Thursday, September 30, 2010

What the Hell is Quantitative Easing? - in 10 easy steps

The Monetary Policy Committee is possibly thinking about considering maybe moving closer to another round of Quantitative Easing.

I know, it causes eyes to glaze over, but stay with me. I'm going to paint it by numbers.
  1. Our Ponzified economic system has to grow, otherwise it collapses.
  2. To grow, it needs more money, which has to be created by someone. (It doesn't grow on trees you know).
  3. Normally, (for the past 50 years or so), the banks create new money out of nothing by lending money at interest.
  4. This process has dried up because of bum decisions by highly paid banksters in the manic, or boom phase of the bipolar economic cycle.
  5. Now we are in the depressed or bust phase of the economic cycle, banksters are sucking their thumbs and not lending money because they are afraid the economy is going to go tits up.
  6. In doing so, they are ensuring that the economy will indeed go tits up.
  7. In order to try to get the banks to start lending, the Bank of England is giving them lots of easy money by crediting its own account with money created out of nothing, (just as the banks themselves do), and using it to buy government bonds and other stuff from the banks.
  8. The banksters then have more money, which in theory they can  lend out, but in practice they will probably continue to suck their thumbs and use the money to make their crap account sheets look a bit better, and also of course, to pay themselves those all-important bonuses.
So there we have it. SNAFU.

The Green alternative to this entirely crap economic situation is this:
  1. We need to get the economy moving again, but in a green (i.e. sustainable and equitable) way.
  2. We also need urgently to conserve energy, and a massive programme of renewable energy, (Green New Deal) with a pan-European HVDC grid.
  3. It is perfectly legitimate for the Bank of England to create new money, in the same way that banks create new money.
  4. It is useless to give money to the banks, as they are useless, see above.
  5. Therefore the Government can grant, or loan out money (at low or zero interest) created by the BoE directly to enterprises that will fulfil the UK's energy needs (2 above).
  6. It can also, if necessary use the money in a Green Wage Subsidy to stimulate the green sector of the economy, using the existent welfare system.
In short, if and when the Bank of England decides to inject new money into the economy, it should inject the money directly into the real, green sector of the economy, not into the banks because they are as useless as an ashtray on a motorcycle.

I am aware that this approach will seriously frighten some of the horses, and the reflex cry of "Hyperinflation!!" will go up.

Hyperinflation results from excessive production of money, usually in situations of totally crap government (e.g. Mugabe's Zimbabwe, or in conditions of civil war). At the moment we have an insufficient supply of money to the real economy. If conditions change, Government can suck excess money out of the economy to rectify the situation.

In order to fully understand what is going on we need to view this video. It keeps getting moved around, so if the link does not work, you have to Google "Money as Debt". I would appreciate it if you would look at the links in this piece, especially the video, before posting critical comments, if at all possible. Thank you.

1 comment:

DocRichard said...

Hi Shalom Patrick
I'm sorry to say it is not clear what you are proposing. Try redrafting it with the core of your proposal right at the beginning in one sentence.
Richard