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Economic Reform

~ Public borrowing places a burden on future generations.

Economic Reform

Author Archives: Kostas Vogias

Η Λύση της Στάσης Πληρωμών

11 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by Kostas Vogias in ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ

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ΕΙΔΗΣΕΙΣ, THEORY

Η λύση της χρεοκοπίας

Στην προκειμένη περίπτωση, αυτό που φοβίζει την Ευρώπη είναι ο συνδυασμός της πτώχευσης της Ελλάδας, με την καταναγκαστική έξοδο της από την Ευρωζώνη, για την οποία δεν υπάρχει ούτε νομικό πλαίσιο, ούτε εμπειρία – η οποία όμως θα οδηγούσε στην αλυσιδωτή αντίδραση της κατάρρευσης του ευρώ, της ραγδαίας αύξησης των επιτοκίων δανεισμού των υπολοίπων χωρών της περιφέρειας, στην αδυναμία εξόφλησης των υποχρεώσεων εκ μέρους της Ιταλίας, της Ισπανίας κοκ., σε μεγάλα τραπεζικά προβλήματα και στη διάλυση της Ευρωζώνης.

Υπάρχουν βέβαια και άλλες απόψεις,σύμφωνα με τις οποίες δεν είναι απαραίτητο να συμβεί το παραπάνω τρομακτικό σενάριο,εάν η Ελλάδα δεν μπορέσει πράγματι να εξυπηρετήσει τις υποχρεώσεις της.

Από την άλλη πλευρά, η πτώχευση μίας χώρας δεν είναι ανάλογη με τη χρεοκοπία μίας επιχείρησης – η οποία εξαφανίζεται, σε αντίθεση με τη χώρα που συνεχίζει να υπάρχει. Ειδικότερα,τα αποτελέσματα μίας κρατικής χρεοκοπίας είναι οδυνηρά μεν για τους δανειστές της, αλλά «ανακουφιστικά» ουσιαστικά για την ίδια και τους Πολίτες της – αφού παρέλθει το πρώτο μεγάλο σοκ, το οποίο διαρκεί περί τους έξι μήνες.

Αυτό που απαιτείται βέβαια είναι η δραστηριοποίηση, αμέσως μετά, σύσσωμου του ανθρώπινου δυναμικού της – το οποίο, στην περίπτωση της Ελλάδας, είναι υπαρκτό και εξαιρετικά ικανό, υπό την προϋπόθεση πως δεν θα εμποδίζεται πια από την Πολιτική ή/και δεν θα καθοδηγείται προς τη λανθασμένη κατεύθυνση.

Η λύση της στάσης πληρωμών

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Outline of the American Monetary Act

10 Tuesday Feb 2015

Posted by Kostas Vogias in ENGLISH

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PROPOSALS

First: It incorporate the Federal Reserve banks into the U.S. Treasury where money will be created by the government as money, not as private interest-bearing debt; and will be spent into circulation to promote the general welfare and monitored to be neither inflationary nor deflationary.

Second: It removes the banks privilege to create purchasing media through the fractional reserve system. Fractional reserves are elegantly ended by the U.S. government initially loaning banks enough money at interest to bring reserves to 100%, converting all the past monetized credit, into U.S. government money. Banks then act as intermediaries accepting deposits and loaning them out to borrowers, what people think they do now. Some variations of the plan had the U.S. Government lending banks all or part of newly printed cash needed to achieve 100% reserves. This was a crucial part of the plan, because depositors were going to the banks and withdrawing their accounts, deflating the system.

Third: It Spends newly created money into circulation on infrastructure, including education and healthcare needed for a growing society, starting with the $1.5 trillion that the American Society of Civil Engineers estimate is needed for infrastructure repair; creating good jobs across our nation, re-invigorating local economies and re-funding all levels of government.

by Stephen Zarlenga

The Need for Monetary Reform

09 Monday Feb 2015

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PROPOSALS, THEORY

While The American Monetary Institute is responsible for its present form, the Act is based on Aristotelian monetary concepts in existence since at least the 4th century BC and employed successfully in a variety of monetary systems since then, ranging from democratic Athens to republican Rome. It is not merely a theory – its main elements have a long history of successful implementation in major societies around the world, including the American Colonies and the United States. These concepts enabled us to first establish the U.S. and then to maintain it as one nation.

The following brief summary: The Need for Monetary Reform serves as a preface to the American Monetary Act. (It was written before the banks brought down the world economy!)

Continue reading →

A steady state economy

04 Wednesday Feb 2015

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FILM, PROPOSALS, THEORY

A steady state economy is an economy with stable or mildly fluctuating size. The term typically refers to a national economy, but it can also be applied to a local, regional, or global economy. An economy can reach a steady state after a period of growth or after a period of downsizing or degrowth. To be sustainable, a steady state economy may not exceed ecological limits.

Watch a short film: Enough is Enough

or read more: Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy

Petition

23 Friday Jan 2015

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PROPOSALS

The same banks that caused the financial crisis currently have the power to create 97% of the UK’s money. They’ve used this power recklessly, putting most of the money they create into property bubbles and financial markets. And now they’re back to their old ways.
We need a change. The power to create money should only be used in the public interest, in a democratic, transparent and accountable way. The 1844 law that makes it illegal for anyone other than the Bank of England to create paper money should be updated to apply to the electronic money currently created by banks.
When new money is created, it should be used to fund vital public services or provide finance to businesses, creating jobs where they’re needed, instead of being used to push up house prices or speculate on the financial markets.

Sign the Petition

An economic reform proposal

23 Friday Jan 2015

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PROPOSALS, THEORY

Having in mind that:

i. Despite of the increasing number of national and international financial institutions, the increasing amount of the available statistical data and computing power, economic crises are not predicted by governments, central banks and the academic community.
ii. The effectiveness of fiscal and monetary policy tools in an economy decreases over time. Just like in the human body, over time the same dose of a medicine or a drug has a diminishing effect.
iii. The complexity of the economic environment (of the theoretical models, of the institutions, of the financial products and of the attempts to regulate them) has led to an increasing level of national and private debt in almost every country and in increasing the concentration of wealth of the top 1% of the population.
iv. To simplify economic environment would be of great value to the society and the policy maker.

It is proposed that a sovereign currency*, public debt repayment with sovereign currency** and full reserve banking***, followed by balanced budgets in the public sector would be beneficial to the Greek, the European and the world economy.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_sovereignty
and http://sovereignmoney.eu/35-defining-the-monetary-prerogative/
** http://www.themoneymasters.com/monetary-reform-act/
*** http://www.positivemoney.org/2011/07/what-exactly-is-full-reserve-banking-2/
and https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=26178.0

REGULATION (EU) No 472/2013

16 Friday Jan 2015

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PROPOSALS

The debt that Greece is expected to pay is equivalent to 175% of annual national wealth, and is an intolerable burden for the Greek people.

What would happen if a greek government decided to apply, to the letter, Article 7 of a regulation adopted by the European Union in May 2013 “on the strengthening of economic and budgetary surveillance of Member States in the euro area experiencing or threatened with serious difficulties with respect to their financial stability”, concerning countries subject to a structural adjustment plan, including in particular Greece, Portugal and Cyprus.

Paragraph 9 of Article 7 maintains that States subject to structural adjustment should carry out a complete order of public debt in order to explain why indebtedness increased so sharply and to identify any irregularities. Here is the text in full: “A Member State subject to a macroeconomic adjustment programme shall carry out a comprehensive audit of its public finances in order, inter alia, to assess the reasons that led to the building up of excessive levels of debt as well as to track any possible irregularity”.

REGULATION (EU) No 472/2013

On Central Banks

12 Monday Jan 2015

Posted by Kostas Vogias in ENGLISH

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PROPOSALS

In order to become effective, central banks must be enabled to be true masters of the money system. They need to gain full control of the money by way of monetary quantity policy. No quantity policy is possible, however, as long as the banking industry dominates the monetary system and determines the entire stock of money, while money and capital markets inherently fail to reach some ‘equilibrium’ and self-limitation. In conclusion, banks must stop acting as monetary quasi-authorities and become purely financial institutions, meaning that the banking industry must be stripped of its monetary power to create and delete money-on-account by creating or deleting primary credit. Banks ought to be free lending and investment enterprises, but just money intermediaries in this without the illegitimate privilege of conducting business on the basis of self-created money.

In the nineteenth century, and for much the same reasons, banks were stripped of their power to issue private banknotes. The monopoly of banknotes was given over to the central banks, many of which were set up in the process. Now the time is ripe for the same to be applied to money-on-account. Bank money should be phased out and central-bank money in public circulation in the form of money-on-account and e-cash phased in, resulting in a sovereign money system with full control of the stock of money. In this way, a state’s, or a community of states’, monetary prerogatives of the currency (unit of account), the money (means of payments) and the seigniorage (gain from creating money) would be fully completed. Independent public central banks – acting on a well-defined legal mandate, but not taking directives from the government – are the obvious candidates for being entrusted with the functions related to the monetary prerogatives.

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What is Full Reserve Banking?

12 Monday Jan 2015

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THEORY

The definition of full reserve banking can be a source of much confusion and consternation. The confusion revolves around the definition of “reserve ratio”. Normally, the reserve ratio is defined approximately as follows:

‘

Reserve ratio  =

The money held by the bank


The money deposited in the bank by its customers

It is easy to see that the higher the reserve ratio, the smaller the risk of a bank run. With a ratio of 100% this means that even if every single customer demanded to take out their money, the bank will have it all available. This is clearly a very safe form of banking, but as described so far, the bank would simply be acting like a safe deposit box. It would not be able to make any loans. It appears that banks can not act as financial intermediaries between savers and borrowers. Indeed there are some economists that have pronounced that full reserve banking is useless for precisely this reason… but they are mistaken and here’s why:In the context of a full reserve banking system, we need to be slightly more precise about the meaning of the reserve ratio.

‘

Reserve ratio  =

The money held by the bank


The money that the customers currently 

have the legal right to withdraw

Read more

The Chicago Plan Revisited

12 Monday Jan 2015

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PROPOSALS, THEORY

IMF Working Paper, Research Department

Prepared by Jaromir Benes and Michael Kumhof, August 2012

Abstract

At the height of the Great Depression a number of leading U.S. economists advanced a proposal for monetary reform that became known as the Chicago Plan. It envisaged the separation of the monetary and credit functions of the banking system, by requiring 100% reserve backing for deposits. Irving Fisher (1936) claimed the following advantages for this plan:

(1) Much better control of a major source of business cycle fluctuations, sudden increases and contractions of bank credit and of the supply of bank-created money.
(2) Complete elimination of bank runs.
(3) Dramatic reduction of the (net) public debt.
(4) Dramatic reduction of private debt, as money creation no longer requires simultaneous debt creation.

We study these claims by embedding a comprehensive and carefully calibrated model of the banking system in a DSGE model of the U.S. economy. We find support for all four of Fisher’s claims. Furthermore, output gains approach 10%, and steady state inflation can drop to zero without posing problems for the conduct of monetary policy.

The Chicago Plan Revisited

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