns Scytl? George Soros isn’t in the voting machines, but the intelligence community is
    by Gerry Bello

    ……………..

    http://www.truthisall.net/Diane_Perlman/diane_perlman.html

    The Silence of the Scams:
    Psychological Resistance to Facing Election Fraud
    Diane Perlman, Ph.D.,
    Licensed Clinical Psychologist

    The subterfuge was successfully accomplished with use of censorship, illusion, distortion, brainwashing, propaganda, misinformation, disinformation, mystification, intimidation, shaming, and domination. As Bush might say, it was a “catastrophic success.”

    These techniques combine to form something like a collective hypnotic induction, which creates an illusion of a consensus that cannot be challenged. Few have the insight, training, or tools, to see through the manipulation. Even fewer have the courage to take on the challenge. For many, responses to domination may include disbelief, learned helplessness, psychic numbing, fear, cowardice, conformity, denial, cognitive laziness, avoidance, and submission to authority. These items are inter-related and the list is not exhaustive.

    Before the psychological explanations, it is necessary to acknowledge a basic factor: the overwhelming ignorance of the facts. This can be exacerbated by a lack of desire to know the facts, and an avoidance of the awesome responsibility that comes with this knowledge. Of course if the facts were accurately reported in the mainstream media, the collective psychological climate would be conducive to a healthier public response.People accept fraud for reasons which may be conscious or unconscious.

    Some of the ways that they do this are described below.

    Confusing Outcome with Process

    Many don’t want to deal with the corruption because they believe that challenging fraud won’t change the outcome, so there’s no point. This might be a self-fulfilling prophecy. It represents a kind of immature, black-and-white thinking, as the outcome is a separate issue from the process. Even if it doesn’t affect the outcome, voter suppression is criminal.

    Paradoxically, refusal to examine the process prevents discovery, which might change the outcome. The Ohio vote challenge required two-hour debates in the House and Senate. Most Democrats who supported the challenge, emphatically stated that they didn’t expect it to change the outcome, as if they were intimidated into making that point first or they would be ridiculed and dismissed. Most Republicans ignored their actual words and made emotional, even hysterical accusations of them not accepting the outcome, being sore losers, and worse. Republicans ignored the issue of voter suppression and praised Kerry highly for not making a big deal out of this.

    snip

    Evolution, Adaptation and Survival

    All of these reactions are understandable, but all become part of the problem. In the short run, they may minimize pain, but in the long run they are counterproductive and serve to magnify and multiply problems that are not being faced. Such avoidance mechanisms are not adaptive, as they play into the game of the destructive forces, allowing them to dominate. The continuation of the processes of systematic domination requires the ignorance, passivity and complicity of the majority of decent people, including the millions who supported Kerry. These people are colluding with their own domination.

    The Courageous Minority

    The reactions listed above are completely natural. Carl Jung said that consciousness is a work against nature. To go against the collective tide of ignorance, conformity and cowardice is a work against nature taken on by the courageous few. This collective, archetypal drama described by Jung was popularized by Joseph Campbell in The Hero’s Journey. The Hero is the one who is willing to take on challenges that most people fear. According to Jung, the hero archetype represents the progressive force in society.

    The people I have witnessed working intensely to investigate and challenge voter fraud have a particular psychological profile. They are courageous and willing to face pain and fear. They call up their strength to challenge authority, as our lives, our freedom and democracy depend on it. They are unable to deny what is going on or remain silent. They are heroes in our mythical, archetypal Hero’s journey, willing to face the dragons that are guarding our “National Treasure.”

    They are acknowledged in a piece by William Rivers Pitt called “Heroes” on Truthout.org. Pitt quotes Bob Dylan: “I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.”

    Only by facing the pain can we transcend it. Consciousness is the first step. Action is an antidote to depression. It would be a sign of health, freedom, and conscious evolution if more people could muster up the courage to face the painful truth of what is happening in our country and support the great work of those courageous souls–who are not nuts or conspiracy theorists, but evolved, conscious, healthy leaders taking personal risks and sacrifices to elevate our democracy, restore our integrity and ultimately to increase our security on the world stage …if we let them.

    1. If like the Scots, you have hand-counted paper ballots, you cannot allow, like the Scots, those ballots to be transported to a different place to be counted. You MUST have continuous custody of physical ballots to prevent tampering.

  13. by Consortium News
    We Lucky Molecules
    by Robert Parry

    https://consortiumnews.com/2015/04/22/we-lucky-molecules/
    via: http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/04/23/we-lucky-molecules

    Exclusive: As American neocons and other war hawks push for endless war in the Mideast and now eastern Europe, the resulting chaos is straining the capacity of civilization to meet basic human needs and raising the risk of nuclear war, what would be a tragic ending to the Universe’s luckiest molecules, writes Robert Parry.
    snip

    A journalist also should be humble, recognizing that something as grand as “truth” is rarely revealed. We almost always have to settle for a more limited understanding, though one that can keep expanding as more facts become available. The best we can usually do is give people an honest framework for understanding what is happening around them, even if it’s an imperfect or limited depiction.

    But the more people understand about the realities of the world, the less vulnerable they are to the propagandists, those clever folks who disseminate ignorance in the superficial form of information and then use that ignorance to dominate the people. The true calling of a journalist is to give the people as many facts as possible and thus the tools to detect and negate the propaganda.

    All this goes to the overriding principle that there is nothing more important to a democracy than an informed electorate and to the counterpoint that the most effective way to defeat democracy is to misinform the people. And, as the world hurtles toward more and more wars and ever worsening crises, there may be nothing more important than exposing the lies, exaggerations and prejudices that undergird most conflicts.

    As President John F. Kennedy said in perhaps his finest speech – at American University on June 10, 1963 – “For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.”

    In an age of environmental fragility and nuclear dangers, the human race must finally recognize its common interests and cooperate in the common cause of averting unnecessary chaos and conflict. We must in the end realize that we are among the luckiest molecules in the Universe – and act accordingly.

    1. Some interesting stuff there, Bev. When I look around the net I might see all these videos about the fascist bankers and the facist corporations. And they seem like they might be good, so I might look at some of them, but then I realise that they are made by the Tea Party right.

      They say the hate the elite for bringing about a government communist state. It’s bizarre? The New World Order is a Jewish banker’s communist plot (mega rich bankers who are communists? Eh!) These right wingers all look crazy to me, then they say that the elite intend to starve 5 billion people to death off the planet. Then they will talk about chemtrails where the government is spraying their land and the skies to slowly kill them off.

      1. Dear Kavy, Among the finest of journalists is Robert Parry and his site at https://consortiumnews.com/ .

        He reports as honestly as possible, and, very differently from the right-wing, he attempts to understand facts that inform people and bring people together to solve very dangerous problems.

  14. Baffled Popperian

    Was the back of the bike shed being monitored to ensure nothing changed hands before the meeting? I only ask because 13 seems like a surprisingly high number.

    1. Baffled Popperian

      Fudge, for some reason my attempt to save an edit to the above comment didn’t work – wanted to make it crystal clear that I was only joking and also to ask a serious question:

      Do you have any opinions as to what it was that your audience found most convincing? Do you suppose it was more the positive arguments in favor of a Green position, or was it more to do with criticisms of the main parties?

      Best Wishes

      1. Baffled Popperian

        Yes, yes I deserve that after fluffing it so badly 🙂 .

        I suspect you are right about the younger generation being more open to a Green position – after all they are more likely to experience the negative consequences of things like climate change, and the Green party has the advantage of not being associated with any of the disastrous interventionist wars of late, and it’s policy on trident is manifestly sensible.

        However a priori it is not obvious to me what the main reasons would be for them to look to the Green Party as the natural choice of replacement of the Westminster elites in the event that the economy doesn’t genuinely recover or in the event that you are right about another financial disaster coming soon(ish).

        Because In such an event many in this sort of age-group are going to have an even worse time of trying to find work than I did when I left university around the time of the last one (and I have been a temp for 7 years), and will likely be competing for a decreasing number of even half-decent private sector vacancies.

        Now, the Green Party is, quite rightly in my view, anti-corporation and in particular anti-tax-dodging with regards to corporations. As such it is hard not to believe that a significant number of the younger generation are going to put 1 and 1 together, (or be told by critics of the Green Party) and wonder how the Green Party won’t end up provoking big-multinationals – i.e. the big employers – to simply leave and go elsewhere (i come across this sort of comment quite often).

        Adding the numbers together you had 123 audience members of which about 60% voted in your favor, with the next best being about 19%, and the three definitely to the right combined only got 21% , your result is quite impressive. So unless the issue of employment and economic policy didn’t come up, you must presumably have either have offered a answer to the above concerns that your audience found persuasive, or you must have succeeded in taking apart your opponents so successfully on their own policies that you didn’t need to defend your own party on that sort of thing.

        It would be interesting to know which it was.

        Best Wishes

        1. http://www.monetary.org/
          The Legislative Bill that all countries need to adopt by former Rep. Dennis Kucinich: http://www.monetary.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/HR-2990.pdf

          http://www.monetary.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/2010-GREEN-PARTY-APPROVED-MONETARY-PLANK.pdf

          Green Party’s Historic Monetary Reform Plank

          The necessary steps to fixing the monetary system established in HR 2990 were used as a guideline by the Green Party to create and approve this monetary reform plank.
          ……………………

          http://www.monetary.org/2015schedule.html

          2015 AMI Monetary Reform Conference
          September 10-13, 2015
          Register to attend
          with special discounts to students and active Green Party Members
          ……………..

          http://www.monetary.org/zarlengas-talk-at-the-house-of-lords-london/2010/12

          Zarlenga’s Talk at the House of Lords, London
          On December 18, 2010, in Research & Articles, by AMI

          THE LOST SCIENCE OF MONEY & MONETARY JUSTICE USING GOVERNMENT CREATED MONEY TO FUND PUBLIC PROJECTS
          TALK AT THE HOUSE OF LORDS
          to Lords, British MP’s, and monetary reformers
          at Parliament, London May 4, 2004
          ………

          When a nation’s money is debt, loaned by bankers to people, businesses and governments, it works as intended to draw all value, real property, and advantage to top predators, doing great harm to everyone else. When a nation creates its own Debt-Free Public Money, all the needs of people-health care, education, infrastructure–are suddenly affordable-there is no budget crisis.

          As a speaker at The American Monetary Institute Conference Joe Bongiovanni’s EconomicStability videos are 4 to 10 minutes each.

          Bongiovanni says the only thing you have to watch out for with a debt-free public/government money, is that Fascists can still be in charge of the money for themselves, even though the great promise and ability of a debt-free money is to enhance the lives of everyone. And, I keep wondering how else to have the enormous money to pay new engineering to try to reduce the current and future danger of Fukushima, WIPP, the 400 aging nuclear power plants, and a destabilizing climate change for the generations that it will take. It may be a matter of survival itself for us to know about and use debt-free money as we have done six times in America’s past with brave Presidents like Washington, Lincoln, and Kennedy among others. Support and PROTECT all leaders who would do this again for the common good.

          1. Monetary Reform Talk, 4.09, Part 1: Introduction by EconomicStability
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AamPaXA_a0M

          2. Monetary Reform Talk, 4 09, Part 2: Early History by EconomicStability
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8w0vyB9sq1Y

          3. Monetary Reform Talk, 4 09, Part 3: Lincoln’s Greenbacks by EconomicStability
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wzf3h-63sjk

          4. Monetary Reform Talk, 4 09, Part 4: Post Civil War by EconomicStability
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsWJK8pQ_uQ

          5. Monetary Reform Talk, 4.09, Part 5: Federal Reserve Act by EconomicStability
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6Q7IcTAgcQ

          6. Monetary Reform Talk, 4.09, Part 6: Chicago Plan of 1933 by EconomicStability
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_wp8N-Q_O4

          7. Monetary Reform Talk, 4.09, Part 7: Robert Hemphill quote by EconomicStability
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TTVoNIpBjE

          8. Monetary Reform Talk, 4.09, Part 8: Milton Friedman by EconomicStability
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tSXnXE1slk

          9. Monetary Reform Talk, 4.09, Part 9: The Solution by EconomicStability
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lyGoTEJb6g

          1. Greens and all political leadership everywhere need to review the above material. If your only circulating money is Debt from bankers’ loans to people, businesses and government, there is no way to get out of debt. Money must be money, not debt.

            The information about the Greens’ platform to have a public/government Debt-Free money is from the U.S. only. I encourage Greens in England and elsewhere (and all party leadership) to contact the good people at the American Monetary Institute:

            http://www.monetary.org/
            American Monetary Institute
            PO BOX 601
            VALATIE, NY 12184

            Phone
            518-392-5387
            or 224-805-2200
            E-mail
            [email protected]
            …………………..

            And, attend the AMI Conference. Some of the speakers at previous and upcoming annual Monetary Convention are Greens, and some are European, Australian, and Asian:

            http://www.monetary.org/2015schedule.html

            Howie Hawkins, one of the original founders of the Green Party, has run twice for governor of New York, after a prior run for U.S. Senate in 2006. A Syracuse resident, he’s a Teamster working for the United Parcel Service, who’s been endorsed by numerous political, labor , education organizations and teacher’s unions including New York’s Badass Teacher’s Association, Ralph Nader, the New Progressive Alliance and numerous others By receiving over 5 percent of the N.Y. vote he held the Green ballot line for the next four years, an important milestone.

            One highlight of his campaign was that Ralph Nader held two events to help promote Howie’s candidacy! That is a very big deal.
            We have been in touch with Howie for several years and we joined the Green Party’s Shadow Cabinet as Monetary Director, at Howie’s suggestion. Howie convinced me to do that, though I had doubts due to some elements of the party opting for what I consider political correctness rather than real monetary reform. We have and will continue to do our best to help educate them.
            Since September 2010, the Green Party’s National Committee has approved a monetary reform Plank which closely echoes Kucinich’s NEED Act proposal (National Emergency Employment Defense Act). It is the first time that any important political party in our country has put forward real monetary reform and we support that wholeheartedly!

            You can read the details at our home page article at the GREEN-PARTY-APPROVED-MONETARY-PLANK.

            Howie will discuss how third parties can bring new issues into the mainstream of public debate and not let the two major parties take movements for reform for granted because they have no where else to take their votes. He’ll include some history on the Greenback Labor Party as it relates to monetary reform. And he will talk about the Greens, their growth, and their support for monetary reform.

            We are making a special effort to reach the Green Party. Greens can attend the conference at near scholarship levels of $79. instead of the discounted fee of $195 or the full registration fee of $395. Remember bona fide students can attend the whole conference at $49 per person.
            ….

            Howard Switzer of Tennesee’s Green Party Will Speak on The Great Importance of Monetary Reform to the Greens

            Howard Switzer, is a Tennessee architect working in eco-friendly building methods and builds energy efficient, healthy, homes of earth and straw. He co-founded the ‘Moving the Money to Main Street Campaign,’ adopted by the GPUS in 2007. That same year he attended the AMI presentation from Stephen Zarlenga at the Greens national meeting in Reading, PA which confirmed his belief that monetary reform is critical to democracy and the funding of the Green Economic Transition. He presented on monetary reform at the 2013 Green Party National Meeting and then at the 9th Annual IMRC.
            …………

            Last years’ and perhaps this year also, European speakers were:

            Prof. Joseph Huber of Martin-Luther University of Hall-Wittenberg, is Germany’s most important monetary reformer. Founder of monetative.de, Berlin, a monetary reform initiative. In the ’90s he developed a new currency-school approach to overcome fractional reserve banking. He has worked with James Robertson on UK and European monetary reform since 1999, on behalf of the New Economics Foundation, London. This year he will speak on:
            – Why many economists fail to understand the relevance of the monetary system. Why most measures of banking and financial-market reform will only be effective in combination with monetary reform.
            – Sovereign money does not involve nationalisation of banking. Why public banks are a distraction rather than an option.
            – Positioning of monetary reform between Friedman-style supply-side monetarism and demand-side Keynesianism.
            – Is monetary reform about tight money or loose money? Will sovereign money bring about high or low levels of interest?
            – How monetary reform contributes to ensuring that money is put to good uses, i.e. capital, operational and consumer expenditure, rather than contributing to the casino sections of the financial economy.

            Prof. Huber’s important website at http://www.sovereignmoney.eu helps explain monetary reform to all. Last year He issued a major challenge to MMT – so called Modern Monetary Theory – which they could not answer!
            ….

            Dr. Michael T. Clark was a senior advisor to the President of the Sixty -third Session of the United Nations General Assembly (2008-9)and helped co-ordinate the intergovernmental negotiations for the outcome of the 2009 United Nations Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and its impact on Development. He later joined the staff of U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) where he assisted with the final drafting of the NEED Act, (National Emergency Employment Defense Act) prior to its introduction.

            Dr. Clark will focus on the international dimensions of the effort to achieve systemic reform of the international monetary and financial system, including how the IMF structure and operating procedures may be revamped to become a positive factor in monetary reform.
            ….

            Dr. Michael Kumhof is the Deputy Division Chief, of the modeling Division, of the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund (the IMF).

            Last year he presented the important results of his “modelling” of the Chicago Plan proposal of the 1930s, when applied to the modern U.S. financial system (data through 2006).
            Dr. Kumhof’s IMF Working Paper “The Chicago Plan Revisited” has swept through the World’s economic community, including at two presentations at the Bank of England, and numerous conferences in America and Europe.

            The Chicago Plan was designed and promoted by our best economists in the 1930s (Henry Simons, Irving Fisher, Douglas, et al), to get our nation out of the Great Depression. The Chicago Plan is the precursor and model of both the American Monetary Act, and Congressman Kucinich’s “NEED Act” (National Emergency Employment Defense Act), from the 112th Congress, “HR 2990.”

            The Bank of England invited Dr. Kumhof to give two talks on banking…

            Professor Richard Werner has emerged as the central figure advising monetary authorities of the European money system to cease their destructive austerity programs.
            He is Chair of International Banking and founding Director of the Centre for Banking, Finance, and Sustainable Development at the University of Southampton. His book Princes of the Yen became a no. 1 bestseller in Japan. His 2005 book New Paradigm in Macroeconomics (Palgrave Macmillan) correctly predicted the collapse of the UK banking system and property market and suggested workable solutions. Areas of research include banking, monetary economics, the global financial crisis: causes, consequences and solutions; determinants of real estate prices in the UK and Japan; and monetary policy implementation in China. This talk presents a rare opportunity to understand the decision making process in the European Monetary Union.
            …………………

            Ole Mackeprang, European Financier spoke on “Money Systems & Warfare” at our 2007 Conference and will update us on the practical changes the Euro has brought since its launch. Back then the Euro was proclaimed “dead on arrival.” Next, pundits claimed the U.S. Dollar was the casualty, and now it is the Euro in trouble again! Perhaps it is time to get some firsthand observations. Mackeprang’s book, “Money is Not Capital” will be available, as well as his new financial novel thriller, “Unlimited Liability.”

            Mackeprang speaks 8 languages, has worked in 62 countries, principally France, Germany, Italy and Spain (Banque Rothschild and Banque de l’Union Parisienne are some companies he has worked with). His fascinating experiences are described in his books, destined to become motion pictures. The life experiences it describes are what American kids (20 & 30 year olds) can only dream about in today’s world – and Yes – we shared some of those times working together in old Europe!

            This year he will bring us up to date on events within the Euro.
            ….

            I don’t see anything like the above for the British Green Party platform.

            https://www.greenparty.org.uk/assets/files/manifesto/Green_Party_2015_General_Election_Manifesto_Searchable.pdf

            on page 12:

            Be prepared to borrow on good terms to fund investment rather than making closing the deficit the main objective of our economic policy. The plans in this manifesto require borrowing of £338 billion (in real 2015 terms) over the Parliament as compared with the Coalition’s plan in the 2015 Budget to borrow £115 billion. If monetary policy demands quantitative easing, we will spend that money directly on green investment. However, the programme of public spending and taxation in this manifesto would show a surplus on the current account (that is, excluding investment) of 2.7% by the end of the Parliament.
            ………

            Borrowing Debt is not the best solution. Please review above for you consideration.

          2. Perhaps a Green party member can explain the change as it looks like two years ago the Green Party of England and Wales and U.S. Greens were on the same page with a Debt-free monetary system:

            http://www.positivemoney.org/2013/09/green-party-passed-a-motion-to-place-money-creation-into-public-hands-and-end-fractional-reserve-banking/

            Green Party Passed a Motion to Place Money Creation Into Public Hands and End Fractional Reserve Banking

            The Green Party of England and Wales made history by joining the US Green Party in calling for an end to the private creation of money by banks at their conference (Sept 13-16). After a debate on the motion at the Autumn Conference in Brighton, the Green Party has collectively decided to instead place this power with a democratically accountable National Monetary Authority at the Bank of England. This represents a huge change in Green Party policy, as we are now calling for full reserve banking, alongside other radical policies such as a citizens income, land value tax and of course the decarbonisation of the entire economy as we move to a post carbon world.

            The passing of the Monetary and Banking Reform Composite Motion (read the background paper here) follows many years of campaigning within the party by members concerned about the private creation of money. A group of these campaigners, joined under the banner of the Green Party Monetary Reform Working Group, have been tirelessly working to educate and raise awareness about the private creation of money. This has involved the passing of motions to recognise this, regular stalls at conference to distribute leaflets, and of course talking with other members about all the issues that Positive Money also campaigns on.

            Despite the former leader and first Green MP, Caroline Lucas, supporting the Positive Money campaign, it was a difficult debate. A wrecking amendment had been submitted, calling for the full reserve banking motion to be deleted and replaced with a motion calling for the public control of banks (which is already Green Party policy). Without ending the debt-based fractional reserve banking system, we can never move away from an economic system that has inequality and unsustainable growth built into it. Thankfully the wrecking amendment fell and the motion was passed unchanged.

            However, just like Brighton represents a beachhead for the Green Party, so too does this motion represent merely a foothold for supporters of full reserve banking within the party. I can understand that many members of the public are disillusioned with party politics and keen to stay outside of it. But the Green Party conference is unique in UK politics in that all the party’s policies are debated and passed there by a democratic vote by members. There is still the chance that what was achieved in Brighton could be undone. So I would implore anyone reading this, who is committed to environmental and social justice, and who seriously wants to end the debt-based money system, to join the Green Party today by clicking on this link. Yearly membership is as cheap as £5 a year for students, and £10.50 for anyone not working full-time. If you do join, and support monetary reform, then please email me at [email protected] to continue to campaign within the party and build support for these policies.

            This is a historic week for the Green Party. I hope that soon other political parties will follow suit, and we will soon end the crazy banking system we have to put up with today.

          3. Pardon my poor research skills preventing my quickly finding the Green’s Economic Policy/Manifesto. Wonderful article:

            http://www.ianfraser.org/greens-the-only-party-contemplating-financial-reform/

            If you believe banking and finance need reform, vote Green

            6th May, 2015
            Caroline Lucas & Natalie Bennett

            Having studied the manifestos I can now say it with some certainty. There is only British political party that is committed to reforming Britain’s broken banking system and still largely out-of-control City of London.

            The Green Party.

            snip

            So, since none of the other parties is offering any prospect of financial reform, and it is clearly such a pressing need, here is the relevant excerpt of the Green manifesto, which was published on 15 April.
            …………………………..

            The UK finance industry is a disaster area.

            Far from generating genuine wealth, its recklessness and greed created the greatest recession since the 1930s, which in turn contributed to the present regime of austerity and cuts to public services. It has presided over other failures, from the misselling of endowment mortgages and payment protection insurance, to the appallingly low returns and high charges of the state-subsidised private pensions industry, its failure to mobilise long-term finance for renewable energy and its collusion in and creation of a whole industry of tax avoidance and evasion. Meanwhile, those who work in the industry at senior level show no signs of remorse and continue to pocket huge salaries and bonuses. Finance needs root-and-branch reform.

            The Green Party would:

            • Move towards creating all national currency through a national monetary authority, answerable to Parliament. The power to create money must be taken out of the hands of private banks. Detailed proposals are set out in the ‘Regaining control of our money’ box.

            • Separate retail and investment banking. Retail banks should be required to limit their role to taking deposits and making loans that facilitate economic activity; investment banks should take the form of partnerships rather than limited companies.

            • Introduce controls on bank lending.

            • Act to control payday lenders and offer alternatives (see the ‘Greens in power’ credit union box).

            • We will use the government-owned Royal Bank of Scotland to create a network of local banks for every city and region, ensuring that each bank is a People’s Bank, obliged to offer cheap basic banking services.

            • Invest £2 billion in a network of community banks, mutually owned and serving local areas or particular groups.

            • Expand the role and the funds of the Green Investment Bank by offering green Individual Savings Accounts and pensions, allowing the bank to borrow and boosting the equity in the bank by £9 billion over the Parliament.

            • Introduce a Robin Hood tax (a financial transaction tax) to reduce destabilising speculation (see the ‘Taxes’ section below for details).

            • Work for the abolition of the City of London Corporation and the special statuses it enjoys.

            Greens in power carry out our policies

            The Green-led administration in Brighton invested £100,000 in a local credit union, partly to help it set up an online system for residents to access loans, making the credit union as accessible as high-interest payday lenders. It also banned such lenders from advertising on Council billboards. In 2013 Green MP Caroline Lucas worked with East Sussex Credit Union to show ministers how to help credit unions fulfil their potential by, for example, ending the restrictions that put them at a competitive disadvantage when compared with banks.

            Regaining control of our money

            One of the most fundamental tasks of government is maintenance of the currency. Without stable money accepted by all we can’t buy and sell things or plan for the future. Inflation in particular makes it hard to take the long-term view that the environmental crisis demands.

            Most people believe that our money is currently created by the nationalised Bank of England. It isn’t. A pound in your bank account is no more than a promise by the bank to pay you that pound; you don’t actually own any publicly created money. In fact, commercial banks create new money (in the sense of money in bank accounts) whenever they make loans, and that money disappears when the loan is paid back.

            The fact that the size of our money supply – the total amount of money in circulation – is dependent upon millions of separate commercial lending decisions by banks makes it hard to maintain economic stability. During the great recession of the past few years, the unwillingness of banks to make new loans and the desire of people to pay down their debts has meant that the money supply has shrunk, and the government has had to resort to the emergency policy of printing money (called ‘quantitative easing’) to prevent an even worse slump.

            We believe that the time has come to recognise that the creation of currency and the control of the money supply is far too important to be left to profit-seeking private sector banks and should be brought back under the democratic control of the state. Quantitative easing was but a first step. Commercial banks should be no more than the custodians of publicly created money in current accounts, and the creation of that money should become the function of a new monetary authority, independent of day-today government control. This policy would protect ordinary bank accounts, and

            • allow banks to fail safely

            • separate ordinary and investment business

            • provide some control on overall lending and debt

            This would be a massive and complex change to our banking system, with many ramifications, and its implementation, involving many years of consultation, legislation and the creation of transitional arrangements, would not be appropriate for one Parliament. But we would take the first steps of preparing detailed proposals and consulting upon them, and Green MPs will press this issue in the next Parliament. The change to the new system would create a new and substantial cash flow for the government, which could be spent on social and environmental priorities and assist in paying down the national debt.
            …………………

            The Greens’ policies may be sketchy and incomplete, extremely disruptive in the short term (especially the monetary policies), and hard to implement unilaterally (also persuading publicly-listed investment banks, especially those headquartered outside the UK, to reconvert to partnership status might be quite a tall order).

            But they are broadly along the right lines, in my view.

            snip

            For good measure here is a video in which the Greens’ candidate for Brighton Pavilion, Caroline Lucas says that politicians have recklessly handed over their power to unelected interests including banks and bankers.
            …………..

            She is interviewed by Russell Brand.

        2. We need a democracy to elect leaders who legislate economic justice for all by creating a debt-free public/government money to meet the needs of people now, and to attempt to ensure our survival as a species by funding enormous new engineering efforts to try to reduce the current and future danger of Fukushima, WIPP, the 400 aging nuclear power plants and to restabilize a destabilizing climate, for the many generations those projects will take.

          Prof. Huber’s important website at http://www.sovereignmoney.eu helps explain monetary reform to all.

          This monetary change could help those in most need. Do not be misled any more:

          http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/30591-xenophobia-poverty-and-the-lies-that-link-them-dissecting-the-ukip-support-base#

          Xenophobia, Poverty and the Lies That Link Them: Dissecting the UKIP Support Base
          Tuesday, 05 May 2015 By Arianne Shahvisi, Truthout

          The culprits are not immigrants, they are the politicians who have initiated draconian austerity measures that ideologically target the poorest and most vulnerable, while decimating the public services that make cash-poverty more livable. The current government has meticulously and relentlessly personified the “deficit” until it seems reasonable to prioritize it above attending to the needs of people who are struggling to eat, and in so doing, they have undermined their own legitimacy, which derives solely from their responsibility to care for the people.

          Permitting anti-immigrant rhetoric to disguise unrelated economic mismanagement is not only deeply unethical because it is a lie and because it hurts racialized people, it is unethical because it commits an injustice against the UK’s working people, who become the brunt of a bigger political joke as they bang their heads against the wrong brick wall, believing that their lives would be better if only they could just get rid of all the foreigners. Anti-immigrant ideology is a ruse, designed to divide working people on the basis of race and nationality, while class divisions are the real levers of injustice.

          And the saddest part of all is that UKIP itself has a very unconvincing set of policies when it comes to tackling poverty, which means their support base is less likely to benefit from voting UKIP than almost any other political party. Their proposed ban on unskilled migration would adversely affect local economies, their cap on benefits would target struggling families, and their failure to adequately protect the NHS and other public services would create additional burdens and vulnerabilities for the UK’s poorest communities.
          snip

          Poverty and (legitimate) fear is what drives these migrants to seek uncertain futures in the European countries who are implicated in the degradation of their own home countries’ stability through colonialism, war-mongering, and brutal debt repayment schemes. Poverty and (illegitimate) fear is what drives poor Europeans to make xenophobia the outlet for their misery and humiliation. The UK government’s prioritization of the interests of the wealthy and corporate has necessitated a diversionary and divisive hatred within the working classes, and UKIP has benefited from the racial hatred that increasing poverty has fed.

          Why are we not talking about UKIP supporters? Because that would mean talking about class, after which we see that UK politics is cowardly, dishonest, and undemocratic to the core.
          ….

          Voting Green should help everyone economically, especially if they push for a debt-free public money.

          1. Huber misrepresents MMT. Very typical of critics. I’ve never seen him engage on any MMT blogs. And to describe the present system with reference to terms like ‘fractional reserve banking’ demonstrates a woeful understanding of modern money. Don’t forget MMT’s co founders include people who understand money and banking from a career in banking operations. Very few economists have that – none have received any worthwhile education in the mainstream.

            Huber’s comments on exogenous/endogenous, retail bank/central bank money are laughable.

            As far as I’m aware, Werner, NEF and other positivemoney advocates also differ significantly from such views as Huber’s.

            Huber also suggests that MMT are unconcerned with Banks’ behaviour. With Bill Black, former US regulator credited with jailing hundreds of bankers, on board, that is simply ludicrous. It is not at all difficult to imagine a more dispersed, locally orientated banking sector, without such things as prop trading, functioning properly in a similarly robust regime of public regulation. (Indeed that was largely the case in the immediate decades post WWII.)

            Of course, functioning public regulation requires an actual functioning democracy as a prerequisite – profoundly absent now. But so does every plan for serious monetary reform – they will all require public servants actually representing citizens’ interests, not those of elites.

            And NONE of the those criticising MMT are proposing even remotely such a powerful – paradigm changing – tool to address social justice and raging inequality as the MMT Job Guarantee.

            Once introduced, a Job Guarantee scheme, in political terms would be very hard to remove. Its effectiveness as an income floor could be diminished by a swing back to neoliberal dogma. But the establishment, in effect, of a g’teed right to work, at a living income, would be difficult to remove, and the wage/benefit levels needed for optimal operation easily re-introduced by a change to a more empathic g’ment.

            It’s all very well saying g’ment can spend debt free money, but if it’s all dependent on the ever shifting sands of discretionary programs, it can, and will, disappear as randomly as it will doubtless appear thru’ a political process.

            We need both a macro economic system as well a monetary/banking system that copper fastens (as far as possible) a minimum level of access to real resources in society.

            PM’s, Huber’s, Chicago Plan etc all completely ignore this aspect of holistic approach, or ‘closing the loop’ that MMT instinctively addresses.

            Just read and understand where people like Bill Mitchell, Randall Wray, Stephanie Kelton etc are coming from, relating to how ordinary people live, as human beings. What they are advocating comes from a vastly deeper understanding of society as a whole, than simple ‘money reform’ clowns like Huber.

            Unfortunately, mass ignorance of money, economics, maths, to say nothing of ‘dynamic systems’ (linear thinking ad nauseam – these are complex systems, do the studying or please or STFU!).. prevails, especially on the web… (‘fractional reserve banking’ – give me a break! – at least study Steve Keen).

            It’s very hard with present understanding to imagine how humans, in anything like present numbers, can see out this century, on current form, absent some massive dose of triptamines in the water supply, or similar.

            Still, at least Stephanie Kelton is Bernie Sanders chief economics adviser. That’s progress.

          2. via: http://www.monetary.org/ American Monetary Institute (AMI)

            A Refutation of so called “Modern Money Theory” (MMT)

            This brilliant paper from Prof. Joseph Huber to the 2013 AMI Conference, analyzes MMT and shows how MMT fails to seek real monetary reform. This landmark paper was sent by the Real World Economics Review to its 23,924 subscribers! MMT thinks they can ignore it.

            The Paper:
            http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue66/Huber66.pdf
            …..

            http://www.monetary.org/mmtevaluation

            AMI’s Evaluation of “Modern Monetary Theory” (MMT)
            by AMI Research, with Steven Walsh; and assistance by Stephen Zarlenga

            Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is a theory developed by a group of economists over the past 25 years or so. In the current crisis it has been receiving some wider attention from the economic community and politicians looking for a new direction.

            The American Monetary Institute (AMI) is sometimes asked about MMT and whether it fits in with monetary reform. We assess anything to do with monetary matters carefully.

            At the outset AMI enjoys a good, cordial relationship with some of the leading MMT economists, and we certainly wish to build on this relationship. But one thing we can’t compromise on is facts. MMT, like much of modern economic thinking, builds upon some erroneous assumptions and a definition of money that is faulty and works to the extreme detriment of the 99%. In addition MMT has its own specific problems between its claims and the facts which have bearing on the validity of MMT.

            Economists too often get the facts wrong

            MMT shows a lack of respect for empirical facts. This is a problem with economists’ theories in general, and we find that MMT is no exception. As the monetary historian Alexander del Mar observed over a century ago (and it still holds true today):

            “As a rule, political economists … do not take the trouble to study the history of money; it is much easier to imagine it and to deduce the principles of this imaginary knowledge.”1

            To their credit, MMT economists like Professor L. Randall Wray admit to using imaginary history, for example:

            “This … summation of the ‘origins’ of money, much of it relying on speculation” is used in “a stylized, hypothetical example of the way in which an economy can be monetized.”2

            But by using this imaginary method, important historical facts get missed. For instance, in an overview of the Continental currency of the Revolutionary War, Professor Wray jumps to the MMT theory-fitting conclusion that “Without a sufficient tax liability, the notes depreciated quickly.”3

            No mention is made of the massive counterfeiting done by the British. This played the main part in the ultimate depreciation of the currency, as Benjamin Franklin tells us in an article he wrote in 1786, reflecting on his first-hand experience of that time:

            “Paper money was in those times our universal currency. But, it being the instrument with which we combated our enemies, they resolved to deprive us of its use by depreciating it; and the most effectual means they could contrive was to counterfeit it. The artists they employed performed so well, that immense quantities of these counterfeits, which issued from the British government in New York, were circulated among the inhabitants of all the States, before the fraud was detected. This operated considerably in depreciating the whole mass, first, by the vast additional quantity, and next by the uncertainty in distinguishing the true from the false; and the depreciation was a loss to all and the ruin of many. It is true our enemies gained a vast deal of our property by the operation; but it did not go into the hands of our particular creditors; so their demands still subsisted, and we were still abused for not paying our debts!”4

            For its part, the Continental Congress maintained an excellent record: $200 million notes were authorized, and about $200 million were put in circulation at any one time (and about $48 million damaged notes were replaced).5

            This example highlights the poor methodology which is at the root of MMT’s problems: it’s extremely bad practice of selectively taking pieces of history out of context and then using them as a prop to give their pre-conceived ideas the appearance of legitimacy, when they are in fact baseless.

            Not that MMT is alone in doing this, the mainstream high school textbook, Economics: Principals in Action (published by Pearson, 2007, p. 248) written by Arthur O’Sullivan and Steven M. Sheffrin, perpetuates this same misunderstanding of the American Revolution. What is happening here is that these stories put in people’s minds that government is incapable of handling monetary affairs, specifically, the supply of money. History shows that ancient governments, the American colonies and the United States government were quite capable of running their monetary systems in a healthy and fairer way than today’s system.

            MMT misuses terms

            MMT stretches and twists the meaning of words beyond normal usage; for example, Wray says:

            “We say that fiat money is a government liability. For what is the government liable? To accept its money in payment of taxes.”6

            Normally people think of a liability as being something owed and due. Money need not be something owed and due, it’s what we use to pay something owed and due. To call money a liability ignores the nature and properties of money. It removes the concept of money and substitutes a concept of debt in its place.

            MMT mis-defines money as debt

            Poor methodology and misuse of terms leads MMT to mis-define money as debt; e.g., Wray says: “Fiat money will be defined as … nothing more than a debt.”7

            But money and debt are two different things, that’s why we have different words for them. We pay our debts with money.

            If money is defined as a debt, it artificially places an unnecessary burden of debt on the whole of society. It turns the positive real net worth of all we produce into a financial negative instead of positive. In effect, it artificially places financial claims on all of our achievements and progress, thus denying us full benefit and enjoyment of all we create.

            While most money in the U.S. mis-designed system is really debt, put into circulation by banks when they make loans, it is a huge error to then define the “nature” of money as debt. That mistake would render it impossible to redesign the system in a just and sustainable way.

            The AMI considers the concept and definition of money as the most critical factor in determining whether a society’s money system functions in a just and sustainable way.

            How money is defined determines who controls the money system, and whoever controls the money system will dominate the whole society. For instance:

            • If money is defined as wealth (e.g., commodities like gold and silver by weight), as Adam Smith did, then the wealthy will control not only their own wealth, but the money system and thus the whole society as well.
            • If money is defined as credit or debt, as MMT and most economists now do, those who dominate credit (the banks) will control society’s monetary mechanism – and we know from experience they will misuse it to create bubbles, until the whole system crashes.
            • If money is defined as an abstract legal power of society, as the Constitution does, then the money system is placed under our constitutional system of checks and balances to work justly and sustainably for the whole society, not for only a privileged part of it.

            The AMI uses the following concept of money:

            Money’s essence (apart from whatever is used to signify it) is an abstract social power, embodied in law, as an unconditional means of payment.

            Some particulars about MMT

            Now we’ll look at some of what MMT claims and compare it with the facts. Then we’ll look at where MMT got its ideas from, what that means, and suggest how MMT can fix these errors.

            MMT makes these specific claims about the present monetary system:

            1. government creates money when it spends, and can create as much as society wants;
            2. taxes aren’t used for government spending, and are “literally burned” instead;
            3. government bonds aren’t used for government spending either, but to help the Fed;
            4. right now, government can create money for full employment and price stability.

            MMT confuses its theory for facts

            We’ll take some quotes from MMT literature related to these claims and show that there are serious problems with them. We then take some of MMT’s own contradictory quotes which seem to admit this.

            1. Does government create money when it spends (as much as we want)? – No

            Wray says “Government expenditure will generate coins, notes or bank reserves”8 and “Government spending is constrained only by … the public’s desire for money.”9

            In fact, according to official sources, the creation and issuance of coins, notes and bank reserves is unrelated to government expenditure. All coins and notes are issued to the public through banks, and all bank reserves are originally created by the Fed for banks.10 Government expenditure merely transfers (previous) bank reserves back to banks.11

            Therefore, government spending is constrained by present monetary arrangements, not by the public’s desire for money.

            MMT bases this erroneous claim on the assertion that, as Wray says: “Treasury spends before and without regard to either previous receipt of taxes or prior bond sales.”12

            In fact, Treasury must receive taxes or the proceeds of bond (or other debt) sales into its general (checking) account at the New York Fed before payments can be made from it, as the law prohibits the Fed from making loans or overdrafts to Treasury.13 The Fed has to debit Treasury’s account to credit banks’ accounts, otherwise its books wouldn’t balance.

            Therefore, Treasury cannot spend without regard to how much is in its account.

            2. Is our tax money “literally burned” instead of being spent again? – No

            Wray says “tax receipts cannot be spent”14 as “the money is literally burned, or simply wiped off the liability side of the central bank’s balance sheet.”15

            In fact, Treasury publishes daily statements of its accounts showing that tax funds are transferred to its account at the Fed, and the Fed publishes weekly statements showing these amounts as liabilities on its balance sheet; they are not wiped off.11 As for burning money, that is a federal crime.16 Currency re-enters circulation until damaged or worn.17

            MMT bases its erroneous claims on the belief that, as Wray says: “Taxes are used to drain excessive disposable income.”18

            In reality we’re in a deep recession (or depression) right now, most people certainly don’t have any excessive disposable income, and yet most people are still being taxed.

            3. Is government borrowing presently unnecessary? – No

            Wray says “bond sales … cannot finance or fund deficit spending,”19 but are done “to prevent … a zero per cent bid for reserves, … allowing the [Fed] to hit its target.”20

            As above, data published by Treasury and the Fed show the proceeds of bond (and other debt) sales go in and out of Treasury’s account/s at the Fed; they are used.11 And today the effective bid rate for reserves is at the Fed’s target rate of near-zero,21 yet Treasury is still selling more bonds.22

            Yet MMT believes that, as Wray says: “Once domestic households and banks are content with their holdings of government bonds and … reserves, then government need not … sell any more bonds.”23

            Today holdings of government debt and bank reserves are much higher than ever before, but Treasury is still selling more bonds.22 Aren’t we “content” with government debt yet?

            4. Is government presently able to create money to create full employment? – No

            Wray says “Treasury’s ability to issue fiat money”24 means “full employment with price stability … can be achieved, now.”25

            But as we’ve seen above, Treasury does not do this at present, banks do, so government is not in a position to create and spend money into the economy to achieve full employment and price stability right now.

            MMT lacks any real evidence

            We haven’t found any real, officially-confirmed, evidence to support what MMT claims. All the official sources we’ve checked (and we have!) indicate that the facts are contrary to what MMT claims; under the monetary arrangements that prevail at present.

            Of course, Congress can change these arrangements, and fortunately we have legislation introduced into this Congress which restructures our money system so Treasury can create the money supply (as MMT thinks is happening) to enable full employment and price stability to be achieved and sustained.

            MMT doubts its own validity

            To their credit, MMT economists like Wray question their own assumptions:

            “What if we have erred in our understanding of money, and in our analysis of government budgets? In this case, we must take [federal program] costs seriously.”26

            In this case, we must ask: What is MMT really doing? We ask because MMT literature sometimes admits something factual, but then reverts straight back to saying things that are completely contradictory to the facts just admitted; e.g., Wray says:

            “It is true that the Treasury transfers funds from the private banks to its account at the Fed when it wishes to ‘spend’,” but in the very next paragraph says: “Treasury cannot withdraw taxes from the economy before spending.”27

            As we’ve seen above, Treasury’s account is debited when it spends, so it must get funds from the economy (since the Fed can’t lend it funds). The funds transfer back and forth between Treasury and the economy; so it’s pointless saying which direction occurs first.

            What else – some other problems with MMT:

            5. Combining the Treasury and Fed together as though they’re both “the government”:

            In fact, the operational arms of the Fed, the 12 Fed banks, are stock-owned by member banks. It should be clear by now that the Fed exists to help banks, not society.28

            6. Saying money has value because of taxes, that’s why people want it, and government decides its value:29

            In reality, money has value because of what it can buy, we want it for many things, e.g., to buy food (paying taxes is much lower on the list), and sellers usually decide its “value” as such. What enables that value to be created in the first place is people living together in a supportive legal and social structure creating values for living, such as education, science, medicine, technology, the arts, etc.

            7. Ignoring the continuous transfer of wealth from poor to rich due to government debt:

            A big part of our taxes go to pay interest on debt, held disproportionately by the top 1%.

            8. Ignoring banks’ ability to counteract government’s effect on the economy at any time:

            Banks can shrink the economy by shrinking the money supply (e.g., Great Depression) or expand it with bubbles (e.g., housing) regardless of government deficits or surpluses.

            9. Ignoring the continuous theft from society due to private money creation:

            Society creates all economic value; private money acts as a private tax on that value.

            10. Accepting systematic injustice:

            Loaning money into circulation widens wealth and income disparities, as those with the most get the most loans and those with the least get the least; e.g., Wray says: “Clearly, large segments of the population are ‘quantity rationed’ … quantity rationing can even be irrational – perhaps discriminatory -” but then says: “We will not dwell on such issues.”30

            At AMI we do dwell on such issues, because not doing so is a morally bankrupt position.

            MMT goes back and forth in its logic

            MMT backtracks on the timing of government spending and tax transfers; e.g., Wray says: “Treasury transfers funds … to its account at the Fed simultaneously as it spends.”31 That’s a lot different from “Treasury spends before and without regard to … receipt of taxes”10 (as quoted above). So MMT admits that Treasury does need funds to spend.

            MMT even admits that banks control our money supply; e.g., Wray says: “the supply of bank money depends on the supply of loans which is not under the control of the government.”32

            We need bank money before anyone can get cash, buy government bonds, or pay taxes. Thus banks have total control over our money supply: nobody (including government) can get any money unless a bank decides to make a loan or purchase.

            MMT fails to realize that this vast power is in private hands, not in the hands of society through government. We’re supposed to be living in a democracy, not a plutocracy.

            MMT also admits the Fed exists to serve the needs of banks, not society; e.g., Wray says: “the [Fed] cannot … refuse to provide reserves … needed by the … private banking system … as all banking systems operate with a fractional reserve system, banks … are automatically loaned reserves.”33 (emphasis added)

            All of this gives a very different impression of the main assertions of MMT.

            Where MMT got its mistaken ideas from: The ‘Smoking Gun’ and fatal error

            MMT got its mis-definition of money from two articles written by “A. Mitchell Innes”(actually A. Mitchell-Innes), a top British diplomat to America at the time the Fed was being established. Innes only ever wrote two articles on money (the second was only to drive home the first), and in effect they created a “backstory” for the new Fed system.34 Innes is the rotten apple. Following Innes has led MMT down a hole.

            Through the Looking-Glass, and What MMT Found There . . .

            Through a maze of inaccuracies and inconsistencies, Innes created a “theory” which says:

            “It is the issue of money which is the burden and the taxation which is the blessing.”35

            Take a moment to test this theory against your own experience. Have you ever felt this? This is backward thinking. Innes tricked serious people by removing the concept of money and replacing it with debt.36

            Substituting debt for money inverts the idea of money. It turns good into bad; and has a domino effect: inverting everything else to give a totally inverted view of the real world.

            The inherent problem with MMT: it keeps the present problems in place

            Under present arrangements, all money is issued with debt (but it doesn’t have to be). Issuing money with debt places an unnecessary interest burden on our money supply and makes it susceptible to collapse and susceptible to private, often corrupt, interests. These are existential threats to our economy and society that MMT fails to address.

            It’s okay, there is a way out: HR 2990

            It doesn’t have to be like this. We need a simple system which every normal person can understand. There is already a bill in Congress which gives us a simple system which isn’t prone to endless bubbles and crashes. This bill is HR 2990 and it’s main goals are full employment and price stability, which are the main goals of MMT too. HR 2990 explicitly takes the money power back into Congress, where it belongs, which is where MMT says it belongs too.

            HR 2990 enables government to spend money without taxing or borrowing, i.e, the functional approach MMT espouses. HR 2990 requires non-inflationary results and provides funds to improve our infrastructure and education at all levels.

            HR 2990 is the missing link that makes what MMT says happens really happen, by treating money as money, not debt.

            MMT needs HR 2990 for the things they say they want to become a reality. MMT can then be about calling for more money instead of more debt – a more reasonable position, and a much easier sell politically.

            Conclusion

            MMT economists are commended for at least looking at money creation, when almost all other economists don’t even consider it, but they look at it in such an inaccurate way that MMT is rendered useless in any practical sense.

            This is because MMT has embedded within it a mis-definition of money as debt, meaning the harder we work as a society, the more in debt we get, meaning we have to work even harder, use more resources, get into more debt, and so on, i.e., it’s a self-defeating system.

            Thus MMT fails to address the source of economic instability and the driver of the social and environmental degradation we see all around us. It proposes putting an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff whenever there’s a crash, instead of preventing them happening.

            This error comes from the mis-definition of money as debt. The mis-definition of money as debt is incompatible with the Chartal (legal) nature of money that MMT espouses, and history shows us that it is also incompatible with MMT’s stated goals of full employment and price stability. Therefore, MMT has to treat money as money: a necessary medium of exchange – without associated debt – if it wants our money system to reflect reality.

            Treating money as money is a pre-requisite for any realistic and sustainable solution. Only then can we enjoy the benefits of technology without endless toil and resource use. When economics is founded on reality, not theory, we’ll all be better off.

            References:

            Bech, Morten L. (2008), “Intraday Liquidity Management: A Tale of Games Banks Play”, Federal Reserve Bank of New York Policy Review, September 2008, New York, NY: Federal Reserve Bank of New York, pp. 7-23.

            Coleman, Stacy Panigay (2002), “The Evolution of the Federal Reserve’s Intraday Credit Policies”, Federal Reserve Bulletin, February 2002, Washington, D.C.: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Division of Reserve Bank Operations and Payment Systems, pp. 67-84.

            del Mar, Alexander ([1895] 1978), History of Monetary Systems, Clifton, NY: Augustus M. Kelley.

            Febrero, Eladio (2008), “Three difficulties with Neo-Chartalism”[*], XI Jornadas de Economía Crítica, Bilbao, Spain: La Asociación de Economía Crítica; Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, 31 (3), 2009, Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharp, Inc., pp. 523-541.

            Federal Reserve Bank of New York, “How Currency Gets into Circulation”, Fedpoint, June 2008 (http://www.newyorkfed.org/aboutthefed/fedpoint/fed01.html).

            Federal Reserve Bank of New York, “Currency Processing and Destruction”, Fedpoint, October 2011 (http://www.newyorkfed.org/aboutthefed/fedpoint/fed11.html).

            Federal Reserve System (2005), The Federal Reserve System: Purposes and Functions, Washington, D.C.: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Ninth Edition, June 2005.

            Federal Reserve System (2011), Federal Reserve Policy on Payment System Risk, As amended effective March, 24, 2011, Washington, D.C.: Federal Reserve System.

            Federal Reserve System (2011), “Currency and Coin Services”, Payment Systems, Last update: July 20, 2011 (http://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/coin_about.htm).

            Federal Reserve System (2012), Account Management Guide, March, 2012, Washington, D.C.: Federal Reserve System.

            Federal Reserve System, Federal Reserve Statistical Release H.4.1, Release Date: March 15, 2012 (http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/20120315/).

            Federal Reserve System, Federal Reserve Statistical Release H.15, Release Date: March 19, 2012 (http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h15/20120319/).

            Franklin, Benjamin ([1786] 1987), “The Retort Courteous”, Franklin: Writings, New York, NY: Library of America.

            Franklin, William Temple (1819), The posthumous and other writings of Benjamin Franklin, London: A. J. Valpy.

            Mitchell-Innes, Alfred [“A. Mitchell Innes”] (1914); “The Credit Theory of Money”, [American] Banking Law Journal, Dec./Jan., 1913/14.

            Sparks, Jared (Ed.) ([1836] 1840), The works of Benjamin Franklin, Vol. II, Boston, MA: Whittemore, Niles, and Hall (reprint 1856).

            US Mint, 2011 Annual Report, Washington, D.C.: United States Mint.

            US Treasury, Daily Treasury Statement, March 19, 2012, Washington, D.C.: Department of the Treasury, Financial Management Service (https://www.fms.treas.gov/fmsweb/viewDTSFiles?dir=w&fname=12031900.pdf).

            US Treasury, Treasury Direct, Historical Auction Query, March 1-19, 2012, Washington, D.C.: Department of the Treasury (http://www.treasurydirect.gov/RI/OFAuctions).

            Wray, L. Randall (1998), Understanding Modern Money: The Key to Full Employment and Price Stability, Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.

            Wray, L. Randall (2003), “Functional Finance and US Government Budget Surpluses in the New Millennium”, Reinventing Functional Finance: Transformational Growth and Full Employment, edited by Edward Nell and Mathew Forstater, Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.

            Wray, L. Randall (Ed.) (2004), Credit and State Theories of Money: The Contributions of A. Mitchell Innes, Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.

            Zarlenga, Stephen A. (2002), The Lost Science of Money: The Mythology of Money – the Story of Power, Valatie, NY: American Monetary Institute.

            Zarlenga, Stephen A. (2006), “Is the Federal Reserve System a Governmental or a Privately controlled organization?”, Valatie, NY: American Monetary Institute.

            Zarlenga, Stephen A. (2010), “Brief Comments on Innes’s ‘Credit Theory of Money’”, Valatie, NY: American Monetary Institute.

            * MMT forms part of a sub-branch of economic theories called “Neo-Chartalism” which itself forms part of a branch of economic theories called “Post-Keynesian” (after the late economist John Maynard Keynes).

            Notes:

            1 del Mar, 1895, p. 101; Zarlenga, 2003, p. 4
            2 Wray, 1998, p. 54 (paragraphs 1 and 2)
            3 Wray, 1998, p. 62
            4 Franklin, 1819, p. 488; Sparks, 1840, p. 504; Franklin, 1987, p. 1127; Zarlenga, 2002, p. 380-81
            5 Zarlenga, 2002, p. 381-82, and p. 388, note 37
            6 Wray, 1998, p. 95, note 6; Wray, 2003, p. 15, note ix (using slightly different words/terms)
            7 Wray, 1998, p.12
            8Wray, 1998, p. 80; Wray, 2003, p. 6
            9 Wray, 1998, p. 87
            10 US Mint, 2011 Annual Report, p. 9 http://www.usmint.gov/downloads/about/annual_report/2011AnnualReport.pdf); Federal Reserve Bank of New York, June 2008 (http://www.newyorkfed.org/aboutthefed/fedpoint/fed01.html); Federal Reserve System, July 20, 2011 (http://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/coin_about.htm); Federal Reserve System, 2005, pp. 27-50 (http://www.federalreserve.gov/pf/pdf/pf_complete.pdf); Coleman, 2002 (http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/bulletin/2002/0202lead.pdf); Bech, 2008 (http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/epr/08v14n2/0809bech.pdf)
            11 US Treasury, Daily Treasury Statement, March 19, 2012 (https://www.fms.treas.gov/fmsweb/viewDTSFiles?dir=w&fname=12031900.pdf); Federal Reserve System, Federal Reserve Statistical Release H.4.1, March 15, 2012 (http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/20120315/)
            12 Wray, 1998, p. 78; Wray, 2003, p. 5
            13 Federal Reserve Act, Section 14, Subsection (b) (http://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/section14.htm) [12 USC 355]
            14 Wray, 1998, p. 78
            15 Wray, 1998, p. 111
            16 18 USC 333
            17 Federal Reserve Bank of New York, October 2011 (http://www.newyorkfed.org/aboutthefed/fedpoint/fed11.html)
            18 Wray, 2003, p. 9
            19 Wray, 1998, p. 85; Wray, 2003, p. 7
            20 Wray, 1998, p. 86
            21 Federal Reserve System, Federal Reserve Statistical Release H.15, March 19, 2012 (http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h15/20120319/)
            22 US Treasury, Treasury Direct, Historical Auction Query, March 1-19, 2012 (http://www.treasurydirect.gov/RI/OFAuctions).
            23 Wray, 1998, p. 87
            24 Wray, 1998, p. 119
            25 Wray, 1998, p. 124
            26 Wray, 1998, p. 180 (5 pages from the end of the book)
            27 Wray, 1998, p. 78 ((new) paragraphs 1 and 2); Wray, 2003, p. 5 ((new) paragraphs 2 and 3)
            28 Zarlenga, 2006 (http://www.monetary.org/is-the-federal-reserve-system-a-governmental-or-a-privately-controlled-organization/2008/02)
            29 For an academic critique on these points, readers are referred to Febrero (see References).
            30 Wray, 1998, p. 110
            31 Wray, 1998, p. 116
            32 Wray, 1998, p. 110
            33 Wray, 1998, p. 105
            34 Wray, 2004, p. 11-13
            35 Innes, 1914, p. 160
            36 Zarlenga, 2010 (http://www.monetary.org/critique-of-innes/2012/06)

          3. @ Mike Hall

            http://www.monetary.org/mmtevaluation

            AMI’s Evaluation of “Modern Monetary Theory” (MMT)
            by AMI Research, with Steven Walsh; and assistance by Stephen Zarlenga
            ……….

            via: http://www.monetary.org

            http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue66/Huber66.pdf

            A Refutation of so called “Modern Money Theory” (MMT)

            This brilliant paper from Prof. Joseph Huber to the 2013 AMI Conference, analyzes MMT and shows how MMT fails to seek real monetary reform. This landmark paper was sent by the Real World Economics Review to its 23,924 subscribers! MMT thinks they can ignore it.

  15. Hi David, its 40 years since I was inspired as a sixth former to join the Ecology Party which became the Green Party and I’m afraid nothing much has or will change until the electoral system changes. Clegg’s worst blunder has been totally failing to turn coalition membership into a serious move towards proportional representation. Until that happens most of our votes are worthless.

    So I’ll not repeat my mistake of last time and vote Lib Dem, I’ll vote Green since this time there is a candidate in my constituency but the Tory will get in as always.

    Best of luck in Scarborough and Whitby

  16. Wish we could all vote for anyone we wanted to represent us directly, so that anyone with say, 25k supporters could have a seat. You’d get my vote.

  17. Hi David

    All of us here will know that you have been touring the country warning about ‘The Death of Democracy’ via TTIP.

    I have just been referred to this video (7 minutes) concerning PayPal and how it relates to TTIP – http://bit.ly/1Ic5a2x

    Would appreciate any comment from you and your blog followers.

    Also, just finished reading ‘Tower of Basel’ about the Bank for International Settlement, which was an eye-opener for me. Selected quotes here – http://bit.ly/1KiKNQB

  18. The Happy Hobbit

    Hi David

    Great to hear about your success at the 6th Form college. It seems that once people step away from the propaganda of the main stream, and their minds are opened to ideas and opinions that fall outside the Overton window, they are not so frightened to consider the possibilities.

    If people here haven’t already done so, I would recommend taking the survey on https://voteforpolicies.org.uk/ – which I found highly illuminating from a personal standpoint.

    David, I was wondering if you would consider putting up a synopsis of what you discussed at the 6th Form college. When I try to speak to someone who is firmly ensconced in the ‘Matrix’ I find it difficult to know where to begin – without babbling!

  19. Hi David. Good luck for the election.
    Just an aside – I have been trying to find ANY references to TIPP, TPP or TASP in the election “questions posed to candidates” or mainline Media reports. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The sovereignty of the country is unimportant?

    (The other question that is being avoided like the plague is the Israel-Palestine situation. Milliband has said some time ago that he will eliminate the Boycott movement – and according to titles in Haaretz, Cameron has vowed fealty to Israel. (perhaps not in those words exactly)). Although it is not an “UK” question, it is a bit disappointing that difficult questions are avoided.

    all the best
    shaun

  20. David, I’ve been away from your blog for quite a while. I think so long that you were openly tussling with the idea of entering politics at the time. To tune in again and hear that you are bringing your intelligence, courage and depth of argument to the Greens is great news. You are right, the tide is turning verdant. It may take some years to make it irresistible to more people, though there’s no doubt that the appetite is there amongst the populus, particularly the younger folk who are being offered nothing but despairingly mind numbing options by the main parties.

  21. backwardsevolution

    Golem – I sure enjoyed your talk on the TTIP. Very well done! A perfect blend of information mixed with some humor (always effective). Just excellent.

    This short video (3 minutes) from Bill Still in the U.S. goes over what’s happening in Congress re the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) and other trade deals. It appears Congress wants to actually see what’s in the secret trade deals before they pass them. Can you imagine that, actually wanting to read the fine print? They must be feeling a lot of pressure from organizations and people opposed to these deals. Good!

    http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=230088

  22. David there is nothing wrong in running for pol. office only wish more ppl like you did it.

    As for young ppl being apathetic or concerned only with consumerism and Facebook (etc.) that has some truth to it. Because there is a consensus of the overlords and party politics are seen as beside the point (in USA and GB and many other places for sure that opinion has some merit), nothing much, it is thought, can make a dent.

    But young ppl (I also have great success with them so it’s personal) have a very strong sense of justice and fairness, respect and dignity for all, which teen cynicism can’t quite quash. (I mean besides saving the whales. Which is of course a good cause.) The main problem, as I see it, adressing a young audience, is the economics of it all. That is very hard to communicate. One really needs to make up some simple and telling schemes and illustrative examples… But then I am in Switz. where politics are inbred and 14 yr olds go to pol. meets. Or belong to pol parties.

  23. The hottest circle of hell is reserved for those who, at times of great crisis, remain ‘neutral’. The same I think is true of those who vote ‘None of the above’.

    If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. You have chosen whoever it is that wins.

    The Greens I think are a party whose time is arriving. The future of the Earth is the biggest issue of the day, as social deprivation was at the time Labour first arose. (Which isn’t to say that social deprivation and Labour aren’t still highly relevant).

  24. David for Green party leader after the 2015 election, would give a much improved performance compared to Natalie Bennett’s car crash interview and would give the party the image it needs.

  25. Yakima Canutt

    Everything would be fine in our political system if the best candidates for each seat were elected. Keep central office control out of it, ban list candidates, ensure local parties select their local candidates, and have an independent and minority party run-off the week before the election to coalesce the dissent.

    People will vote for the best candidate if they get to hear the arguments, almost irrespective of party. I am sure you did not blindly parrot GP manifesto mantras, and spoke as yourself.

    Good luck tomorrow.

  26. As ever the day is won through fear and greed……I for one shall not be shedding any tears for the property owning (mortgaged),self-centered, middle class when their ‘security’ goes up in smoke as interest rates go up and they and their children are thrown out onto the streets!

  27. This was just the warm up. This wonderful, battered old country needs us now more than ever. Just as America needs to be saved from those who have perverted that country.

    We must look to each other.

    I am not giving up. The only thing that has changed from who I was yesterday, is I am more determined than ever.

    I have hopes, I have plans and I have friends to share them with. I have everything I need.

    1. UK, USA, you could say the same thing of France too (and probably nearly all western “democracies”). The last time the French left tried to implement policies of the left was with Mitterrand in 1981. He got such a lashing from the Markets, I think it was lost on no left wing parties in the western world.

  28. Well done David, that you are ‘more determined than ever’ is good news for all of us.

    Thankyou for standing, it takes a lot courage to do what you have done, hopefully it will inspire others to do likewise.

  29. Well done for standing, David, and glad that you are keeping up the fight.

    The Green Party received 1,157,613 votes in this election, not that much less than the SNP, and nearly four times as the amount cast in 2010.

    On the stats alone they have a groundswell of momentum behind them.

    They just need some more articulate and inspirational leadership 😉

  30. I was going to vote Green, but i live a very Conservative borough and when i got to the polling voith i knew a vote for Green would put the Tories,in, so i voted Labour. Io e the Green Party political broadcast, though. That was such good fun.

    People don”t have clue what’s going on. They don’t know that they have to work very long hours to find the money to pay thier mortgage or rent because of the financial system. They have no idea of what has been discussed above. Many keel voting Tory and yet thier children end up with massive,student debts and then massive mortgages or rents. And when the post graduate jobs don’t pay, they don’t realize how the system is fixed to screw them to maximise profits for the few., so they carry on voting Tory because they say only they can fix the economy. And the right wing media ram it home.

    over the centuries millions have perished in unnecessary wars because they did not have the facts,. The ruling class ensures that no one gets,the facts. The Tory supporters shout gleefully how they won, but spend grouping long hours at work their children have no future, and thousands,diie and get wounded in wars the mega rich want to steal other countries resources

    The ruling class don’t work for a living. The know the right people, they use corruption, there is ilegal .

  31. I’m using my tiny mobile phone and pressed the wrong button..Im reading Eric, Zeusse’s book, Feudalism. fascism, Libertarianism, and Economics. In itt he describes how the ruling class, who he calls,the aristocracy, make their money. Through wars, insider dealing, money laundering, illegal drug and gun running, fixing the markets, asset stripling, rent extraction, owning the banks and printing money out of nothing, corruption, it certainly has nothing to do with hard work

  32. After seeing the results of the UK elections, any hopes still left for democracy have been crashed again!
    Two parties, took a total of 563 seats out of a total 650 …. or 87% of the total seats ….. this is not what democracy had in mind you know.

  33. Good post from NC on the election, but what really struck me was a comment from Christopher D. Rogers, in which he illustrates the failure of the left in England & the probablility of a Brexit:

    “The actual sting in the tail is this, the rightwing parties in the UK – Tories and UKIP now constitute a majority of the votes cast in England and Wales, that is the combined vote, excluding Scotland is in positive territory above 50%.”

    A situation that cannot be blamed on the Green party & without knowing much about UKIP supporters – I wonder how many of them would be disaffected Labour voters & where did the one time Libdem votes go ?

    Gird your loins my friends, things are going to get horribly interesting.

    http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/05/ilargi-will-austerity-be-the-straw-that-breaks-the-eu-and-the-uk.html

  34. Bev above, the AMI is a highly partial organisation, and what they and you’ve written about MMT is pure junk. I see no point in arguing your erroneous points – you are clearly here purely on a sales job.

    AMI has zero credibility. I’ll just quote former central banker, now Professor of International Finance and Monetary systems, Bernard Lietaer..

    ” Academically, MMT has never been challenged, from what I see, they are right.”

    This is because the vast bulk of MMT is simply a description of the funcionality available in current monetary and banking systems of sovereign, fiat, free floating currencies like $, £, Yen etc. And these facts are drawn from present operational reality, as stated in relevant Central Bank, BIS etc documentation.

    1. The NMTer’s seem like quite nice people. Mike Norman, who is a successful hedge fund manager, really fights the Conservatives, libertarians, and the neoliberals. If we are you going to beat the psychopathic ruling class we need as many of the good ones in our side as we can get.

    2. I make no money from these postings. I am not a representative of AMI. I am trying to help our survival as a species, and to increase our knowledge and humaneness toward each other today. Having money, not debt, we can meet the needs of people today, and pay for massive, new engineering to try to reduce the dangers of radiation and climate change for the many generations it will take. I don’t know how else to do that, but with debt-free money.

      A Public/Government Debt-free money is tried and true having been instituted six times in the history of the United States, and in France. Bankers are deadly serious about keeping their profits from debt-loans as a country’s only circulating debt/money, so it is important to PROTECT politicians who will do this again for the common good.

      Academically, as listed in above references:
      http://www.monetary.org/mmtevaluation
      AMI’s Evaluation of “Modern Monetary Theory” (MMT)
      by AMI Research, with Steven Walsh; and assistance by Stephen Zarlenga

      29 For an academic critique on these points, readers are referred to Febrero (see References).

      Febrero, Eladio (2008), “Three difficulties with Neo-Chartalism”[*], XI Jornadas de Economía Crítica, Bilbao, Spain: La Asociación de Economía Crítica; Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, 31 (3), 2009, Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharp, Inc., pp. 523-541.
      ……………………

      http://www.monetary.org/

      http://www.monetary.org/how-the-economists-facilitated-the-crisis-and-how-hr-6550-solves-it/2011/06

      How the Economists Facilitated the Crisis and How HR 6550* Solves it ( later also HR 2990, which needs to be re-introduced every year until it is law)

      Economist Jamie Galbraith in testimony to the Senate Crime subcommittee on May 4th, 2010:

      “I write to you from a disgraced profession. Economic theory, as widely taught since the 1980s, failed miserably to understand the forces behind the financial crisis.”

      With rare exceptions, those in control of the World’s monetary/economic agenda and the theories supporting it have helped bring the world to its knees. Shouldn’t they (and their theories) be held accountable? The challenge will be for “youngsters” like yourselves, to bring your chosen profession to its senses.

      False “monetary” beliefs (some call them theories) have misdirected public policy decisions for decades, with devastating effect! Errors of Concept, methodology and factual errors led to disastrous outcomes for our nation and have the potential to gradually take America down into an unprecedented abyss of lawlessness and deprivation. Consider the present insane calls for austerity. Economists have allowed the idea to prevail that a government has to be run the way a shopkeepers runs his store. These times call for greater care and some heroism among economists; and cowardice is no longer tolerable among those who do understand.

      Which particular monetary errors? Most importantly, economists have not understood or appreciated the difference between money and credit. That using credit for money is dangerous, harmful and unnecessary. Can’t they read Knapp’s “State Theory of Money, available in English since the early 1920s, to understand credit is just one type of money system, and not a good one at that? Even Minsky who pointed out that such a fractional reserve system always collapses, regarded that as a problem inherent in “Capitalism, and didn’t consider eradicating it but merely called for government providing jobs when the credit structure was in collapse. A solution that one of AMIs researchers said was like “trimming poison ivy!”

      Many economists have falsely concluded that “all money is debt,” and while most money in our particular mis structured system is debt, this attitude ignores the possibility and necessity to define a better system based on government money, not private debt. This failure to understand the concept of government money as opposed to private credit, has had immense and deadly repercussions. The Great Henry Simons summed it up in one magnificent sentence in the 1930s:

      “The mistake … lies in fearing money and trusting debt.”
      Henry Simons, (Economic Policy for a Free Society, 1930s, P.199)

      This fundamental error has allowed the most egregious banking and money system to dominate our society for a century. It has caused immense damage:

      For example: The privatization of our monetary system, with control over public policy being in unelected hands, for whoever controls the money system, over time will control the nation.

      And look what they have done with that power:

      * They’ve given special privilege to create money to some, and disadvantage to others; which has led to an obscene concentration of wealth and a corresponding poverty! This has encouraged lawlessness and corruption among the privileged; pushing them to diseased excess for acquisition, and ignoring those among us in great need.

      * They’ve turned economics into a primitive religion, and worshipped the “market” as a god, despite all evidence to the contrary. A primary tool they use is to denigrate and ignore evidence. “Anecdotal” was the description Greenspan used for real evidence that challenges their theories. A fundamental sin of poor methodology.

      * They have placed an unnecessary ball and chain on the leg of every producer by having the money supply itself bear an unnecessary interest cost to society.

      * They’ve foisted a “fractional reserve” system on us prone to periodic collapse. Credit will collapse during a crisis. Money does not collapse. Credit will collapse during a crisis. Money does not collapse. Money does not collapse.

      In our present system most of what we use for money – more accurately purchasing media – comes into existence as an interest bearing debt, when banks make loans. In that sense, most money in our fractional reserve system – is debt. But economists can’t seem to grasp that those rules can and must be changed. Afraid to confront their paymasters, who are benefitting from the injustice, they can’t conceive of practical ways we can use real government issued money for money instead of substituting private debt for it. They ignore previous attempts such as the Chicago Plan of the 1930s; and smear prior periods when such real money was used successfully.

      Errors of methodology regarding money include refusal to examine the facts and a tendency to ignore history where the monetary facts are found. This leads to the silliest errors of fact regarding monetary history including:

      * Being unaware of the colonial periods’ excellent experience with government money.

      * The Continental Currency – they are generally unaware they were destroyed by Brit counterfeiting.

      * The Greenbacks – which is mistakenly characterized as worthless paper money, ignoring that they ultimately exchanged one for one with gold.

      * The French Assignats – where they have again ignored Brit counterfeiting and enshrined the propaganda book written by a banking heir as unbiased fact (White’s Fiat Money in France)!

      * The German Hyperinflation is not recognized as occurring under a privately owned and privately controlled Reichsbank!

      * Regarding the FED as part of the government!

      * The Free banking Schools misidentify the Free banking period because New York’s “Free Banking Law” gave better results. But despite its title it imposed much stronger requirements and regulations and was the opposite of free banking!

      Jamie Galbraith ended his testimony to the Senate’s Crime Subcommittee with this warning: “But you have to act. The true alternative is a failure extending over time from the economic to the political system. Just as too few predicted the financial crisis, it may be that too few are today speaking frankly about where a failure to deal with the aftermath may lead.

      In this situation, let me suggest, the country faces an existential threat. Either the legal system must do its work, or the market system cannot be restored. There must be a thorough, transparent, effective, radical cleaning of the financial sector and also of those public officials who failed the public trust. The financiers must be made to feel, in their bones, the power of the law. And the public, which lives by the law, must see very clearly and unambiguously that this is the case. Thank you.”

      James K. Galbraith to the Subcommittee on Crime, Senate Judiciary Committee, May 4, 2010.
      On June 13, 2011, in The State’s Crisis, by AMI

      Also at http://www.maxkeiser.com/2013/03/radical-options-for-the-uk-economy/#Obbh447tsbsx7mJ8.99

      1. It should be noted that a debt-free money does not have to be backed by precious metals. It can be backed by the built infrastructure that it buys, or services rendered that it buys, which is helpful, especially if as some report that gold from the West is heading to the East, and perhaps into some bankers private accounts.

      2. harold wilson's pipe

        Galbraith? Name sounds familiar, as indeed does the content. Any relation? 😉

        “The process by which banks create money is so simple the mind is repelled.”

        Where can I find the background to the quote, a simple explanation of what it meant then, and an explanation of its current relevance?

        [If it’s in a JKG Senior book, that’s fine, I have a few to choose from, but they’re hardcopy and thus not readily searchable. And they’re in a different place from me. But I’ve had them for decades, especially Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went – but maybe I’ve forgotten that particular line]

        1. @ harold
          Yes, Jamie, James K. Galbraith, is John Kenneth Galbraith’s son, and Jamie Galbraith is an Economics Professor at University of Texas.

          Perhaps someone will provide the page number from the book, Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went, that contains the quote, “The process by which banks create money is so simple the mind is repelled.”

          It is still relevant. Some of my favorite quotes that I think explain Galbraith’s quote:

          from above on MMT:
          http://www.monetary.org/mmtevaluation
          AMI’s Evaluation of “Modern Monetary Theory” (MMT)

          …the harder we work as a society, the more in debt we get, meaning we have to work even harder, use more resources, get into more debt, and so on, i.e., it’s a self-defeating system.
          …….

          http://moneyaswealth.blogspot.com/2010/09/best-political-quote-in-over-100-years.html

          Best Political Quote in Over 100 years!

          “If men can create electronic bookkeeping entries representing debt and loan them into circulation, men can surely create electronic bookkeeping entries as a payment and spend them into circulation with no debt. Which do you prefer?”
          – Gregory K. Soderberg, Rep. Candidate MN. Lt. Gov., 2010

          http://moneyaswealth.blogspot.com/2011/07/why-are-we-short-of-money-why.html

          Why Are We Short Of Money? Why?

          The World Economy Trembles Because Every Nation Is Short Of Money.

          Yet.

          Money Is The Easiest Thing In The World To Create.

          It Is Done On a Computer.
          Type It In. Press enter.

          That Is, In Fact, How They Do It Now.
          But, They Only Do It As A Loan.

          Why?
          Because You Let Them.

          That’s Stupid.
          Don’t Be Stupid.

          You Can’t Borrow Yourself Out Of Debt.

          Ever.

          snip

          Think about it:

          If the banks are the only ones who create money,
          and you have to give it back to them (loan payments) – two things happen.

          1st. You have to give it back!! You never get to keep it in exchange for goods/services. In the aggregate (combined picture) you do the work, but can’t keep the money.

          Right!

          Theft!

          2nd. If the banks are the only ones allowed to create money, and then only as a loan, in the aggregate, you have to borrow to pay interest!

          IMPOSSIBLE to get out of debt.

          …………..

          It becomes POSSIBLE to get out of debt with:

          http://www.monetary.org/ The American Monetary Institute

          The Bill: http://www.monetary.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/HR-2990.pdf

          and The Green Party in the UK, US and everywhere.

    1. Chris Hedges is a fantastic guy, and a vegan, like me. Being a war reporter he has seen some terrible things, but it never hardened him. He remained sensitive to other peoples and creatures suffering.

      I also liked what he had to say about Christianity too, then i discovered that he was not a believer anymore. I’m an atheist too, but it can be a very lonely uncaring place. My dad was never openly religious, but Christianity gave him a lot of comfort as he approached his death. I think we need a spiritual side, but I’m an arch liberal, which means i tend to have a rational scientific mind.

    1. Does anyone know what is actually in the TTIP, is there any transparency or are people trying to sign contracts that they have never seen ?

    1. As the Conservatives destroy our economy over and over again, they manage to convince the electorate that it is all the fault of the other parties and only they can put it right. I try to study why people vote Conservative, especially ordinary working people, because this might unlock the key to how they are being brainwashed. But sadly, they just don’t think too deeply about things like we do.

      They have no idea how the retirement could have gone down to 60, or how after 55 we could have gone on a shorter hourly week, or how we could have longer holidays, and a shorter hourly week. The amount of automation and machinery doing the work knocking out things out 24/7 we are just harming our environment by working all these long hours. And more job sharing would be better for everyone.

      The electorate have no idea how much they have lost out by constantly voting for right wing parties Tell them this and they won’t believe you, the propaganda is so total that they are completely brainwashed by neoliberalism and its one sided version of market forces.

      Right wing ideas are easily understood by people. Saddam was bad, we’ve got to kill him. There’s no complexity. The Sun newspaper throws out one sentence black and white headlines and gullible people are stirred emotionally. They go on about Benefit Street which costs us peanuts,, but fail to mention Wall Street and the City of London which cost 100’s of £billions more.

      A London police officer has his own blog and he specialises in financial crime. On his blog he says that the City of London is the financial crime centre of the world. When i wrote this on the Guardian on-line readers section recently they removed it in a jiffy

      .No one .is getting the truth. Paul Craig Roberts says that we live in a matrix, where we are completely lied to all the time. There is no truth to be found in the mainstream media. This is George Orwell”s 1984.

      1. “Saddam was bad, we’ve got to kill him.”.. No mention that we night have to kill 100’s of thousands, maybe million of innocent people to get him. No mention of the chaos or civil wars that may be left in his place after he has gone No mention that the mega,wealthy like wars so can sell loads of weapons and that governments will have to borrow from their banks to pay for it. No mention that western governments are just after the oil and that they installed Saddam in the first place to get it anyway. No mention that the US sold him chemical weapons, and that they wanted him to start a war with Iran so that this would weaken an independent nation.

        If you mention this to people it just goes over thier heads, or they might think that you are not a patriot.

        1. They know well enough how to compose the music that plays to the worst instincts of many & takes away the necessity to think. After all greed isn’t the sole preserve of the rich & the majority have for 2 or 3 generations been brought up on a materialistic philosophy. Lets face it – if you are up to your eyes in debt & have a large mortgage, you have a vested interest in wanting the system to continue, & the the thought that it might not, or is even unsustainable is likely to create massive cognitive dissonance, which is proven to produce further irrationality.

          I imagine Goldman Sachs still has plenty of muppets to suck the lifeblood from, despite the fact that these patsies,( who you would imagine are reasonably intelligent ) might cop on, as there is evidence enough out there if you look for it, evidence enough to show that they are blinded by the trough.

          Those at the top including the Tories, know this only too well as they are the smart money & as for Gonzo & co.- it’s much easier to believe those who they aspire to be than a bunch of Lefties & hippies, they perceive as wanting to force them to provide for the work shy or manufacture wicker baskets, never mind shouting worrying things that signal that all is not what it seems.

          As for atheism – nobody knows & perhaps it is one case when it is a good idea to abstain from voting. I am a very undecided, but like Rupert Sheldrake’s idea that when we die we go into a dream state & that dream states reality is dependant on how we lived our lives, which would I think be a form of justice.

  35. In the Guardian yesterday was a journalist who that no matter how much she argued with her mother, or old she got, her mother always voted Conservative because she said that she did want big government meddling in her life. But did she realise that the reason that she may to sell her house to pay for her old age care was because people kept voting for small government over the years.

    Using the term “Big Government” is how the ruling class fought against democracy using it as propaganda to diminish our democracy. I wrote in with this:

    New Labour worked with the bankers to ruin the British economy. New Labour was a Thatcher party Mk 2 and carried on with her destruction of the UK to line the pockets of the super rich. We need a real socialist alternative. We need to get the ruling class out if our lives, as they have become too big, they control everything and are bleeding the UK dry.

    We need more democratic government with teeth to represent the British people, to cut the ruling class down to size and reduce their power. We can’t let the big ruling class, big business, or the big banks, ruin our lives and dominate everything. More democracy for the people means a cheaper NHS, cheaper utility bills because governments ie.us, as public owners, can run these better without excess profits being creamed off to a few people.

    We need publically owned banks,,that is, get the mega rich, ie.big business, out of our money supply. Less big business wrecking our lives and more effective government representing us, not just 37% of the electorate, who voted for the Big Banks party.

    In a proper democracy big government is people power. Our taxes would be lower because the rich couldn’t scam us anymore, or start loads of wars which we, the tax payer get left with the bill, or our children pay with thier lives.And publically owned banks would mean ultra cheap loans and government borrowing will cheap too saving us up to 30% on our tax bills or even more.

    Get big business and the big banks out of our lives and then we won’t have to sell our homes when we get old to pay for our health care. It’s time to cut down the power of the big mega rich meddling in our lives and have more effective government working for our behalf. It’s time to reclaim back our democracy and stop the big banks from wrecking our world and our children’s future.

    The Conservatives are the bankers party, they stand for big business and the big banks , where they have become too powerful and too big with too much control over our lives. We need to claim our individuality back, have more freedom, less interference from big business and big banks, so we can live higher quality lives with less meddling from the rich and powerful.

    1. It’s a pity that many cannot make the connection between those who fought to establish the freedom & affluence that they take for granted, & the very same sort of people who are now fighting to keep those benefits. Unfortunately they probably need a Tory foot to grind their faces into the pavement before they might realise.

      Maybe this is how a constituency will be born to replace the working class built around workplace communities that Thatcher destroyed, one that another Blairite Labour set up could well miss out on. If my family experience is anything to go by, not many associate themselves as Working class anyway as they did in my Father’s time, but rather consider themselves as upwardly mobile middle class over those they consider as chavs, or an underclass.

      I remember an incident at school in the seventies that wa located in a large council estate, when for some reason the history teacher asked us to hold up our hands if we considered ourselves as working class. I & a lad whose family used to transport coal pickings in a pram, both put our hands up. Then everybody else signalled that they were middle class despite the fact that their parents worked manually in local industry. The teacher basically laughed at them & I am sure that whatever it was that influenced their choice, would have been further entrenched when a few years later Mrs. T. came along.

      1. In the 70’s the Daily Mirror was a really good newspaper with some serious reporting in. In those days lots working class people had a real interest in politics but look at that paper now, or The Sun, or any of them. Even the UK Guardian is rubbish and just toes around the edges with a few liberal issues and ideas.
        It’s so wishy washy. Seumas Milne and George Monbiot do their best, but they seem a bit censored, or muted.

  36. And let’s get the big banks out of our pension schemes where they rip us off with insider dealing. We need more effective government to control the pension funds, or better still, get the government to run then for us without profit. Pension funds with their hidden costs might take the majority of the money you have paid unto them and they underperform so you might not be able to retire when you want to. So let’s get the big banks out of our pensions schemes where they scam us.

    The truth is hidden from the electorate, we have programmes about about Benefit. Street on TV, but nothing about the scum and criminals that work in The City of London and Wall Street.

    In the book, Economics and the Powerful, Norbert Haring and Nail Douglas, describe who hedge funds managers work with pension fund managers to rob the pension funds. Hedge fund managers get to know the books of companies they want to invest in and in this way they get insider knowledge. Because they have so much money and clout they can demand this.

    If it looks like a company that the hedge funds have invested in might lose value the hedge fund managers will get their pension fund manager friends to buy their shares off them so the pension funds lose money instead. But the opposite can also occur, if a,company that pension funds have investments in are going to make a lot of money, then the pension funds will sell the shares to the hedge funds so that they make the big profits instead. It is estimated that pension funds under perform by 10 to 20% a year because of this. That’s worth billions to only a few elite people. And with all that extra wealth they have,even more money to corrupt others so they can make even more money.

    None of this ever gets reported in the MSM, and so people keep voting for the bankers party, the party backed by financial criminals, because they have been told that Labour will ness up the recovery by a right wing press that the mega rich own.

    Our retirement age in inceeassjg not because we are .living longer – ordinary people don’t, but the wealthy do, which alters the statistics – but because our economy has been scammed by the bankers, hedge fund managers, and private equity firms so that it is always on its knees.

    Everyday we get ripped off by the aristocracy but people unwittingly keep on voting for the bankers party oblivious to the scam.

  37. people are like turkeys and keep on voting for xmas. when it comes then no doubt those same people will not only be surprised but will seek to blame ?? russians..chinese.. or anyone except themselves.

    1. I know,two two people who have worked for a London bus company for most of their working lives. Both vote Tory. At one point a few years back the London bus companies were getting lots of their buses replaced because the stock had not been renewed for years. At this point all the London bus companies had been privatised but TFL was going half on the cost of rhe new buses.

      One of these Tory voters kept moaning to me about how it was putting his rates up. The other Tory supporter hated the Freedom pass, which he said put his rates,up. Both of these people had very well paid jobs in the bus industries and as they were once public industries they had top quality pension schemes. Both of these people had done extremely well out of working for what was once a state run industry and yet they moaned about how the bus industry had increased their rates.

      One of the Tory supporters had won a,scholarship and got a bursery from the council so his daughter to go to a drama school to learn ballet, he would never have been able to afford this on his wage, although very good for a London engineer. His daughter is now a top ballet star and both hm and her moan about the tax and vote Tory.

      Weird, eh, but this is how working class Tories think. Of course, they deserve every benefit going but others don’t.

      But none are told that our taxes are so high because of subsidies to the rich, or how they avoid tax, but expect the police force, and the courts to protect their property and stashed away zillions. And they like the armies to fight their wars for them so they can get the oil cheap, but they scam out on the tax.

      And the government borrows money from their banks where they invent it out of nothing and loan it to us at interest but public banks could do it for free reducing our tax by a third.

      The working class Tories watch about Benefit Street which cost us peanuts, but there are no programs about Wall Street and the City of London which costs us £100,s of billions. Hardly any mention of their organised crime where they may even look after the money of our most deadly enemies for a price, the terrorists who want to bring the west down. Their illegal drug and gun running. Their insider dealing making our pensions underperform by 10 20% a year so they make the big money and we lose, and so our retirement age goes up. The scum that work in the City and how it affects our wages, our taxes, or how they put us into unnecessary wars would make for far more interesting viewing on TV, but the own the media so we never see it.

      1. I tried to edit the above but it didn’t work.

        And because our pension funds underperform our retirement age goes up. In the book, Economics and the Powerful, the authors Norbert Haring and Nail Douglass, both professors, describe how hedge fund managers work with the pension funds to sell and buy shares so that pension funds make the loses and the hedge funds make the gains. This means that our retire.age has to go up.

        Do the working class Tory voters know that if their pensions performed properly, and if the industry did not scam so much off themselves in hidden costs they could be retiring at 60. It is just so unbelievable how the Tories get away with it, but they own the media so no one gets to find out the truth. Not even the limp wristed Guardian writes much about it.

        There was one very good Guardian journalist, though, who is not a big name like the others, who wrote a terrific article about the pensions once. He said that the pension fund managers were putting all the money into causing house price booms where they make big bonuses, but they keep their money when the crashes occur. He said they should be investing the money into new high tech industries instead and helping young entrepreneurs. Many of these industries would be high tech, our own silicon valley, and many would be about new green environmentally friendly products. This would create good paying jobs for apprentices, young scientists, university graduates, etc, and these industries would give young people good jobs and old people very good pensions, with maybe an earlier retirement age which would free up even more jobs for young people.

        The public have no idea how much the have lost by voting for right wing governments over the years., They have been scammed.

        1. Now imagine that I was a professor and I went on TV arguing the above. The ruling class would then get all their PR companies, their Conservative professors who are their lackies, and bombard me with their whole army of paid stooges who are in on their game. What chance would I stand?

          But still, we have Dr Paul Craig Roberts, Professor Michael Hudson, and many other university professors, in fact, there are a whole ton of books written by academics about what i have said above. Maybe one day we will have a chance.

  38. hi Kavy we get our chance everyday that we are here. if our own lives were dependent on the ponzi scheme thats offering us all slavery as a future we would be screwed.. fortunately our lives are a happening thing not because of the thieves but because of something else… to discover it is the challenge. making heaven happen in the midst of hell is what human beings are being called upon to accomplish.. and it can only happen individually for us..each human being for themselves will discover how to respond.

    1. That just sounds Ayn Randian to me. The old Tory trick of blaming the poor for being poor, where it has nothing to do with thier policies.. Get out there and make something of yourself. If there are no jobs in your town then start your own business. More work and more boring work. Always on the go, always on the make, no rest, no peace, just the same old capitalist treadmill. Many will fail and end up on the doctor’s meds, other will find solitude in drink, others will try to compete but find it grim. Is this how life is meant to be? In the third world many work around the clock, but does the magic of capitalism work for them.

      And does your heaven do anything about the financial crime i mentioned above that robs British people of a better life, their savings, and the value of their pensions, and also in many instances their jobs.

  39. Kavy i am sorry that you have misunderstood me. i am certainly no friend of ayn randian and his guff. i wanted to say that being human is our greatest resource and we don’t seem to know it hence all the crime. human reaction to the situation we find ourselves in is the positive response. we have to get to know what is human to tap the resource that we are.

    1. It all sounds a bit new agey to me. I”m an engineer during the day and a musician in my spare time, and I do Lindy Hop dancing in the rest of my spare time. I have done a lot lessons to improve my Lindy Hop dancing. I have done computer courses to learn how to program music editing software. And I did tons of college for my engineering. How much more resources do I need tap into. I still think the political system is corrupt and ordinary people are getting ripped off I don”t understanding what finding our human resources has to do with it, but I do admire George Galloway, Paul Craig Roberts, and Michael Hudson who put an enormous amount of their resources into fighting injustice, if that’s what you mean.

    2. Desmond you’re making the mistake of posing bourgeois liberalism as a solution to the impending crises looming over the horizon.

      The problem is that this language has so often been used a cover for implementing further neoliberal policies when collectivist responses are clearly needed; the evidence for this is all around us with traditional liberal political parties capitulating to multinational finance capital, the activities of US, private and NATO funded NGO’s around the world, Thatcher and Reagan’s campaign to attack public provision, Bush’s hijacking of the language of freedom to lay waste to the ME.

      Self-help type doctrines are also notoriously free of material context in a way so as to allow politicians and business to efface the responsibility for the great financial asset grab now taking place. It hides the impact of the role of political, economic, and social forces, promoting solutions that are compatible with existing structures of production and consumption. Far too many people are choosing this depoliticised route to ‘individual happiness’, based on these decontextualised appeals to ‘lifestyle’.

      http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/may/09/oprah-winfrey-neoliberal-capitalist-thinkers?CMP=fb_gu

      The primacy of the individual and notions of freedom are far too easily manipulated by powerful elites that dominate the media agenda, often appealing to a base instinct of selfishness (not that I’m suggesting that you belong to this camp) that has proven absolutely destructive to the body-politic these past 30 odd years. The utopian ‘expansive-self’ which was encapsulated in the social movements of of the 1960s and 70s and that promised so much has simply been siphoned off by consumer capitalism and sold back to us.

  40. I guess there’s always Buddhism to bring contentment and self fulfilment in a troubled world. According to Eric Zeusse, the historian and author, the rich have always used religion to control the masses. Religion was real handy for them. For one thing, a promise of a better life after this one helped poor people to cope with their miserable lot and put up with the order and be less inclined to fight back.

    But religion had other uses too The gentry got people to believe that they were chosen by God to rule, so the royalty were said be ordained by god. The church, the bishops, and the archbishops, who were part of the ruling class, went along with it.

    And then there was war..As the ruling class don’t like hard work, they tend to steal money instead. Stirring up religious,hatred was a great way to get a war going and then you can go to someone else’s land and,steal all their treasure .

  41. Now that the tiny detail of a UK general election is out of the way.

    David, as a prospective parliamentary candidate, how are you going to work for your constituents over the next 5 years (hold surgeries?)

    Imagine you are an unwhipped MP sitting in this Parliament, I want to see your voting record in the same format as TheyWorkForYou (a sort of TheyWouldLikeToWorkForYou)
    I want to see your justification behind the votes you (do/don’t) cast.

    Please film all of it (especially the procedural)

  42. Sums it brilliantly up for me :

    The below is a response from a lady called “Annette”, to an article by former Scottish Labour MSP Richard Baker entitled “Separation is not the answer” (to Labours woes).

    The piece originally appeared on http://www.labourhame.com, and was brought to my attention by @george_wallis. The original article can be found here: http://www.labourhame.com/separation-is-still-not-the-answer/#comment-128724

    Breathtaking.

    “I am so tired of the word “nationalism” being branded about by Labour. And, ooh, they inserted the word “patriotic” in their constitution, how quaint. Personally, I don’t give a toss about patriotism and nationalism. I am an EU citizen living in Scotland and I voted YES because it is my firm belief that every country has a right to political self-determination and should not be ruled by another country. This is something that I suspect most Labourites would in theory agree to, because it makes them sound noble, but when applied to Scotland, they suddenly get a hissy fit at the notion of someone “wanting to break up our country.” The only explanation I can find for this behaviour is that they believe Scotland is not a country.

    I’m going to help you out here, Labour, because I have watched your decline for a long time and it seems clear that you have not the foggiest idea where you have gone wrong. That is why almost everything you did to improve your prospects has only made things worse. So let me try to explain, and let me tell you in advance that everyone I have spoken to over the last few days agrees with me. Not because I am so super-clever, but because it is blatantly obvious. Only Labour seem to be unable to see it.

    Forget Blairism. The con Blair pulled off worked once, but it will not work again in our lifetime, because there are things people don’t forget. Blairism gained Labour the support of a certain number of swing voters and that helped you as long as your core supporters loyally stood by you. Whatever made you think, though, that you could give up the goals and values of your real clientele and that nevertheless they would keep voting for you indefinitely? Sure, many people feel loyal to a party and are patient with it, and there is a certain inertia that needs to be overcome before some voters desert their traditional party. But if that party continually fails to represent their supporter’s interests, these supporters will eventually walk away. The sentence I heard again and again and again these last few months was this: “I have not left Labour, Labour have left me.” That is the core of the problem.

    So listen to me well, Labour Party, because if you get this wrong again you will be done for, once and for all: Don’t try to appeal to Tory voters. Tory-leaning voters might vote Labour as a one-off protest vote, but by pandering to them you alienate the people who are your natural clientele. For a few years that might work out, but eventually the Tory-leaning voters will return to the Tory fold and your own supporters will decide you’re just not worth it anymore. If they have any sense, they’ll move on to the Greens, and if not, there’s always UKIP. If they feel seriously conflicted, they might just stay at home and not vote at all. In Scotland, they have serious alternative now. In any case, you’re unlikely to gain back their trust as long as you present yourself as a paler copy of the Tories. Nicola Sturgeon did give you the heads-up in the leadership debate. She said that of course there is a difference between Tories and Labour, but the problem is that the difference is not big enough. It is nowhere near big enough.

    There are several ways in which this failure to be properly Labour instead of Tory-lite has played out.

    1. You have failed to be an effective opposition. Instead of challenging the Tories’ brutal austerity policies, their hair-raising incompetence with the economy, their blatant favouring of the rich elites, you have done little else than bicker about details. You have allowed the electorate in England and Wales to believe against all evidence to the contrary that the Tories are basically right. You voted with them for more austerity cuts. You voted with them for Trident renewal. You voted with them for more foolish military interventions in the Middle East, even though you must know by now how the Iraq War has damaged you. You abstained from the vote on the fracking moratorium which would have succeeded had you not been so cowardly. You have not been a counterweight to the nasty coalition, you have enabled them.

    2. You have allowed the Tories to determine the political narrative. Instead of countering their agenda with your own agenda, you kept telling us you would do much the same as the Tories, only in a nicer way, and you deluded yourself that this would keep everyone happy. All this nonsense about cutting the deficit by slashing public services and restricting government spending, when it is standard textbook economy that in times of recession the government must increase spending to help the economy recover – you could have called the Tories out on this, you could have presented the figures of how the Tory approach had made the economy much, much worse. Why did it have to be Nigel Farage of all people who pointed out in the leaders’ debate that the Tories had doubled the national debt? That would have been your role, you should have hammered this message home relentlessly instead of letting them get away with their ludicrous claim that they had fixed the economy. You even allowed UKIP to set your agenda: Instead of making it clear, like Natalie Bennett and Leanne Wood and Nicola Sturgeon did, that immigration really, really isn’t a relevant problem, you went about printing “Controls on immigration” on mugs and even inscribing it on your ridiculous monolith.

    3. Instead of fighting the Tories, you fought your potential allies. This wasn’t so disastrous in the case of the Greens and Plaid Cymru, given their small numbers, but I will say that having a big campaign to unseat Caroline was not only mean-spirited but stupid; those resources should have gone into targeting a Tory seat. However, it was your treatment of the SNP that might well have cost you the election. Again, you let the Tories determine the narrative. They crowed about a constitutional crisis, about a second referendum which neither the SNP nor the wider YES movement are seeking within the next few years anyway, about “breaking up our (sic!) country,” about chaos and nationalism and England being held to ransom. They and their compliant media outlets abused the SNP and the people of Scotland on a daily basis in the most despicable terms. And all you did was parrot them. Nicola Sturgeon could not have held out her hand any more sincerely, and yet you sneered at it.

    What you could have done, should have done, was to challenge the Tory narrative. The SNP have been riding sky-high in the polls since September; and you had known for months that you could only form a government with their help. Plenty time to come up with a constructive strategy. You could have pointed out that the SNP are a moderate party of the centre left. You could have pointed out that they have a track record of eight years of competent and sensible and not-at-all-outrageous government in Holyrood. You could have pointed out that they stood for the kind of temperate progressive policies that many, many people in England would have been delighted to see. You could have pointed out that in no imaginable universe would even 59 SNP MPs be able to call the shots in a 650-strong parliament; that you would always be the boss in any kind of arrangement. You could have thrown all your might into convincing the English electorate that a Labour/SNP team effort would be good for the whole of the UK, as it undoubtedly would have been. Instead you declared a week before the election on national television that you would rather see the Tories return to power than work with the SNP. The stupidity of this is mind-blowing. And all under the banner of “not working with a party that seeks to break up the UK.” Tell me, what is your deal again with the SDLP, a party that seeks to unite Northern Ireland with the republic? You don’t even field candidates against them to give them a better chance? If you can work with them, why not with the SNP? But even today you still harp on about “nationalism” when in fact what the people of Scotland have opted for is the moderate social democratic policies which you should have offered but didn’t.

    4. Having alienated your core supporters and turned your back on your potential allies, and with no progressive track record as an effective opposition to show to the electorate, you have based your election campaign on sound bites, PR stunts and silly gimmicks. Just after Nicola Sturgeon presented her gender-balanced cabinet and promised to work tirelessly on shattering the glass ceiling, you insulted the women of the UK by inviting them to talk “around the kitchen table” about “women’s issues,” proudly brought to us by a pink van. And you didn’t see it coming that people would call it the Barbie Bus and laugh it out-of-town? You allowed Jim Murphy to run amok in Scotland with one insane “policy announcement” after another – remember the “1000 more nurses than anything the SNP promises?” Why not promise weekend breaks on Jupiter for the over 65s? You wheeled out Gordon Brown at random intervals to make meaningless promises and you expected people to be swayed by the pledges of a retiring back bencher? You had some wishy-washy election promises carved in a massive gravestone and you thought that was a good idea?

    Yours was a hopeless, hopeless campaign from beginning to end, without vision, without structure, without conviction. And yet I, like so many, clung to the hope that surely people in England must be so fed up with the Tories by now that they’d vote for you anyway and that surely once the election day dust had settled you’d see sense and head a progressive alliance with the SNP, SDLP, Plaid Cymru and the lovely Caroline Lucas who is worth her weight in diamonds. We could have turned things around for the good of the many rather than the few. Instead the Tories now have carte blanche to suck dry the people of the UK and grin smugly while they feast on our bones. All thanks to you, Labour Party. Now get your act together and make sure this will never happen again. I cannot spell it out any clearer.”

    https://stevetopple.wordpress.com/2015/05/13/so-listen-to-me-well-labour-party-because-if-you-get-this-wrong-again-you-will-be-done-for-once-and-for-all/

    1. I was in a fish and chip shop the other day and they had The Sun on the table. In his the centre pages it said that the Labour Party had gone too far to the left and had left ordinary people behind. The Sun spoke up for ordinary people, they said. The Labour Party needed to be able to stand up to the rich without being left it said.

      The retirement age has now gone up because the mega rich had scammed our society. Good paying jobs had gone abroad and our industries wrecked because asset stripping made the rich lots more money. For years there were hardly any apprenticeships, another form of asset stripping. Now the needed skills are brought in ready made from abroad, so no paying for any training required.

      The average Sun reader has no idea how much he has lost by listening to the Sun. Labour had moved away from their values, says the Sun.

      1. Yes – I wonder how Murdoch’s flunkeys would describe a Labour party that was actually of the Left – Stalinist, communist perhaps. I remember back when Michael Foot was ripped to shreds by the likes of the Sun ( a lot of it based on his appearance ), someone if I remember rightly who was actually a socialist. Nye Bevan who must be spinning in his grave would probably now be portrayed as the dark evil lord Anti-Christ of a socialist hell on earth – it’s a pity most people cannot cop on to the fact that such a filthy beast greatly improved their lives & for once Britain was an approximation of a land fit for returning heroes.

    2. With all due respect Steve, I found that critique very uneven. Scottish Labour was undoubtedly the most right wing part of the Labour party but Ed Milliband did his best to move the party on from the Blair years. What the press did to him should be instructive for progressives and radicals across the country. No political party leader in the last twenty years has talked about inequality as much as Ed did and with such conviction. And as for the claim that it was a ”hopeless, hopeless” campaign – in Scotland maybe but not the one I was part of in England. It was incredibly focused, very energetic and kept the party in the game in the face of massive media opposition.

      And finally, as you know, I think *mass* immigration is one of the key features of neoliberalism and so Sturgeon, Bennett and Wood’s high minded rhetoric really was totally wrong headed, and, I would suggest, a key reason why many ordinary people will not vote Green.

      There are too many people in this country who are forming their views based on what they read in newspapers. This applies both to the left and the right. If people engaged with political parties or were prepared to think more critically, they might find things weren’t quite as simple as they (would like to) believe.

      1. Also with all due respect mate, except for the immigration issue, I think she was pretty much on the ball, with the most important point being that if they persist with Blairism they will be no use at all to those who are their alleged constituents. I do think that Milliband couldn’t do right whatever he did, especially with Mr. Austerity-Lite, Ed Balls behind him & It’s OK talking about inequality as Obama often does, but going along with austerity policies isn’t going to change anything.

        If they had had the right sort of Balls maybe they should have taken up the immigration issue, as it would likely win back many working class votes that have been lost to Ukip. Maybe they should also realise that no matter how much they try & out Tory the Tories, the press are always going to rip them to shreds. Whatever the ins & outs of it are, as far as I am concerned ( & I don’t read the papers ) the Labour party in it’s present state ( whoever happens to be steering ) isn’t fit for purpose & I think it could turn out to be good thing that they didn’t get elected in the long run, as rather than most probably poodling along in the same old way, they might actually sort themselves out.

        It’s just my opinion mate & probably not worth arguing about, but noone will ever know what would have happened anyway – I just happen to believe that it would have been the usual letdown & for there to be real change, we need something truly radical, but very unfortunately to get to that omelette – many more eggs will have to be broken.

        1. This from Michael Sheen perfectly sums it up for me :

          “The question of whether Labour moves back towards the centre, doing more to seem business-friendly or breaking away from the unions, is totally secondary to the fundamental question: “What do you believe in?” If it wasn’t about getting elected, or ­being popular, or being successful in the short term: what do you believe in? Then, how do you turn that into policy that can make concrete change? You should have deeply held beliefs and core principles based on your experience of living with and listening to the people you are representing, shouldn’t you? Then that becomes the bedrock from which you are able to face the uncertainties and challenges of the future. Your adaptability and flexibility in the moment is precisely related to how solid you are at your core. If politics is about compromise and flexibility on the surface, then unless there is a passionate belief at the heart of what you do, you will die slowly, eaten up from the inside, crumbling from within. You won’t realise it until your head hits the floor, your mouth still moving, making promises into the dust ”

          .http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/05/michael-sheen-tyranny-mere-wealth-destroying-our-democracy

        2. Fair enough, Steve.

          I just think the slow death of the Labour party is more complicated than many people would like to give credit for, and that whilst I support David in the Greens, I desperately wanted to see the back of the Tories and that at this point in time, Labour were the only ones who could replace them.

          Having been engaged in left wing politics for five years now and having spent two months canvassing door to door for Labour, I can promise you that it is not easy at all getting many members of the public to listen. There are myriad reasons for this – too many to go into at this time of night. Consequently when I read the frustrations of people like the Scottish woman quoted above, while I may understand the analysis behind her point of view, I’m sorry to say that it is a particularly left wing perspective which isn’t well-reflected in my experience on the doorstep.

          I accept now however that had Ed been elected, he would have been undermined from within. Paul Mason claims that the Times was organising for Right wing Labour MPs to cross the floor if Ed formed a progressive coalition. I also think if another financial crash happened and he wanted to properly nationalise the banks and write off their bad debts, he would not have had the full support of his party. If ever a man was caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, it was Miliband.

          With the passing of TTIP by the EU Trade Committee today, I now finally accept what David has said all the long – the age of reform is over, and ‘revolution’ is our only way out.

          1. I would like nothing more than to see the total annihilation of the Tory party & more importantly it’s policies in terms of Neoliberalism mixed with their traditional bag of Etonian & money grubbers in their castles & the poor man grovelling at their gates. They are at least the best chance we have of discreditting the above & through this, the clearing the Neoliberal infection from other parties who have adopted it in an effort to keep up.

            I think that they will overeach as they simply cannot help themselves which will result in one of David’s tipping points. They will start to squeeze working families & the middle sort of people, pensioners etc as they are idealogues & true believers, will no doubt try & extract wealth from the environment, which if they are directly affected, will not go down well with Middle Englanders.

            The tragic thing is I suppose that it’s their’s to lose & those who are still hanging onto the 80’s Thattcherite dream who have let the rabid dog off the leash, need to be bitten before they realise the truth and through this like refugees hopefully turn and fight against it.

            All we can do is whatever we can do to fight against this, by taking advantage of & highlighting their crimes against their own people, in the huge face of a media that will try it’s best to justify the worst excesses. You care deeply about these things Phil , & it’s people like you are needed to work together despite their natuaral individual differences of opinion, which avoids the useless Left bickering that is a handy tool for those they are supposed to be fighting against.

            We have our acorn, let us try & work together to make it grow into something strong, but not rigid as it will break, able to bend to withstand the foulest wind, with it’s roots fimly stuck in the soil that contains the original seed & it’s message.

  43. David, there is a vacuum in the blogosphere that is crying to be filled with your latest thoughts. On just about anything really, such is the extent of our vacuousness. lol

    Have a great weekend all.

    1. Hi Jesse,

      to fill the void whilst we’re waiting
      (I appreciate that after a long campaign, some people need a bit of space to re-prioritize, close family comes first, extended family have to wait)

      I get this everyday http://www.xkcd.com
      he also does this https://what-if.xkcd.com/ but he has gone on holiday and it won’t be back until July 14th, 2015 at 7:49:59 AM EDT. (this seems a bit specific but that’s Randall)
      (there may be another What-If ‘Randall doesn’t reappear’, but who would write it ?)

      I read this (but don’t understand a lot of the content) http://andreswhy.blogspot.co.uk/
      but he suddenly stopped posting after 26/3 with no explanation.

      (are all you lot ‘in the know’ exiting the burning building and not telling the rest of us or am I just being a bit more paranoid than usual)

      I read ZH, it used to be good but now it is mostly shit although they have reproduced a few of Golems articles in the past and recently republished a Max Roser article
      http://ourworldindata.org/data/population-growth-vital-statistics/world-population-growth/
      that is a rehash of one of my posts from 2010 but includes graphs. (and no acknowledgements)

      And then one day I came across this

      http://forum.woodenboat.com/showthread.php?166255-I-want-to-build-airplane-lifting-wheels-into-my-boat-Im-building-but-dont-know-how

      google sometimes throws you a curve ball.

      It starts with ‘My old boat got too small, so I found some wood dad was hiding and Im building myself a new one.’

      It then asks ‘I want to be able to pull my boat out in different places from where I launch and walk about with it, so I want wheels with me.

      My brothers canoes ones didnt float when he rolled his canoe.

      If I build some into my hull, I wont lose them.

      Im building a sort of Mirror Dinghy type boat with a centreboard as I found some rigging off one in the bedroom.

      Before I start building the tanks, I want to work out how Im going to fit my wheels.

      Would anyone have any Ideas how I can fit them? ‘

      About halfway down page one someone thinks it is a spoof (fair enough), it isn’t as other posters point to previous builds, the blog is genuine and the builder is about 12/13.

      Somewhere around page 30 (each page will take a few hours to read, they are long pages) there is a picture of the family, in the background you can see a bookshelf filled with A4 books, at around page 45 it is revealed that these are the journals they have to complete each year.

      This family is worthy of a fly on the wall documentary, if only someone knew of a filmaker I’m sure we could get it crowdfunded.

      1. I thought the following boat was so interesting, though it is not one with wheels. As an engineer, Dmitry Orlov, along with others, designed this boat, a houseboat that sails. Perhaps contact him with the boat with wheels design problem:

        from: Dmitry Orlov at http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/
        whose books include:
        Societies That Collapse
        Communities that Abide
        Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Experience and American Prospects

        http://quidnon.blogspot.com/
        A houseboat that sails
        ……………

        Another Engineer with wonderful ideas to help communities is Marcin Jakubowski, Ph.D.:
        Marcin Jakubowski is the founder of Open Source Ecology, an open collaborative of engineers, producers, and builders developing the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS). The GVCS is a set of 50 most important machines that it takes for modern life to exist – everything from a tractor, to an oven, to a circuit maker. Marcin and his team are producing open source blueprints – so that anyone can build and maintain machines at a fraction of what it costs today. His goal is to create a life size LEGO set of powerful, self-replicating production tools – that can decentralized production – to build modern prosperity in local economies. He imagines the raw power this gives to people – to tap autonomy, mastery, and purpose – towards rebuilding their communities and solving wicked problems. Marcin believes that true freedom – the most essential type of freedom – starts with peoples’ individual ability to use natural resources to free themselves from material constraints – to unleash human potential.

        https://www.ted.com/talks/marcin_jakubowski

        http://opensourceecology.org/

        Open Source Blueprints for Civilization. Build Yourself.

        We’re developing open source industrial machines that can be made for a fraction of commercial costs, and sharing our designs online for free. The goal of Open Source Ecology is to create an open source economy – an efficient economy which increases innovation by open collaboration.

        Open Source Ecology is accelerating the growth of the next economy – the Open Source Economy – an economy that optimizes both production and distribution – while promoting environmental regeneration and social justice. We are building the Global Village Construction Set. This is a high-performance, modular, do-it-yourself, low-cost platform – that allows for the easy fabrication of the 50 different industrial machines that it takes – to build a small, sustainable civilization with modern comforts.

        http://opensourceecology.org/wiki
        Civilization Starter Kit – v0.01
        Open Source Ecology – DVD – Cover – v0.01 – 05.jpg

        The Civilization Starter Kit currently contains all the training materials you need to build 4 out of 50 Global Village Construction Set machines (Beta v0.01). Join our global network of independent replicators creating a sustainable, open source economy.

        http://oseeurope.org/
        Open Source Ecology Europe

    1. Seems like a good base to work from – here’s a list of MEP’s who voted for it from 38 degrees :

      David Campbell Bannerman, Conservative MEP for East of England – he didn’t even bother turning up!
      Emma McClarkin, Conservative MEP for East Midlands
      David Martin, Labour MEP for Scotland
      Jude Kirton-Darling, Labour MEP for the North East of England

      One other UK MEP who had a vote, William Dartmouth (UKIP MEP for South West) did listen to his constituents and voted against TTIP.

      Both David Martin and Jude Kirton-Darling pledged to vote against ISDS in TTIP (the part that lets corporations sue governments), and then appeared to backtrack at the last minute

  44. Just finished watching your documentary on metamorphosis, really fantastic. It also reminded me how much I miss your commentary on the metamorphosis of our current situation in this country. I really hope that the financial system will collapse this year and I hope it will force us to change as people. Your thoughts on what is happening around us and how we can prepare are very useful. Hope you will get back to blogging again soon

  45. Metamorphosis…. BBC4 this evening. A program by one David Malone.

    Stunning program David, very well done! 🙂

    Brought to mind things like Terrence McKenna’s ideas on evolution & even the Matrix blue pill/red pill… on a day I also read Mr Leary’s work with LSD referenced in a national newspaper article reporting renewed scientific interest and activity in such things.

    As someone just past their 60th year (and many personal metamorphoses), my considered opnion now is that human society in present numbers cannot hope to survive this century out, absent some metamorphic kind of change, most likely relating to brain chemistry. I don’t see change of suitable significance happening any other way.

  46. I can understand your pessimism Mike in a world where the Sepp Blatter corruption sideshow is getting everybody fired up, & people vote for those who are the same ilk as those who enforced the majority of their ancestors to live lives of miserable drudgery. FIFA is well worthy of investigation, but in comparison to the biggest heist in history, which has effected everybody, it’s the equivalent of stealing the petty cash. I tried to find some specific figures on the net the other day as to the amounts British banks had been bailed out. Hardly anything there & in terms of the information that I found, there was nothing of any use. Maybe Rory’s hoped for crash might produce some brain chemistry shock therapy & thanks both of you for the Metamorphosis tip, will check out the i-player – nice to escape for a while from this bullshit Downton Abbey rose tinted world.

    http://www.salon.com/2015/05/30/the_fifa_corruption_sideshow_takedown_of_1_percent_crooks_or_strategic_move_against_putin/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=socialflow

    1. I guess comments are closed at Truthdig. So, instead of there…here. I hope Chris Hedges sees this information.

      Karl Marx did not understand money, according to Joe Bongiovanni. See:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEU13R5jt1w
      Joe Bongiovanni
      Why Monetary Reform Must Become Your Number One Issue
      start at time 15:45

      How Does the Monetary System Relate to Socialist Theory?

      Marx did not understand money at all. He never understood money. Marx was willing to work with the private bankers.

      I am not here to criticize Marx, okay, but the fact of the matter is there has never been a socialist or communists theorists who understood money.

      Now having said that, Trotsky was the closest that I felt who understood money. And, a couple of French Socialists whose names just escape me right at the moment, understood money.

      In sum, the entire left of the left do not understand money (my note: with the exception of the Green Party). In fact they ususally refuse to engage it as a substance of discussion, because it doesn’t matter to them. It’s the means of production. It’s all the things that count under both socialism and communism.

      I am kind of a bit of a socialists myself, but when it comes to money I am a nationalist. Money is issued by nations. It is up to the nation to control the issuance of the money. The nation that controls the issuance of the money, all you have to worry about is Fascism. Okay. And so, if you ensure that the issuance of the money is something that happens for the good of the people, you are well on your way to controlling all those other issues that are important, the means of production. Not that you control the means of production, but you influence the means of production by true economic decision making.

      You see, money is a commodity. Because it is a commodity, if you control the issuance, image that you had a commodity that you didn’t have to go and acquire. Image that you have a commodity that you can just create. It’s like you can create wheat. Or, you can create anything that is a real commodity and you can do it out of thin air and then you can market it. That is the situation with money.

      And, until you take the commodity nature of money out of money. That is to say, money resorts back to its means of exchange function in the economy. Money has to be available to function as a means of exchange. That is the primary function of money. Sort of like the definition of money, that which serves as the universal means of exchange. So, if that is the definition of money, then how does it become a commodity, it is an exchange media.

      And, it should only be created by a government. Because why, there is a production and consumption of goods and services that’s what an economy is about. You need to have a means of exchange in order for those things to happen. So, that’s how money should function. And, it will never function that way really as long as it is a tradable commondity, a marketable commondity, as long as we live under capital markets. Okay. Capital markets determining what money is all about. We have to get away from that.

      There are those who think that the problems we have today of too much debt and too much mal investment and all that can be corrrected by going to the gold standard.
      The gold standard does not matter. It really does not matter. You can have a gold standard or not have a gold standard. It really does not matter. It just depends on who controls the gold. Just like the thing that matters is who controls the money. Okay, so then it matters who controls the gold. If you have a gold standard, I’m sorry, but this is what my Dad always said to me, it is okay to have a gold standard if the government controls all the gold. Because, then the value of the money which is the purchasing power of the currency is determined by the government which whatever relationship it has to gold. So, gold is no answer to solving any of the problems that we have today. Okay. It’s not that. But, however, neither is it neccessarily because of what it is, because of it’s natural properties, neither is it the boogieman that it has been said to be.

      Gold should be functioning in the market right now for whatever use it serves. And, its primary use is industrial, creation of jewelry, creation of things that have value to persons, a personal value of something that is made of gold. That is what it should be.
      Now it’s an investment vehicle. Okay. Now you can buy a future of gold; now you can buy an interest in gold and related things. So, it becomes just another marketable commodity. As a marketable commodity, it should not back money. It should never back money if it is a marketable commodity.

      If people want to invest in gold, and hold gold, as something that protects their investment, that is fine. That is true of anything. But, it shouldn’t be backing the currency. It shouldn’t be backing the currency.

      ……………..

      Many people say that gold is going from the West to the East. Jim Willie ( http://www.goldenjackass.com/main5.html ) says that gold is also going into some bankers, intelligence agents, political and military leaders’ private gold accounts, many being held at the (Bush’s) Carlyle Group. He says that governments should get that gold back that was leased or sold from Western government strongholds into private hands. This behavior seems to be less like Marxism, and more like a Fascistic theft of public property.

  47. Hi Bev

    I agree with you regarding money. It should be ‘created’ by a transparent government agency and spent into the real economy by the government, according to it’s mandate, NOT created as debt by banks to be used mostly for speculation.

    I’m reading David Harvey’s latest book at the moment, ‘Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism’. Just finished chapter 2, ‘The Social Value of Labour and Its Representation by Money’. I’ll put a few quotes up from that chapter later and recommend the book on what I’ve read so far.

    1. The government can create the money and spend it on social services, so no extra taxes required. The money gets its value when social workers, doctors, nurses, schoolteachers, university professors do work. They will then spend the money into the wider economy creating jobs and helping private businesses to prosper. We get low taxes, and high quality low cost social services and public provision. And the private sector gains to because there will be better infrastructure, a more educated workforce, and again lower taxes, and they will also have more customers because of the well paid public servants.

      This is what the ruling class, the banking class, are hiding from the public. And they have got away with it. High taxes are blamed on the poor and so millions of people keep voting for the bankers party, the Tories. Our taxes are high because our government borrows the money from the private banks and we have to pay a shocking amount of money back as interest. Our government allows bankers to create our money supply out of thin air, when governments could do it themselves, tax free.

  48. Hi again Bev – and All.

    Here are quotes from Chapter 2 ‘The Social Value of Labour and Its Representation by Money’ from David Harvey’s new book ‘Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism’.

    This takes us on to the field of the second contradiction of capital. What is money?

    Exchange value requires a measure of ‘how much’ commodities are worth relative to each other. This measure is called money. So what is this ‘money’ that we so unthinkingly use and reuse on a daily basis?

    In the case of social labour, ‘value’ speaks to why shoes cost more than shirts, houses cost more than cars and wine costs more than water.

    Being immaterial and invisible, value requires some material representation. This material representation is money.

    This gap between money and the value it represents constitutes the second foundational contradiction of capital.

    Whereas gold and silver are relatively scarce and of constant supply, the representation of money as numbers allows the quantity of money available to expand without any technical limit. We thus see the Federal Reserve in our time adding trillions of dollars to the economy at the drop of a hat through tactics like quantitative easing. There seems no limit to such possibilities except that imposed by state policies and regulation.

    When the metallic basis of global moneys was totally abandoned in the 1970s, we indeed found ourselves in a potentially limitless world of money creation and accumulation.

    The rise of credit moneys (beginning with the simple use of IOUs) places a great deal of money creation in the hands of individuals and the banks rather than in the hands of state institutions.

    This calls forth regulatory impositions and interventions on the part of the state apparatus in what is often a desperate attempt to manage the monetary system.

    Above all, we take something that is inherently social and represent it in such a way that it can be appropriated as a form of social power by private persons. This last contradiction has deep and in some ways devastating consequences for the contradictions of capital.

    The fact that money permits social power to be appropriated and exclusively utilised by private persons places money at the centre of a wide range of noxious human behaviours – lust and greed for money power inevitably become central features in the body politic of capitalism.

    When money takes the form of mere numbers, then its potential quantity is limitless. This permits the illusion to flourish that limitless and unending growth of capital in its money form is not only possible but desirable.

    Even a casual examination shows that compounding growth for ever is impossible.

    When the European Central Bank was formed to deal with the euro, its sole mandate was to control inflation and nothing else. That this played out disastrously when the sovereign debt crises hit several European countries after 2012 testifies to a chronic inability within the institutions that capital sets up to regulate its own excesses, to understand the contradictory logic embedded in the monetary form that capital now necessarily assumes.

    1. Thanks so much Joe Taylor for the quotes and references above.

      I thought I would add the free text of a book recommended by Joe Bongiovanni, from Frederick Soddy, a English Nobel winner in Chemistry, who got interested in the beneficial ideas surrounding a Public Debt-free money. The book is on-line, though until you get to the Preface, the formatting of the contents is a little more difficult than a regular Table of Contents.

      https://archive.org/stream/roleofmoney032861mbp/roleofmoney032861mbp_djvu.txt

      THE ROLE OF MONEY

      WHAT IT SHOULD BE,
      CONTRASTED WITH WHAT IT HAS BECOME

      By FREDERICK SODDY

      M.A. (Oxon) ; LL.D. (Glasgow) ; F.R.S. ; Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, 1921 ; Author of ” Science and Life ” ; ” Wealth, Virtual Wealth , and Debt ” ; ” Money versus Man ” ; etc.

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