Agree that our Media Dept
Agree that our Media Dept could have put something about the Deborah Orr nonsense on the comment section. Unfortunately, that’s now closed but there were 449 comments. Most of these were either from currency cranks of one sort or another or from friends of the Coop Bank. There were a few intelligent contributions, though. For instance.
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Ignorant tosh. Money creation has nothing to with electronics and would still happen if everything worked via parchment, quill and carrier pigeon. I think there might be a teensy bit more to it than described here: if banks really can create money at the stroke of a keyboard and that’s it, how can they ever go bust? Why don’t they just create money every time they need to pay somebody?
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When Deborah Orr or Zoe Williams tell me that money is created by banks ex nihilo or Simon Jenkins tells me that Quantitative Easing is just moving figures from one column in a spreadsheet to another I think to myself that they are probably wrong. I say that because commentators without any technical expertise in the area in which they are commenting always love explanations that are simple, plausible and wrong.Debt and credit are two sides of the same coin. A bank can lend money it does not have immediately available so long as it can borrow money to cover its consequent debts. A borrower can borrow money so long as its creditors believe it will be able to pay it back. What happened to Northern Rock, RBS, Lehman Bros, most Irish banks and Bankia of Spain is that they got to a situation where they were unable to borrow any more money. What has happened to Greece and is in severe danger of happening to Spain and Italy is that they have arrived at the same place. If any of those institutions or sovereign states could continue to create money out of nothing they would do so. But they cannot.
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I think this column sets a new low in terms of its level of confusion about money creation. Deborah Orr has basically reproduced a non-sensical conspiracy theory promulgated by positive money.Perhaps the Guardian could get someone who has mastered economics to at least A-level standard to comment on the workings of the financial system.
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banks can’t create money out of thin air. If you genuinely think that then you really should go and find a professional to explain it to you.
We didn’t get in, but someone from Zeitgeist did:
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But are you so blind not to see that the problem is the monetary system and how it works?Have you done your research? Do you know how modern money mechanics work?The only solution is to end the monetary system.One of the solutions is called Resource Based Economy.This is supposed to be an alternative paper, please please stop this nonsense and talk about real alternatives to this slavery system.
That’s probably expecting too much from the Guardian.