ALB
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Yes, I thought that there weren't supposed to be any workers in America as everybody (except the filfthy super rich) there is supposed to be middle class. Revealing slip of the tongue on his part.
Sounds like the Planet Capitalism. The bloke from Child Poverty Action seems to be living there too if he thinks that the problem can be solved within capitalism. The government ensuring that the destitute don't get more than the bare minumum, that's par for the course under capitalism.
JamesH81 wrote:That is what I'm trying to work out, action that is not DISRUPTIVE but in support of the Junior / Student nurses ! ?
….Violence is one thing. Disruption is another. There's a long tradition of non-violent "disruption" (Gandhi, Martin Luther King and all that). In a sense strikes come into that category. Those in charge are not going to take much notice otherwise.
The strike was both democratic (in the strike ballot 98% voted for) and peaceful. Anyway, it wasn't about the establishment of socialism, just about getting better working conditions under capitalism. What were these (and other) workers supposed to do: let their employers walk all over them?
Just drove past Kingston hospital. There was a small picket outside with placards saying "NOT FAIR. NOT SAFE". A motorist tooted as they drove past. So I did too. Might as well have a so-called "fair day's wage" as long as the wages system lasts….
Yes we did. Personally I assumed that it would not have been a mistake but part of Andrew Neil and his team's plan to discredit us, also reflected in his questions. Par for the course with political journalists. But, despite this, we got our general political position over and even a few enquiries.
Here's another example of media manipulation of an item currently in the news:http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13941019000780Of course this might be Iranian propaganda but presumably the images can be checked and we do know what the Saudi royal despotism is capable of.Antidote: watch RT and Press TV as well as the BBC and Sky. As Dave B has pointed out, the truth can emerge from arguments between two liars.
robbo203 wrote:http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-03-27/piketty-s-three-big-mistakes-in-inequality-analysisRognlie seems to think the problem of increasingly inequality lies with landlordism. Any comments?Henry George rides again ! Though that's seems to be more the interpretation put on what Rognlie wrote by the author of the article, Noah Smith, who seems to be a Georgist (see for instance some of his other articles, eg this).All the same, it is interesting that so many of those in the Sunday Times Rich List are either the landed aristocracy owning land in London (eg the Duke of Westminster) or jumped up property speculators. But of course their gains come from capitalists not from directly exploiting workers, so we'd be talking about increasing inequality within the owning class. As if we should care about that.
I know that this is only tangential to the main point, but this passage from the SWP is worth commenting on:
SWP wrote:Those of us who have been in revolutionary organizations assume that everyone knows about the Russian Revolution and other revolutionary risings. In the past, even the reformists we debated knew something about these issues: it was part of a shared culture. That's no longer true.This is an unusually perspicacious comment from them. It's true but is it a good thing or a bad thing? Obviously it's a good thing that the Russian Revolution has faded as a model for the socialist revolution but other parts of the "culture" shared by critics of capitalism up until the 1990s faded too, eg "working class", "capitalism", "socialism". "revolution" but these fortunately do seem to be coming back.
That was obviously the right decision despite who said it, in fact perhaps even because of who said it. It means we can say nasty things about his religion too without being prosecuted (and they about us, of course).The BBC has reported this comment:
Quote:Boyd Sleator of Atheist Northern Ireland said: "His (Mr McConnell's) comments were offensive but we are allowed to be offensive and I would never want to see anybody prosecuted for being offensive. His comments were idiotic, his comments were silly," he said.Good to know that there are some atheists in Northern Ireland (cue for the joke: but are you a Protestant Atheist or a Catholic Atheist?)
Afraid it is fiktiv but I've just noticed that the term in the English translation is "fictitious capital" rather than "fictional capital". But I have seen "fictional capital" used in the litterature. I still prefer "notional capital" to describe the concept as it avoids any suggestion of fabrication and fraud that so often occur in discussions about banks and banking.
Young Master Smeet wrote:He seems to be suggesting that the paper value of such capital depends on the prevailing rate of interest (which is itself a dependent but arbitrary aspect of the overall rate of profit).He says so explicitly later on in the same chapter:
Quote:The formation of a fictitious capital is called capitalisation. Every periodic income is capitalised by calculating it on the basis of the average rate of interest, as an income which would be realised by a capital loaned at this rate of interest. For example, if the annual income is £100 and the rate of interest 5%, then the £100 would represent the annual interest on £2,000, and the £2,000 is regarded as the capital-value of the legal title of ownership on the £100 annually. For the person who buys this title of ownership, the annual income of £100 represents indeed the interest on his capital invested at 5%This is the conventional definition of "capitalization" (which can be applied to any regular stream of income) but I think that "notional capital" would have been a better term than "fictional capital" (given what Marxists tempted by currency crankism, and even those not, have made of this term).
I know that it's not what they really think but they argue as if they did. Their deeper argument is more subtle and involves the whole banking system including, crucially, the Bank of Exchange which as the state central bank does have the power to "create money out of nothing". They don't really think that a single bank can create money out of nothing, nor that all the banks together could without the involvement of a state central bank.The contradiction in their position comes out in what the supporters of the same idea in Switzerland are arguing: that banks there should still be allowed to lend but only from savings accounts and what they've borrowed from other banks or the central bank. But as a loan would still involve double entry book-keeping it should still, on the PM argument we care discussing here, involve banks creating money from nothing but they don't argue this. In fact, the description of what they think should happen is what happens now except that now banks can also lend money deposited (from outside) in current accounts (which are in effect also loans, from the depositor to the bank).This seems an unecessary restriction on banking lending from a capitalist point of view. In fact, by restricting credit it could slow down business activity and the accumulation of capital which capitalism is all about. Which is one reason why fellow banking reformer Ann Pettifor is opposed to it:https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/ann-pettifor/why-i-disagree-with-positive-money-and-martin-wolfShe wants banks to continue to be able to, as she would put it, create money out of thin air (in fact, to continue more or less as they do now subject to more regulation). She also makes the relevant point that the PM theory is derived from Monetarism.
dms wrote:Under the PM model of banking the bank only has to ensure their assets (the loan agreements) match their liabilities (deposits in accounts).That's easy. It's just double entry book-keeping when the bank makes a loan. It's irrelevant as far as the question of where the money loaned comes from.Incidentally, not all "deposits" are liabilities as there are the two different kinds of "deposit".The original, more normal definition is where someone from outside the bank deposits a sum of money. In this case, the money in the deposit is the bank's asset and the bank's IOU to repay the money its liability.Then there are "deposits" the PM model above is talking about where the bank agrees to lend someone money and opens a deposit in their name with a credit of the amount of the loan. In this case, it is the deposit that is the liability and the lender's IOU to repay it that is the asset. In other words, the opposite to the more normal sense.So some "deposits" are assets and some are liabilities. No wonder there's confusion but I'd have thought it was obvious that the money a bank lends comes its real, non-paper assets, the money deposited with it and what it itself has borrowsed.If Positive Money really think that a bank could operate without outside funding why don't they practise what they preach and start their own bank (suggested name: The Bank of Thin Air). In fact, why has nobody ever done this, not even Ponzi?
For a different, more plausible explanation of why some banks got into trouble see the article in this month's Socialist Standard:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2016/no-1337-january-2016/hbos-horse-boltedIt wasn't just bad loans but also how some even of the good loans were funded.I'm not sure about your last paragraph. A bank might be able to make a loan and then find the funding fairly quickly afterwards. The article in the Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin quoted here describes what happens when a bank wants to expand its lending:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2014/no-1317-may-2014/cooking-books-harry-graeber-and-magic-wand
Quote:whether through deposits or other liabilities, the bank would need to make sure it was attracting and retaining some kind of funds in order to keep expanding lending.
