Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Re: Mind's Eye Re: The new Chinese gold standard

Current governmental guarantees based on extracting higher taxes, borrowing trillions of dollars and creating trillions more out of thin air only guarantee eventual systemic implosion.

It is difficult for those living through tectonic social and economic shifts to recognize the passing of one era and the emergence of a new era. We are clearly in such a tectonic shift, yet it is slow enough and uneven enough that those who hope the old era will somehow endure despite the erosion of its foundations can find evidence to support their beliefs.

One such cherished belief is the faith that financial security can be guaranteed. This faith has two components:
 
1. The faith that risk can be identified and managed to the point it cannot disrupt the payment of promised pensions, benefits, yields, etc.
 
2. The faith that the system can pay what has been promised by one means or another.
 
If tax revenues are inadequate, taxes can always be raised. If tax revenues fail to rise, then the money needed to pay the promised pensions, benefits, etc. can be borrowed. If the money cannot be borrowed, then it can simply be created out of thin air by central banks or printed by government treasuries.
 
Before the advent of high finance, lowering risk could only be achieved by spreading the risk over a large populace. To lower the risk to individuals that their house would burn down in an accidental fire, insurance was sold to 1,000 homes. If one or two of the 1,000 homes burned down each year, the insurance could pay the claims and still build up reserves for future claims.
 
But if a conflagration burns down all 1,000 homes, the insurance is overwhelmed; the guaranteed coverage is rendered worthless.
 
The creation of a volunteer (or tax-supported) fire brigade will also lower the risk that an accidental fire could spread. But once again, such a brigade can only mitigate very limited fires; a second fire or a windstorm would exceed the capacity of the brigade to extinguish multiple fires.
 
The faith in guaranteed security is actually a faith that there will be no consequences from borrowing or printing enormous sums of money, and no possible risk to the system that cannot be anticipated and mitigated with some fancy financial footwork.
 
Is this faith reality-based? We know that borrowing immense sums of money does have consequences: interest must be paid out of future income, reducing the income that can be consumed or invested, and dependence on borrowed money creates moral hazard: rather than make difficult trade-offs, the borrower just borrows more money.
 
Creating money out of thin air is also not consequence-free. Fancy financial footwork can mask the consequences of creating money to pay promised pensions, benefits, etc., but eventually the reality that creating money does not create wealth intrudes on the fantasy that if tax revenues are insufficient, and borrowing has limits, then we can guarantee incomes, pensions, benefits, etc. by creating money out of thin air.
 
Those dependent on the promises made in the previous era will support any policy that "extends and pretends" the illusion that financial security can be guaranteed, regardless of seismic shifts in the natural and financial economies.
 
The irony of "extend and pretend" is these policies only push the system to extremes that guarantee systemic collapse. The more we avoid facing the intrinsic insecurities generated by tectonic shifts, the more we hasten the sudden implosion of old systems pushed beyond their limits.
 
Real security arises from the constant volatility, friction and insecurity of experimentation, adaptation and dissent. Guarantees based on extracting higher taxes, borrowing trillions of dollars and creating trillions more out of thin air only guarantee eventual systemic implosion.
 
Put another way: spreading the risk of a house fire amongst the 1,000 homeowners does not actually lessen the risk of a conflagration burning down the entire town.  We need to be doing real things to ensure our security and social capital.

On Sunday, April 5, 2015 at 8:19:41 PM UTC+1, archytas wrote:
I would recommend this video before approaching any economics - http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-04-04/only-tv-news-report-economy-youll-ever-need - we are being bulled even more spectacularly than this spoof.

On Sunday, 5 April 2015 19:28:09 UTC+1, archytas wrote:
The answers were put forward more than a century ago.  They come down of positive money or modern monetary theory, with issues anthropology and real history throw up on "economic rent" and its foul origins in slavery and blood debts,  Some of the necessary ideas are religious in origin, like jubilee, and were widely practised.  

Definitions of money rarely hold to scrutiny.  In most economics money comes into being to replace less efficient barter systems - but this particular thought experiment has the problem that two centuries of anthropology has not produced a single case of this arising in a society,  Most people think governments create money, but this is not the case - nearly all money arises as debt from private banks, and paper money has a remarkable connection with war and gambling.

That money is a convention, potentially replaced tomorrow has been known at least since Aristotle.  It has been widely treated as a neutral substance in economics, this being so clearly a lie the whole of the subject falls.

I can define positive money for you Molly - indeed short reads of web pages on this and MMT quickly give the positive gist.  This will not help that much, until you work out what you'd want money to be and lend your voice to the 'revolution'.  And one reason to look at existing systems is to see how wide the network of the parasite has become.

I'd start with a thousand of us and blank paper.  Though there is a Tea - Ching to refer to.  The future memory leads to money controlled by government of the people and issued to make projects happen.  This is really simple, though like most simple ideas is actually a simplexity.  This is evident on Molly's questions and Don's (or my) thoughts on what happens 'after the US military umbrella'.  Jesuit priests noted they could buy a woman with a hairgrip in South America - a form of money and its use, and no doubt a question on the chastity of Jesuit priests.

"Your earnings, your savings" is itself moot Molly.  We've been had by loads of ideology before we can speak.  Money in this becomes a repository of value and an advantage to you over those without it.  And you have made money something without thinking much about who has it and does not.  Does the current system work at all for most people?

I'm going to have a very heathen drink to celebrate Don's Easter bunny tomorrow.  My friendly barkeep, not seen for nine months, will demand cash for beer 100 times its cost at the factory gate.  The detailed reality of such transactions  might help us understand more on money.  They are, in fact, always messing with our tangible assets.  And most of the time, they are trying to seize assets in order to rent them back to us.

Part of the answer is giving thanks to the ancestors who built a lot of our environment and yet thinking of private property differently.  One can paint the future dream and we should.  We need to remember that current words and meaning may not let us into the new vision.  Out of our thousand, very few will know that governments don't produce money.  I think we should be starting our arguments in 'admitted ignorance'.  

On Sunday, April 5, 2015 at 1:01:50 PM UTC+1, Molly wrote:
It is fascinating to watch the wheels spinning but it would be much more inspiring to know there were alternatives, whether as individuals or groups.Living with zero debt stabilizes you in a Ponze economy, but your earnings and savings are still cut when things go bust after the boom. It keeps the concept of money abstract as long as we use it to exchange. What is the alternative to that? No tangible assets seem immune from the market manipulations.

On Sunday, April 5, 2015 at 3:01:12 AM UTC-4, archytas wrote:
The Chinese have already killed about one in nine Tibetans.  Russia's capacity for secret police activity spans either side of the USSR.  Islam is a religion of peace - ho, ho ho - various practitioners and Jews having shipped about 2 million white slaves in a century or two around the Black Sea.  There are no real nice people in history as they never survive to write it.

Some think the use of the USD is worth about $30 billion annually to the US.  This sounds a lot, but is about 0.2% of GDP.  I think money is more deeply criminal than is generally admitted.  Given how bent the Chinese and Russians are I have difficulties thinking they can forge a new reserve.  The problem is the US is no longer a democracy and neither is Europe.  The actual reserve currencies are the USD, Euro and (marginally) the pound sterling.  To understand what is going on we need to look at Japan and wider issues in Ponzi economics.

The answer is about taking money and assets from the rich and freeing ourselves from paying for work already done.  Don may be right on top dog being inevitable, but money, whether Chinese, US or Russian is under the control of an allocation class and everywhere they end up with it clinging to their fingers.

The currency wars are fairly well described at Zerohedge and Keiser Report.  The real problem is that we have no real USD or pound sterling - money is created as debt by private banks.

On Sunday, April 5, 2015 at 5:23:13 AM UTC+1, Don Johnson wrote:
I thought I'd find reams of information on this new development at the wsj.com. Barely a blip on the radar. I don't think it matters much. The US is already marginalized politically and militarily and only time will tell what effect this will have on the rest of the world. The short game is ME chaos. I fear for my Zionist brothers and sisters. There will be another power presiding over world hegemony in the coming years. It will be interesting to see how well Russia, China and Iran treat those under their thumb. I'm sure they will treat 3rd world countries with the respect they deserve and never abuse them like the English, French and Americans have. They're just better human beings then us I'm sure. <-----sarcasm

Those of you who think there won't be a big cheese are kidding yourselves. There's always a big cheese. Now we will see just how stinky the next flavor will be. 

dj

On Mon, Mar 30, 2015 at 11:34 AM, Chris Jenkins <digitalprecipice@gmail.com> wrote:
"For years I have regarded that strange subject called "economics" as being somewhere on a par with that other strange subject known as "theology," and tend to see economists as belonging to the same general group as bishops, witch-doctors, mullahs and snake-oil salesmen"

I was exceedingly disappointed when I discovered this was likely the case. 

On Sun, Mar 29, 2015 at 6:51 PM, frantheman <francis.hunt@gmail.com> wrote:
For years I have regarded that strange subject called "economics" as being somewhere on a par with that other strange subject known as "theology," and tend to see economists as belonging to the same general group as bishops, witch-doctors, mullahs and snake-oil salesmen. In their areas of so-called expertise, they regularly get things wrong - and then go on to earn vast amounts as talking heads, retrospectively explaining what they failed to see coming. Carnival fortune-tellers probably have a better record of accuracy.

The ghastly thing is that these high priests of mumbo-jumbo have such power and influence.

I have some (a very small amount) of sympathy for the Chinese leadership elite - they're riding a very powerful, unpredictable, and very dangerous tiger; trying to modernise and stabilize a population four times the size of the USA, most of whom are still leading a pre-modern peasant existence, the rest of whom are trying to gallop into a materialistic hyper-capitalism as fast as they can. The whole country seems to be living in a state of perpetual high tension. Whether they will succeed without the whole thing exploding around their ears remains an open question. Let's hope they do, for the alternative - China unravelling - would lead to the kind of geo-political instability which would make the Middle East look like a kindergarten squabble.

I see the latest moves as part of a long, ongoing process leading to full convertability of the yuan/renminbi. Within the current (lunatic) models which economists and economic commentators use, this can only be seen globally as something positive. While it may have been very convenient for the US to have the dollar as the global reserve currency, this has not necessarily been good for the rest of the world. China owns a massive amount of US debt (owing the the trade imbalance between both countries) and are thus terribly vulnerable to changes in US fiscal policy. For the world generally, a basket of around half a dozen reserve currencies (dollar, euro, yuan, Swiss franc, pound sterling, yen) is a much more stable proposition. It would force the major powers to cooperate at a deeper level than they currently do. It would also reduce US hegemony globally, which might just help provide a reality check for the US political elites (particularly those on the right) - though I'm not holding my breath about that.

Am Sonntag, 29. März 2015 15:28:24 UTC+2 schrieb Molly:
The new Chinese bank established with a gold standard is gaining momentum on the international stage. How will this effect the world economy? These quotes from Bloomberg:

China's clout has been expanding for decades, as its rapid growth allowed it to snap up a rising share of the world's resources, its exports penetrated global markets, and its bulging financial assets gave it power to make big individual loans and purchases. Now, the creation of international lending institutions is leveraging that economic influence closer to the political and diplomatic arenas, as U.S. allies defy America to back China's initiative.

 

"This is the beginning of a bigger role for China in global affairs," said Jim O'Neill, U.K.-based former chief economist at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., who coined the term BRICs in 2001 to highlight the rising economic power of Brazil, Russia, India and China…

 

Chinese President Xi Jinping's vision of achieving the same great-power status enjoyed by the U.S. received a major boost this month when the U.K., Germany, France and Italy signed on to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The AIIB will have authorized capital of $100 billion and starting funds of about $50 billion.

 

Canada is considering joining, which would leave the U.S. and Japan as the only Group of Seven holdouts as they question the institution's governance and environmental standards.


 

China, flush with the world's biggest foreign-exchange reserves and anxious to convert them into "soft power", is building an alternative architecture. It has proposed not just the AIIB, but a New Development Bank with its "BRICS" partners—Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa—and a Silk Road development fund to boost "connectivity" with its Central Asian neighbours…

 

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