I’m gonna need more convincing than some crackpot who still naively disbelieves the laws of physics, providing repetitiously monotonous non-evidenced based verbal hand-waving cries of “it’s a myth” to support what are obviously arguments devoid of foundation or supporting references. Please, let’s stick to arguments based on empirical (or objective) evidence not fideism.

Here are a few links that help elucidate the Austrian / Libertarian position on most of the scenarios you describe, if you’re interested (and I hope you are!)

http://lewrockwell.com/vance/vance279.html

http://mises.org/daily/2120

http://www.guardian.co.uk/open-weekend

(24th/ 25th March)

The pics are reminiscent of 1930’s Farm administration photos.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/bruce-springsteen-on-someplace-like-america/2011/12/19/gIQAx1Px4O_story.html

Who would have believed the 21st century version of blitz-krieg would be waged by the use of speculation backed by computed digits and Monopoly money?

This is the financial shamans version of the neutron bomb – the one that supposedly annihilated all life forms but left the real estate and assets untouched and ripe for the victors spoils. Not a bad result for a threat backed by nothing more than a myth and a lobotomised propaganda machine.

Was this a conspiracy or a cock-up? Is Greece merely a tactical test case to test a greater strategy? Iceland blew up, but it wasn’t part of the EU and didn’t play the game choosing instead to let their banks go to the wall. And, anyway Iceland was too small to be treated as a test case. ( Though strangely the money men have already decided Iceland can come back into the funny money club if it wants to – perhaps the club doesn’t want any country to survive and progress outwith the clubs ‘largesse’ of debt and interest?)

Ireland and Portugal for the moment have played into the austerity pack of socialising real costs in order to pay real interests for computed Monopoly debts that circled only within the speculators and did nothing for their real productive economies. So for the present, they will be allowed to continue paying the pawn fee while the broker decides whether to sell their pawned assets or keep them in escrow.

Until that is Greece succumbs or is subdued and the tactic is proved successful; then the PIIGS will be transformed to exactly one letter less than the acronym and given the same neutron treatment.

Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy are already on the conveyor. The new Baltic and eastern European entrants have little in the way of reserves or financial clout to be able to withstand the ‘new’ club rules. Then on to France and the UK, both of whom, for the moment, are claiming the role of self sufficient internal and external gualeiters while in reality they are in just as much, if not more, hock to the Financial Storm Troopers as the countries they’re victimising.

Some economists argue this isn’t a moral issue, purely an exercise in fiscal control. They might have a point if the money, the debt and usury charged were real and thereby creating real hardship for the alleged investors. But there not. It’s electronic Monopoly money that hasn’t even incurred the cost of the paper it isn’t printed on.

If we allow this idiocy to win even a tactical skirmish we may as well write off the last five hundred years, democracy and the advance of civilization; and gird our loins with the sackcloth of feudal serfdom to serve the alchemy of the Overlords of Financial Funny Money.

Whether through ignorance, incompetence or prior recruitment to their cause this is exactly what our political masters and their technocratic gualeiters want. There’s a lot of ‘profit’ in it and it would make their lives so much easier not to have to spin their way through the demands democracy places on them.

For now we still have a choice. Either the easy way of apathy, or we take a myth by its mythical horns, expose it to the ridicule it warrants and deserves, then carve out for ourselves, our communities and our nations a real life based on our real values.

In the real world, the Greeks are our neighbours and the rats in the financial shamans laboratory. How long before it’s our turn?

Thanks guys!!

I haven’t quite got my head around the implications of full reserve banking as yet. Partly because I lean toward the view that 90% of what is euphemistically called ‘investment’ banking needs to be banned anyway. And that this is possible. See this pdf for more on this:

http://www.greenhousethinktank.org/files/greenhouse/home/Banking_inside_final_3.pdf

I’m inclined to believe if the banking sector can be properly regulated/reverted to its historical role, then reform efforts can be concentrated more usefully on the other important (possibly more important) aspects.

[I take some comfort from the fact that William K Black, a legendary anti-banking fraud expert is an MMT supporter & confident that banking can be regulated to function properly (as it largely used to be).]

I’m referring here to the ‘functional finance’ part which both positivemoney & MMT both include. Arguably, there is a much more extensive body of work on this within MMT. This completely removes any importance of targeting some (arbitrary) gov debt/deficit level. Rather, gov issues or extinguishes money according to the prevailing requirements of the economy. Eliminating the scourge & waste of unemployment & optimising the productive use of resources for the widest benefit of society. Or at least doing an infinitely better job of it than now.

If you’re not familiar with MMT follow the link provided in Golem’s links section to Bill Mitchell’s blog. Takes a bit of study, but totally worth it imo. Consistent with Steve Keen’s view also on how the monetary system & economy actually works in the real world. Essentially, debt money is perfectly ok & useful so long as it goes to productive purpose, not casino speculation & asset bubbles.

I would argue Haldane downplays the criminality and idiocy (see Robert Sherrill, Byron Dorgan, Brooksley Born for some who warned of the idiocy), but still essential reading:

“The continuing backlash against banking, as evidenced in popular protests on Wall Street and in the City of London, is a response not just to the fact that the world is poorer, as pre-crisis riches have turned to rags, but to the way these riches were privatised, while the rags are being socialised. This disparity is nothing new. Neither, in the main, is it anyone’s fault. For the most part the financial crisis was not the result of individual wickedness or folly. It is not a story of pantomime villains and village idiots. Instead the crisis reflected a failure of the entire system of financial sector governance.”
http://goo.gl/X3VcB

Hi Phil,

Longer reply on it’s way, but in the meantime I recommend the following:

http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2009/01/31/therovingcavaliersofcredit/

http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/15766/1/MPRA_paper_15766.pdf

http://www.amazon.co.uk/New-Paradigm-Macroeconomics-Macroeconomic-Performance/dp/1403920745