Blog 2-70 The Rich and the Rest

Blog 2 - 70  The Rich and the Rest

As the law of money inexorably structures a society - whether a city, a nation, or, significantly at present, the residents of the whole globe - there are risers and fallers, winners and losers. 

But the law persists: Money goes where money is. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer

Here's a statistic, which puts numbers on this point.:

"Between 1980 and 2014 the bottom 50% of post tax incomes in America increased by just 21%. compared with  113% for the top 10%. But the top 1% rose even more - by 194% - while the top 0.001%  rose by 617%. "  (The Economist: April 6, 2019)

And here''s historical footnote: Device to remove the top 0.001%, used judicially -1789ff. - to reverse the law of money temporarily. We might call it decapitalization.

                           Well, actually, it was a short term solution for  a few of them..

Blog 2 67 Reviewing Joyce Nelson By-passing Dystopia

Blog 2 67 Reviewing Joyce Nelson:  By-passing Dystopia, Hope-filled challenges to corporate rule.  Further quotes:

From the Introduction
Preparing a series of speaking engagements, she writes, allowed her 
"to crystallize my thinking about an economic orthodoxy that has ruled most of the world for the past 45 years. Sometimes called 'trickle-down theory' or 'free market capitalism', neoliberalism has fostered an agenda that (to my way of thinking) has 12 predominant aspects. Think of them as 'the dirty dozen'.

Deregulation
Open borders for Capital
Small government/big state
Tax cuts for multinational corporations
Austerity budgets
Union-busting
Privatization of public assets
Corporate rights (or 'free trade') deals
Tax havens
No limits to growth
Central Bank 'independence'
Privatization of the money-creation function


"Fostered since 1973 by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and a variety of corporate think tanks, the neoliberal economic agenda has created environmental destruction and massive wealth inequality across the planet and is finally being challenged, including by economists themselves." 

The book looks back at this process and especially its results, but the major focus is on the emerging new understanding of how our world ought to be seen, must be seen - if we are to survive. It is a great reassurance to read of alternatives already in place and emerging. Here's an example in separate quotations from Chapter 3, "Sordid Tales of the 'Magic Money Tree'." The underlying topic is the money creation by governments after the 2008 "financial crisis".

"While promising to put more money into the National Health Service, {2017] British PM, Theresa May answered that 'there isn't a magic money tree that we can shake that  suddenly provides everything'... "

Reply:  "Actually, there is a 'magic money tree"' and the financial sector has benefited greatly from  its shakedown over the last nine years."

She is referring to the so-called "Quantitative Easing (QE)", by which governments of Britain, America, EU, Canada, bailed out  their private banks after the 2008 "crash" with trillions of dollars.of central bank-created money.  on the mistaken premise that this would stimulate the economy as it "trickled down". In fact, it had no evident effect on the real economy. Instead  (quoting again) "it went into tax havens and private vaults, after being used by the banksters and their corporate cronies for stock buybacks, paying down loans, buying real-estate, and doing lots of mergers and acquisitions"

But she goes on (quoting The Guardian first) to another use of "QE".

"Ah idea that is gaining traction is that monetary and fiscal policy could work together to deliver 'monetary financing'. Under this proposal  new money would be created by the Bank [Bank of England] as with QE, but instead would be spent into the economy by the government to boost investment, employment and incomes. It's an idea know as "People's QE." 

She goes  on to look back - at previous successes that point to such an alternative use of government money-creation to benefit the whole society
(Canada, North Dakota, Ecuador), and forward to, current discussions and proposals, such as Switzerland) . 

If that sounds encouraging, it is. It's a signpost on the road to  bypassing dystopia,  And that what this book is all about!

Blog 2-68 More from Nelson

 Money

Power


Blog 68 More from  Nelson: Bypassing Dystopia

Remember? Dystopia means a rotten place, like Earth at the beginning of 2019. For most earthlings, something ain't working.

From the Introduction

Preparing a series of speaking engagements, she writes, allowed her 

"to crystallize my thinking about an economic orthodoxy that has ruled most of the world for the past 45 years. Sometimes called 'trickle-down theory' or 'free market capitalism', neoliberalism has fostered an agenda that (to my way of thinking) has 12 predominant aspects. Think of them as 'the dirty dozen'.

Deregulation

Open borders for Capital

Small government/big state

Tax cuts for multinational corporations

Austerity budgets

Union-busting

Privatization of public assets

Corporate rights (or 'free trade') deals

Tax havens

No limits to growth

Central Bank 'independence'

Privatization of the money-creation function  (introduction p1

'Fostered since 1973 by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and a variety of corporate think tanks, the neoliberal economic agenda has created environmental destruction and massive wealth inequality across the planet and is finally being challenged, including by economists themselves."

The book looks back at this process and especially its results, but provides a major focus on the emerging new understanding of how our world ought to be seen. must be seen - if we are to survive. It is a great reassurance to read of alternatives already in place and emerging. 

Here's an example in separate quotations from Chapter 3, "Sordid Tales of the 'Magic Money Tree'." The underlying topic is the creation of money by governments after the 2008 "financial crisis".

"While promising to put more money into the National Health Service, (2017) British PM, Theresa May answered that "there isn't a magic money tree that we can shake that suddenly provides everything…"

Well, it seems she was “mistaken”. After the 2008 financial emergency Britain created and issued 435 billion pounds sterling,

US Federal Reserve Bank,, $4l3 trillion

European Central Bank 1.34 trillion euros

“and when you add in QE by other banks - like Switzerland’s, Sweden’s and Canada’s, the figure comes to about $20 trillion as of the Autumn of 2017.”

“Tony Pugh, The Guardian:  

‘Quantitative easing as practised by the Bank of England and the US Federal Reserve, merely flooded the financial sector with money to the benefit of bondholders…this did not create a so-called wealth effect, with a trickle-down to the real producing economy.’

“But the horrible thought arises: maybe QE was never actually meant to revive the economy. Maybe the “magic money tree” always was meant to reward only the super-rich (at the big banks and hedge funds). Maybe QE “trickle-down” promises were never more than neoliberal PR meant to hoodwink the economically illiterate rabble.”

Thought-provoking?

Blog 69 Canada to Build Wall: the Crumbling Canadian-American Relationship

Blog  2-69  Canada to Build Wall: the Crumbling Canadian-American Relationship 

Recently leaked Cabinet notes reveal that the Canadian government is gearing up to implement secret plans to build a 4000-mile wall along the Canada-USA border.

It is part of a far-sighted response to the current American government’s  open rejection of the projected pace of global warming and its insistence on extracting the last dollar’s worth of fossil fuels from coal and oil fields. No change in that official view can be expected, the notes explain, until the current administration (of mostly rich old men) dies off. 

Prompted by the recent report of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) that the  scientific evidence suggests the irreversible turning-point may come as early as the 2030’s, the wall project addresses a later time at which the ozone layer has been sufficiently destroyed and the earth is in the stage of final meltdown. The American mainland south of the 49th parallel will have become too hot and dry for human habitation. 

So the report envisages  a vast assault of Americans attempting to cross the Canadian border fleeing towards the North Pole*. The processing of immigrants can only be managed if they are funnelled through a limited number of functioning entry points. Specifically mentioned is the probability  that American criminals, rapists and “economic refugees”  will also attempt to enter at other points if refused at the well-defended gaps in the wall.

Footnote: The migrants may claim that they are only trying to get to American territory in Alaska. The notes’ frank response is that Alaska may have already seceded and be defending its own borders.

* (It is expected that the Poles will be the last habitable areas of the planet. Unfortunately the ill-educated migrants, it is assumed, will not know that the North Pole is in the middle of the Arctic Ocean and only the South Pole is on the solid ground of a continent. )

Now, the authenticity of these “notes” is questionable, because the current Liberal government of Prime Minister Trudeau is, in fact, trying to build a large pipeline expansion to the Pacific ocean - to get the last dollar’s worth of the particularly dirty Canadian type of oil out of the ground and onto the market. So, is that a government whose “leaked” notes can be believed?

Probably not.

Back to the more credible, and optimistic, Joyce Nelson book, in the next blog.

Blog 2 66 Nelson: Escaping the Dystopian Tsunami Pt 2

Blog 2 - 66  Escaping the Dystopian Tsunami  Part 2

The best way to review a Joyce Nelson book on the world money “system” has to be to quote it.

So here are some samples:

1. How our money is created: not by governments “printing“ it. That is just a figure of speech, and applies to about 2% of the money we use - the cash in your pocket.

Quoting Nelson  p54 (referring to the Swiss Initiative to reactive their state-owned bank.)

Fractional Reserve p54

  "The [Swiss] Initiative targets what’s called “fractional reserve banking”, whereby a private bank creates money out of thin air by creating loans based on a mere fraction held on deposit. For example, a bank may have $1 billion on deposit from savers, but under fractional reserve banking, it can lend out that $1 billion ten times or more simultaneously, and collect interest on that $10 billion (or more) worth of loans - all without having more than a fraction (that first $billion) on deposit to back up the loans."

John Kenneth Galbraith’s comment on it: (Look him up; his credentials are impeccable and huge.)

         “The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled. Where something so important is involved, a deeper mystery seems only decent.”

That is to say, anybody - yes, that’s you and me - anybody can understand how most of the world’s money comes into existence. Private Banks loan it into existence - and collect interest on it. A government’s taxation is chickenfeed compared to the banking industry’s taxation on the money you use every day.

And this is the single most important thing to understand about the world economy. We are all using borrowed money (and paying the private banks interest for the privilege/convenience/necessity of having money to use. "We" includes everybody except those who deal exclusively in cash. Cash is the only money which does not have to be rented at interest. (The private banks are trying to do away with that 2% cash, of course.)

P.27  " The good news is that there is nothing to prevent cities and provinces from setting up their own public banks to bypass the Canadian Infrastructure Bank* "privatization bank", or simply to control their own capital, rather than handing it over to Bay Street or Wall Street banksters while paying millions in fees to them",

*Canadian Infrastructure Bank.  A bank set up by the current Canadian government, totally free from government control  to finance large infrastructure projects, which may or may not, be profitable investments). The stated object is to get the three biggest Canadian pension funds to buy into them.

More to come….

Blog 2-65 Bypassing Dystopia - a Review

      MONEY

POWER

                       Power attracts money like a magnet.

                                  Money corrupts power like a cancer

Blog 65  Bypassing Dystopia  - a Review.

Bypassing Dystopia  is another homer by Canadian, Joyce Nelson!  

But what’s wrong with it?  I bought a dozen copies of her previous book, Beyond Banksters, and had no difficulty in passing them out  as “enlightening" (and free) reads to friends at the curling club and other venues. Yesterday I tried the same offer with Dystopia, and had only two takers.

It has to be the title. I mean it’;s a splendid title for language nerds and history freaks like me. But for some folk not so inclined it may sound like directions for a highway detour - “Bypassing DYSTOPIA”. If that’s you, skip down to the footnote for a short explanation.

And permit me to subtitle her book “Countering the Current World (Dis)Order”_

*End note:  The title alludes to a travel-fiction book called Utopia, published in 1616. - that’s right, 1616 - by Sir Thomas More. Every college English major reads it as a masterpiece of political and social satire. Two words are at play in its title; eutopia (Greek), meaning “a good place”, an ideal society, and utopia (Greek), meaning “no place.” That is, More is ironically saying that eutopia, presented in his book, does not exist - at least not yet. 

On the other hand, “Dystopia"  which means a “not good place, a place where everything is wrong". appeared first in English about 200 years after More’s Utopia. 

So Nelson uses "Dystopia" to refer to the world presented on our daily TV news in 2018, where so many things seem to be so wrong that you just want to shut the damn thing off and let the President and the gun-toting psychotics carry on. (To say nothing of the extreme climate events.)

We can’t do that, of course, and Nelson offers hope, and direction, for the human race to bypass this stage of our collective history. With examples of what can be done and what is being done!

Next blog we’ll give you a few home runs from the book.

Blog 2 64 Are People Basically Good, Or Basically Bad?

Blog 2 - 64  Are we basically good or basically bad?

A colleague of mine attended a conference for middle management personnel. I don’t remember the topic, but the attendees were divided about equally  between government and private sector people. 

The organizers provided some preliminary activities to put the group at ease. One of these activities provides food for thought. They asked the conferees to look at two options, and then, without discussion, separate themselves into two different rooms depending on their personal answer.

The Question:

Are people basically good, but corrupted by society ,or are people basically bad and must be controlled by society?

My colleague reported that 

almost all the private sector people chose the first option 

(folk are basically good but are corrupted by society);

Almost all of the civil servants chose the other option 

(people are basically bad and need to be controlled by society.

We’ll come back to that. Let’s set it in the middle of divided America - or even take a larger view: the divided world.  Ask a wide sample of people anywhere in the world this question: is government a good thing or a bad thing? You’ll have a similar division between 

1. those who see government unequivocally as an evil, restricting their personal freedoms and ambitions, Actually, they often don't express or even recognize the underlined motif.

Example:  Corporate CEO’s and shareholders in western “democracies” (In America, for instance, they’re celebrating the President’s recent banking de-regulation. and other reductions of government powers). See previous blog.

2. those who see government as the focus of hope for their well-being. 

Example: those Franklin Roosevelt referred to as “The Forgotten Man at the Bottom of the Economic Pyramid” (Roosevelt really meant it and did something about it, but no rational American expects the current President ever to actually do anything for the FMABOEP - least of all members of Congress.) 

Obamacare, now… 

Permit me to add a third, currently prominent, attitude:, 

3. those who fear that their governments will seriously harm them. 

Examples:  critics of the governments in Mr. Erdogan’s Turkey, or Mr Duterte’s Philippines, or Mr. Bashar Al-Asad’s Syria. What do they have to fear (in these nominal democracies)?

It would be a better world if we could recognize that “the best of all possible worlds” is one on which most citizens were focussed on the common good .  Repeat.

That means agreeing that both governments and private agents should not be primarily acquisitors but contributors. 

And we might dream of persuading even some of our soulless citizens - the corporations - if civilized by governments, or, better, self-civilized. 

You have to visualize it, then say it, to make it happen (before we destroy the lot of us).

So back to the conference: here’s the next level of question. How do you explain the conviction of private sector execs that we are all good but corrupted by others, and the public execs’ conviction that we are all bad and need to be restrained?  Think about it. till next time.