Historical Manifesto

Jacque Fresco : An Obsolete Monetary System - 1

An Obsolete Monetary System

The money-based system evolved centuries ago. All of the world's economic systems - socialism, communism, fascism, and even the vaunted free enterprise system - perpetuate social stratification, elitism, nationalism, and racism, primarily based on economic disparity. As long as a social system uses money or barter, people and nations will seek to maintain the economic competitive edge or, if they cannot do so by means of commerce they will by military intervention. We still utilize these same outmoded methods.

Our current monetary system is not capable of providing a high standard of living for everyone, nor can it ensure the protection of the environment because the major motive is profit. Strategies such as downsizing and toxic dumping increase the profit margin. With the advent of automation, cybernation, artificial intelligence and out sourcing, there will be an ever-increasing replacement of people by machines. As a result, fewer people will be able to purchase goods and services even though our capability to produce an abundance will continue to exist.

Our present, outmoded political and economic systems are unable to apply the real benefits of today's innovative technology to achieve the greatest good for all people, and to overcome the inequities imposed upon so many. Our technology is racing forward yet our social designs have remained relatively static. In other words cultural change has not kept pace with technological change. We now have the means to produce goods and services in abundance for everyone.

Unfortunately, today science and technology have been diverted from achieving the greatest good for reasons of self-interest and monetary gain through planned obsolescence sometimes referred to as the conscious withdrawal of efficiency. For example, the U. S. Department of Agriculture, whose function is presumed to be conducting research into ways of achieving higher crop yields per acre, actually pays farmers not to produce at full-capacity. The monetary system tends to hold back the application of these methods that we know would best serve the interests of people and the environment.

In a monetary system purchasing power is not related to our capacity to produce goods and services. For example, during a depression, there are computers and DVD's on store shelves and automobiles in car lots, but most people do not have the purchasing power to buy them. The earth is still the same place; it is just the rules of the game that are obsolete and create strife, deprivation and unnecessary human suffering.

A monetary system developed years ago as a device to control human behavior in an environment with limited resources. Today money is used to regulate the economy not for the benefit of the general populace, but for those who control the financial wealth of nations.

Resource Based Economy

All socio-economic systems, regardless of political philosophy, religious beliefs, or social customs, ultimately depend upon natural resources, i.e. clean air and water, arable land and the necessary technology and personnel to maintain a high standard of living.

Simply stated, a resource-based economy utilizes existing resources rather than money and provides an equitable method of distributing these resources in the most efficient manner for the entire population. It is a system in which all goods and services are available without the use of money, credits, barter, or any other form of debt or servitude.

Earth is abundant with plentiful resources; today our practice of rationing resources through monetary methods is irrelevant and counter productive to our survival. Modern society has access to highly advanced technologies and can make available food, clothing, housing, medical care, a relevant educational system, and develop a limitless supply of renewable, non-contaminating energy such as geothermal, solar, wind, tidal, etc. It is now possible to have everyone enjoy a very high standard of living with all of the amenities that a prosperous civilization can provide. This can be accomplished through the intelligent and humane application of science and technology.

To better understand the meaning of a resource-based economy consider this: if all the money in the world were destroyed, as long as topsoil, factories, and other resources were left intact, we could build anything we choose to build and fulfill any human need. It is not money that people need; rather, it is free access to the necessities of life. In a resource-based economy , money would be irrelevant. All that would be required are the resources and the manufacturing and distribution of the products.

When education and resources are made available to all people without a price tag, there would be no limit to the human potential. Although this is difficult to imagine, even the wealthiest person today would be far better off in a resource based society as proposed by The Venus Project. Today the middle classes live better than kings of times past. In a resource based economy everyone would live better than the wealthiest of today.

In a resource based society, the measure of success would be based on the fulfillment of one's individual pursuits rather than the acquisition of wealth, property and power.

The Choice Is Ours To Make

Human behavior is subject to the same laws as any other natural phenomenon. Our customs, behaviors, and values are byproducts of our culture. No one is born with greed, prejudice, bigotry, patriotism and hatred; these are all learned behavior patterns. If the environment is unaltered, similar behavior will reoccur.

Today, much of the technology needed to bring about a global Resource Based Economy exists. If we choose to conform to the limitations of our present monetary-based economy, then it is likely that we will continue to live with its inevitable results: war, poverty, hunger, deprivation, crime, ignorance, stress, fear, and inequity. On the other hand, if we embrace the concept of a global resource-based economy , learn more about it, and share our understanding with our friends, this will help humanity evolve out of its present state.

Organisation supportrice en France :
Association Civilisation 2.0 - http://www.civilisation2.com

Sources : https://www.thevenusproject.com/en/store/official#!/~/product/category=1360103&id=5501756

https://www.thevenusproject.com/en/about/resume

Yves Herbo-MPSA, 13-01-2015

Jacque Fresco : An Obsolete Monetary System - 1

An Obsolete Monetary System

The money-based system evolved centuries ago. All of the world's economic systems - socialism, communism, fascism, and even the vaunted free enterprise system - perpetuate social stratification, elitism, nationalism, and racism, primarily based on economic disparity. As long as a social system uses money or barter, people and nations will seek to maintain the economic competitive edge or, if they cannot do so by means of commerce they will by military intervention. We still utilize these same outmoded methods.

Our current monetary system is not capable of providing a high standard of living for everyone, nor can it ensure the protection of the environment because the major motive is profit. Strategies such as downsizing and toxic dumping increase the profit margin. With the advent of automation, cybernation, artificial intelligence and out sourcing, there will be an ever-increasing replacement of people by machines. As a result, fewer people will be able to purchase goods and services even though our capability to produce an abundance will continue to exist.

Our present, outmoded political and economic systems are unable to apply the real benefits of today's innovative technology to achieve the greatest good for all people, and to overcome the inequities imposed upon so many. Our technology is racing forward yet our social designs have remained relatively static. In other words cultural change has not kept pace with technological change. We now have the means to produce goods and services in abundance for everyone.

Unfortunately, today science and technology have been diverted from achieving the greatest good for reasons of self-interest and monetary gain through planned obsolescence sometimes referred to as the conscious withdrawal of efficiency. For example, the U. S. Department of Agriculture, whose function is presumed to be conducting research into ways of achieving higher crop yields per acre, actually pays farmers not to produce at full-capacity. The monetary system tends to hold back the application of these methods that we know would best serve the interests of people and the environment.

In a monetary system purchasing power is not related to our capacity to produce goods and services. For example, during a depression, there are computers and DVD's on store shelves and automobiles in car lots, but most people do not have the purchasing power to buy them. The earth is still the same place; it is just the rules of the game that are obsolete and create strife, deprivation and unnecessary human suffering.

A monetary system developed years ago as a device to control human behavior in an environment with limited resources. Today money is used to regulate the economy not for the benefit of the general populace, but for those who control the financial wealth of nations.

Resource Based Economy

All socio-economic systems, regardless of political philosophy, religious beliefs, or social customs, ultimately depend upon natural resources, i.e. clean air and water, arable land and the necessary technology and personnel to maintain a high standard of living.

Simply stated, a resource-based economy utilizes existing resources rather than money and provides an equitable method of distributing these resources in the most efficient manner for the entire population. It is a system in which all goods and services are available without the use of money, credits, barter, or any other form of debt or servitude.

Earth is abundant with plentiful resources; today our practice of rationing resources through monetary methods is irrelevant and counter productive to our survival. Modern society has access to highly advanced technologies and can make available food, clothing, housing, medical care, a relevant educational system, and develop a limitless supply of renewable, non-contaminating energy such as geothermal, solar, wind, tidal, etc. It is now possible to have everyone enjoy a very high standard of living with all of the amenities that a prosperous civilization can provide. This can be accomplished through the intelligent and humane application of science and technology.

To better understand the meaning of a resource-based economy consider this: if all the money in the world were destroyed, as long as topsoil, factories, and other resources were left intact, we could build anything we choose to build and fulfill any human need. It is not money that people need; rather, it is free access to the necessities of life. In a resource-based economy , money would be irrelevant. All that would be required are the resources and the manufacturing and distribution of the products.

When education and resources are made available to all people without a price tag, there would be no limit to the human potential. Although this is difficult to imagine, even the wealthiest person today would be far better off in a resource based society as proposed by The Venus Project. Today the middle classes live better than kings of times past. In a resource based economy everyone would live better than the wealthiest of today.

In a resource based society, the measure of success would be based on the fulfillment of one's individual pursuits rather than the acquisition of wealth, property and power.

The Choice Is Ours To Make

Human behavior is subject to the same laws as any other natural phenomenon. Our customs, behaviors, and values are byproducts of our culture. No one is born with greed, prejudice, bigotry, patriotism and hatred; these are all learned behavior patterns. If the environment is unaltered, similar behavior will reoccur.

Today, much of the technology needed to bring about a global Resource Based Economy exists. If we choose to conform to the limitations of our present monetary-based economy, then it is likely that we will continue to live with its inevitable results: war, poverty, hunger, deprivation, crime, ignorance, stress, fear, and inequity. On the other hand, if we embrace the concept of a global resource-based economy , learn more about it, and share our understanding with our friends, this will help humanity evolve out of its present state.

Organisation supportrice en France :
Association Civilisation 2.0 - http://www.civilisation2.com

Sources : https://www.thevenusproject.com/en/store/official#!/~/product/category=1360103&id=5501756

https://www.thevenusproject.com/en/about/resume

Yves Herbo-MPSA, 13-01-2015

Foray into an area reserved too: money - Part 9

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5,  Part 6, Part 7, Part 8

VI

Appendix: Some practical remarks

The banking network

In practical terms, this transformation of the currency is no difficulty, especially in the age of computers, statistical software and accounting is now in common use.

As bank money is long, the new money is created by the increase in the assets of an account, and conversely, it is canceled by the diminution of that asset. The novelty is that these entries at any level whatsoever, can not legally be performed by public institutions with the sole function of keeping accounts of individuals and companies. This currency being only purchasing power, which can not be placed or created in order to bring interest, it has a nominal value of its creation, it is not transferable from one account to another, she remains on the same account until canceled. Banks are no longer the investment intermediaries, they no longer have the power to promote clients' multiplying the credit "against repayment with interest taken for their benefit. In other words, they do not make money by handling: managing accounts they perform a public service, such as, for example, marital status or social security, and obey a Central Bank whose decisions emanate from the only political power.

Every citizen has an account under his name, held by the bank of its choice. This personal account number can be number of social identity, which ensures that everyone has an account and a single. And that from birth, although as the owner is not an adult, who has charge of using his account to maintain and ensure their education.

Funding for the production

Today, in order to procure the means of production, a contractor on credit, usually through a commercial bank. With money "that can not relate," there are more private investors living in the interest derived from such advances, and it is the government's responsibility to provide the means of production.

What differences this transformation of money she leads?

There is none in the first stage: in both cases, whether the banker or the relevant economic services, the Contractor must encrypt their needs and convince him that his project is seriously considering the result it discount.

But in the first case, the banker is the sole judge, and his only concern is to ensure that the amount requested in advance if it has enough chances to be reimbursed and have more interests that requires. While in the second case, the economic department, because it is public and not interested in a private capacity, will be able to take into account other criteria such as environmental impact, noise, health, waste, pollution, and conservation of the common heritage, etc. One can imagine the creation in each commune councils to publish projects and to get the public interested in coming debate. We see that in so far as it is no longer only to make profit, it becomes possible to consider all the conditions in which production takes place. This public consultation can lead to discuss modes, methods and production rates, their impacts, site selection, energy, raw materials, the nature of the waste and how they are eliminated, etc. And even what happens to the company if it fails to prevent these deplorable Brownfields we see too often today and no one is responsible.

In both cases even when the project is accepted, the amount awarded is included in the enterprise, which will be charged to the account as the contractor will use to buy raw materials and to produce as provided.

It's then that things change.

When it comes to a loan capitalist currency, the contractor is deemed to own the wealth produced and he must find to sell as it is with the money from the sale to repay the loaned amount , he pays the interest, he pays expenses, taxes and duties. When he managed to pull enough of sale for the balance is positive, despite possibly advertising it pays well, it has a benefit. Otherwise, it is he who is the loser.

On the contrary, if the money was allocated in distributive currency contractor does not have to repay or pay interest, or advertising, or expenses, or taxes, or taxes because it does not own the wealth produced. He is contracted to deliver to retailers to be offered for sale at set prices. So he makes a public service by producing what he has committed to produce.

Now consider the renewal of the production process.

With capitalist money, the entrepreneur can hope to earn enough profit to be able to advance a share of more and more of its means of production, so have less need loans and, therefore, be increasingly free produce as they see fit ... if they can sell more. When it reached a certain size, the company becomes a shared between shareholders which are common owners of the means of production and wealth produced case; Their only concern is its profitability because the company is an investment, and all matters such as production methods, working conditions and pollution are generated, again and again, as seen from the perspective of reducing production costs for the sole purpose of increasing all the expected return of their investment. Even the utility of the products or the hazards involved in this, no longer matter as long as good publicity "communication" manages to attract customers! Customers and employees are put at the service of investors who also have grip on production.

Distributive currency can turn this logic, the relationship between producers and consumers no longer based on the submission of each other, for interest. The competition gave way to cooperation with terms when asked settled by consultation, the production contract linking the team of producers to the society in which they live, and which also includes clients for whom they s undertake to produce.

During the term of a contract, on behalf of the company is recharged automatically for continuous production. At maturity, the entrepreneur and his team are required to submit their balance sheet to the public to have a say if any renewal application for certain conditions can be adjusted as required.

Citizen participation

The economic department authority to create money needed for production companies to function plays so with the new currency, the role only investors and shareholders when money is capitalist.

By creating the same way the money required to run public services, the institution replaces the tax: distributive currency removes any levy taxes or any taxes since it is no longer necessary. This does not mean that everything is possible, since the flow of distributive currency is defined, so limited by the production.

Through this currency is thus the general population that invests in its businesses and puts his assets at their disposal, and it is this which sets out the broad guidelines on the production and distribution of wealth thus produced.

The company is therefore committed to a diametrically opposed to the liberal ideology that exalts selfishness by claiming that when everyone acts only according to its own personal interest way, the result is happiness for all through the miracle of the famous and mythical "invisible hand" ...!

The democratic organization made ​​possible

The tasks to fulfill depend first of the broad economic policy. Regarding the production of goods, two extreme positions are unlikely to be adopted in a democratized economy or aberrant growth ideology, race in front of a consumer society that destroys non-renewable resources and compromises life on the planet, or a return to the Stone Age through systematic denial of the use of any technology.

The wisdom of nations will probably towards a balance between optimal use of the common heritage of science and nature reserves to allow maximum individual development, and the need to avoid compromising the ability of future generations to do even better, by building knowledge.

Further recall that distributive currency does not promote the proliferation of useless gadgets: when the sale is not motivated by profit manufacturer and seller, no one has more interest in pushing the gogo to accumulate.

For these reasons, the development of programmed machines ceasing to improve the production of material goods, especially in the final stage, will require fewer and fewer hours of human labor. The necessary jobs will thus proceed mainly in research and development services.

How to distribute these tasks?

The current distribution is made by the market: anyone who is not an inexhaustible fortune in his crib was forced to sell his personal qualities and his energy at the highest price in the labor market, and his life depends on it. This system can be seen, leads, when employment is scarce, precarity and exclusion for part of more and more of the population. Because it is based on selfishness it encourages, this pseudo-society is, again, a failure in human terms. Distributive currency helps rebuild the society based on solidarity, replacing the rat race by a long-term contract between the company and each of its members and can be summarized as follows: the company guarantees all citizens a decent income for a lifetime, it feels compelled to contribute, through its activities, to the extent of its resources and as required, to the corporation to ensure that all adequate standard of living.

Based on a clear principle as a modern democracy means, defining the modalities of its application, to let the people themselves choose their activities, betting on their diversity and the fact that a task is all the better fulfilled it has been selected and therefore corresponds to the aspirations and abilities of the person who committed it.

The purpose of education, reflection of society, has changed dramatically: it is no longer to form disciplined employees and bulimic clients, but future citizens able to think, judge, criticize and take responsibility, and, regardless of the time required for that, to help them reveal their talents, find their own way, then give them the training they need to develop, with a maximum of general knowledge, key to their autonomy of thought. Aware of the needs of the company who assured him such training, a young become full citizens by engaging in the activity of their choice. It may be associated with it for others to share the work of a certified business and whose resources will therefore be financed as noted above. Admittedly such a commitment can be made for a limited time, so be the subject of a 'civic' contract, after which the citizen will be able to apply for renewal or change its contract , or propose another, or taking a "sabbatical" year for personal reasons, or retrained, possibly to a different activity.

It is expected that at least initially, the opinion reject the idea that complete freedom is left to every individual and that all revenues are equal. It will be up to each region to provide certain quotas or standards, such as minimum or maximum service vacation, annual or longer periods. Let's not go into details because it is not about to freeze anything. Our intention is not to present "a whole package put together" would be the panacea, but to present what seems like another key development, open to any changes dynamics, free of dogmas and imperatives are now taxed when no ethics can justify.

Yves Herbo : it should be noted that the pre-Columbian civilizations of Central and South Americas have for millennia applied a system without liquid currency (except possibly to trade with "foreign") no, and huge spaces. Close enough to this system, citizens commanded their monthly lists of family and professional needs, and each citizen assured his task to produce and supply the needs of all who were grouped into communities and made available to continue to produce and live. Obviously, a royal family and priests abusing the system and ran, but the principle is fairly easily replaced by a democratic government if you think about it a bit ... there is evidence that the vast agricultural dynamics of the Incas, for example, enabled them improve their technicalities and to increase the number of persons engaged in research, astronomy, chemistry, etc. people ...

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Yves Herbo, 23-10-2014

Foray into an area reserved too: money - Part 8

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5,  Part 6, Part 7

part Two

Vb)
Liberation

"Who will tell the untold power of association when it turns into cooperation ...?" Jacques Duboin (Liberation)

By cons, it does not need to be an economist to see the result. The unlimited growth is unsustainable, its consequences are already such that it is the biological balance of the planet is in danger. What do foresaw few lucid minds there a few decades now seems the obvious: we can not continue this blind race. "No tree may climb to heaven!"

As for competitiveness, it leads to a profound social imbalance. This ongoing economic war which requires to be the best in anything, disinherit losers too little combative ... or who have not had the chance to be born among the privileged. By dint of promoting "the best" at the expense of all others, the tremendous advancement of knowledge and its technological applications has been put at the service of a tiny minority, while nearly 840 million people (YH: in 2003) (55) malnourished, lacking even a piece of land to grow their own hands to survive.

Both pitfalls of capitalist money

While the catastrophic effects of these imperatives for growth and competitiveness are increasingly evident, yet we continue to pretend unavoidable. And with such hollow arguments that "it is in the nature of things" or "this is how men work," without realizing how these two traps in which our civilization is lost, are contained in the existing mechanisms of the currency, which, however, are obviously not the laws of nature. Indeed:

• The requirement for growth is contained in the mode of creation of money: you have an investment worth more than it cost that can be paid the interest on the loan or "return on investment".
• The widening gap between rich and poor is contained in the choice of the customers to which credits are open, because a credit agency, to avoid being made ​​bankrupt, requires collateral, mortgage, insurance. It can not lend to the rich and
the "snow-ball" effect of compounding, and only the rich can afford to get rich.

While the opinion is being gradually to become aware of the dangers of growth at all costs and is outraged to see that exploitation of resources can not be reduced, on the contrary, poverty in this world, it is clear that the monetary mechanisms are so poorly known that their relationship with this high productivity and individualism is not generally denounced. To believe that it is not even perceived.

This link will yet manifest. It manifests itself, for example by the public reaction against money in times of economic crisis we find that it is creating its own currency that minorities while trying to survive. The experiments that were launched in response to the Great Depression of the 1930s, those, for example, slush money Gesell or WIR circles, as well as those that are springing up everywhere from the liberal turn of the 1980s, by example in Argentina since 2002, are manifestations of the rejection of the official currency. But these parallel currencies, because they are topical, restricted, marginal, can, at best, that saving, but only for association members who create, some of the adverse effects they see.

And, secondly, how can we not see that everywhere money as mobile when large human catastrophes as we deplore the tainted blood, or environmental disasters such as oil spills or in gégazages sea, when we become aware of the effects of the commodification of public services and the patenting of life, or when you discover the power and role of pension funds, currency speculation and tax havens on economic choices, etc. I need regular. Money is the common denominator of all these inhuman behavior, it is indeed the common origin of these disasters that have nothing natural

This should help to understand that trying to fix it, when possible, the effects of these mechanisms does not help, as they renew indefinitely, or even increase, as is still common cause

Delete this cause is certainly not easy, but we must realize that it has become inevitable, it is the necessary condition to give the company bases other than those who are destroying it. But this reconstruction through a new transformation of money: for it no longer requires growth, it is necessary that its creation no longer requires payment of interest, and takes into account other criteria that profitability financial to make it possible to produce, in respect of the human rights and environment, goods and services accessible to all, without exclusion. No coup should this time be necessary to achieve such a transformation since, unlike the previous ones, it aims to increase the general interest before the interest of a few. But it is urgent to think about it, and it is to this end that we make the following three propositions.

First proposal: Return to the regality

Clearly, the intangible currency corresponds to the current state of technology, commodity money is over. It would be absurd to deny the virtual currency while dreaming of return of gold Louis exists, it is convenient, therefore accept without us linger, the currency of tomorrow will be in book-entry form, as it is almost completely today, smart cards and transactions transmitted over the internet going again develop.

But we must be aware of the danger of this modern form of money simply because it is naturally materially unlimited!

His creation is so easy that having abandoned the right to create money to private companies with their own interest objective, seems like an aberration, obvious source of many abuses of unpredictable consequences, incalculable. We have seen that when goldsmiths signed more than they had received gold in their cellars, their only limit was ... fear that their customers find that they had exaggerated Inefficient method, since several panics have marked history We also remember that when too many bankers have followed the example of goldsmiths, because they realized that it made them hurt that some of them were intrigued to get a monopoly And the history of central banks shows that it is still to prevent abuse, panic or bankruptcies they have received a certain power, not to set a limit on the money supply, but only an attempt by the through their discount rate, speed up or slow down the growth of the mass, hoping that these changes would ultimately affect the economy. And since these rates do not obey to the markets, we can not count the number of countries ruined by currency crises ... It is clear that political power should not be content to imagine dikes to prevent abuse or plug in the consequences, it is up to him to determine the necessary money to the economy

It is not without reason that the "right to coin money" was, par excellence, a prerogative of the sovereign, he is a part, under the monarchy, the "sovereign rights" with those to tax , ordered the police and the army, to render justice to declare war or to sign the end. Why any of these rights Prince has he done except when the people won sovereignty? We do not understand that democracies have abandoned some new preferred one of those essential rights that decide the life of a nation The right to create money is too important for it to be dissociated from the other attributes that are used to decide all on their behalf. (because they are not democracies!)

It must be returned to political power because a developed society, as it can be designed in the XXI century must be able to decide that it will meet the needs, according to the means available to it in respecting the rights of living human beings, and to come. From this perspective, if the essential choice for the overall direction of the economy is a fundamental political decision therefore can not be left to private interests.

Today the company serves finance, dictating policy to governments. Hand over responsibility for all money creation to the government, is to reverse the roles: the economic choices then become political choices and finance them subject.

But this is not enough. In a true democracy, entrust the economy to political power would be entrusted to the people, but the whole society, even in the XXI century, is not guaranteed to be democratic and to remain so. To put the economy at the service of all and keep it there, we need rules that prevent abuses by officials to issue paper, and for this, impose monetary limit mass concrete, objective.

Second proposal: Fix objectively money supply

Such a natural limit is simply the result of two aspects of money: it is a right to draw on the wealth produced and recognition of common debt as required by law to accept payment From these two facts leads to the following rule: representatives of a population, having a monopoly on creating the currency undertake in his name, can not issue the equivalent money to wealth and that this population produces sells

The creation of money and being committed to production, new production automatically create its equivalent in other currencies And, conversely, when a product reaches the consumer, money that he uses to buy it has served its purpose and has no reason to exist then it is canceled at the time of sale In other words, the currency becomes a parallel flow and equivalent to the wealth produced to be sold This is obviously an equivalence principle, which will result in practice, adjustments by calculations similar to those that stock computers do today to view quotes in a continuous and permanent.

But we must insist on another aspect For that equivalence is the origin of money creation, we need the price of a good or service offered for sale is evaluated when is committed to its production, rather than after, when it has already been produced This has the disadvantage of disrupting the habits, and the reflex is likely to believe, but a little faster, it comes to remove the market. All those who boast incessantly its irreplaceable merits rest assured, it is not at all to remove, but rather, to return him his virtues (56), that is to say, to allow the selling price of a good or service really is the result of a discussion between producers, sellers and consumers buyers.

But this is only if the democratic evaluation takes place upstream, so before it's too late, it is possible to discuss the modes of production, encourage or proscribe.
Specify, if necessary, that these discussions are intended to define the bases and not to fix prices each, one by one, and that one should provide margins of error and uncertainties, such as for agricultural production, which will result mathematics necessary changes described above. and add that this is not utopian, as evidenced by the Seikatsu, the producer-consumer associations and work in Japan for the past 20 years, or the Community supported agriculture (CSA), the consumer associations (57 ) pass contracts with farmers who purchase and before the season, part of their farm harvest.

Compared to the current situation, currency retains its role as a unit of account and means of payment, even offline. It is a purchasing power that is used only once because it is out of date when he served as a ticket or stamp, leaving its owner the ability to use it for any purchase of his choice. By cons, this reformed currency ceases to be a source of enrichment and inequality, so domination, where an appropriation not involve payment of interest.

Reorganized on this basis, the currency appears as a way to distribute it among all consumer goods and services produced by the economy of a region The logic of accumulation policy, ie accumulation, gives way to a logic of sharing, distribution

This reform, much simpler and more objective than those that have marked history, led to a turnaround: the law of the financial jungle that prevails today, it substitutes a social control of production, economic decisions-finances are finally subjected to reflection and policy debate, informed by surveys conducted objectively.

But until such a prior debate will not consider other aspects as profitability, the warnings of experts and warning cries against the dangers of the current high productivity can multiply indefinitely, they will only be wishful thinking. (see History 2007-2016)

With regard to international trade if the currency of a country (58) is the book event that residents commit themselves to produce (using human knowledge to grow the wealth of soil and sub soilless), trade relations between the two regions are only barter agreements between the two populations, the international exchange of goods are zero-sum and there is then a more international debt. It goes without saying that these contracts may include deadlines, their equity and their enforcement may be subject to supranational control, etc. The important thing is that this transformation of the bases of foreign trade would supply the population with the right to dispose of themselves, to ensure that their own vital priority sufficiency, "living in the country" and flourish developing their culture.

Our third proposal is inspired by what we have observed about the concept of value:

Third proposition: Separate property management from that of the people

We recalled that when economists speak of value, it is exchange value and that it is, in fact, the selling price of a commodity. Besides this award, as set today, no way the result of a debate as claimed by classical economics, but rather the law of the strongest, financially speaking, this approach compared to the standard what the single currency, which is measurable and what is not, leads to considering human labor as a commodity, a first among other matters, and finally the human being as a replaceable object, going to treat employees "like kleenex" in case of "redundancy", "false dismissals bankruptcies."

On the other hand, a little bit of insight predicts that the production of tomorrow will increasingly collective and intellectual work (59), which will make less use of labor, measurable (-ish) work time, and more and more human participation imponderable linked to the personality, culture, experience, imagination and creativity, qualities not measurable by gasoline. So pretend to estimate individual participation to buy it at a "fair price", "wages", becomes an absurdity or a scam.

To avoid this aberration, we must separate the management of people in the property. Do not mix in the same accounting being and having is bringing the economy to its natural place, that of stewardship. Let us not forget that the role of a production company is to transform the raw materials to make available to people the things they need, and that is not to provide employment, it is not create jobs to warrant income. The fact that the transformation of the material requires human intervention does not require treating "human resource" as a commodity, and it is separating materials accounting from humans that this distinction becomes possible and that be remembered that work and jobs are not the goals, but the means. Then only the income received by a human being will not be the price at which it sells to a company. We no longer talk about salary, price of sweat, but individual income based on personal needs and whose goal is to provide everyone with the means to develop their own skills to effectively perform the activities by which it assumes its participation in society. While this contribution may not be fully measurable and produce quality, even for the long term. Even if it means that income is paid by all of society and throughout life, not by companies, to those they employ, and only for the duration of the job.

In today's economy, money profit is used to "commodify" the field of the intangible. Encroaching this area of ​​freedom, finance, submit it to profit and control or restricts access. The General Agreement on Trade in Services, GATS is being installed this appropriation of a common heritage of all mankind, makes knowledge slowly developed over history. Art and culture are some already standardized, it will soon be impossible for farmers to renew their crops, as they have done for so many generations, without buying new seeds from Monsanto. When will the obligation to buy the right to have their own offspring?

The reform we propose is to make it impossible that appropriation, making the currency the instrument of management only real. To separate what is naturally the domain of the economy, which is measurable and which must, in some cases, be "saved" so counted, and that which is the domain of the unmeasurable, the imponderable and intangible, that of knowledge, culture, information to be given without discard the use of which, far from having to be limited if it is not used to harm, shall be delivered besides, and thus be free.

These two areas are obviously not independent, since there is a link between them, man, who lives in the area of ​​real and must flow freely in the area of ​​intangible its own. But to the extent that the economy produces goods and not financial gain, where money is a stream that burns at the same time as the goods produced, it becomes possible to determine objectively the economy. So people can be grouped into a network of cooperatives of all sizes and all take objective decisions that affect them directly, since it is first to decide what to produce to consume and in what conditions this also defines their activity and the total money they have. It is then up to them in the budget and set the share paid for the material means of production, it is necessary to make public services and that which constitutes their personal income work.

The debate is largely open to the public and focus on public interest criteria. This is an extension of democracy to the economy that is available, allowing any resident to participate, if not always directly, at least by delegation to these decisions that are both social and economic.

(55) Read Passet, Financial Globalization and Terrorism

(56) Even the contrary, it is the financialization of the economy that has resulted from the virtues of the book market, to those professionals "Markets" (Stock and currency markets or other commodities , etc.) and remove them for the rest of the world, who is offered goods at prices fixed in advance by the seller: it's "take it or leave it", you do not market ...

(57) include the CSA model of Poughkeepsie, pre-installed in urban areas at a hundred miles north of New York and in France the Alliance peasant ecologists consumer network that brings together organizations working together to promote the development of ecological agriculture products quality.

(58) or a region or group of regions whose residents choose to associate economically.

(59) read about the deep analysis of André Gorz, for example in the immaterial, knowledge, value and capital.

Sources: http://www.france.attac.org/

To be continued for the last part: Appendix and Bibliography

 

Yves Herbo, 23-10-2014

Foray into an area reserved too: money - Part 7

V)
Parallel currencies

By definition, any form of payment is a currency. But the currency of a country is the only one that any citizen is required by law to accept payment in any other currency is a parallel currency (44), regardless of why it was created, the terms of its creation and distribution, unit of account, the extension of its use and whatever its methods of control.

Vouchers and other currencies "affected"

The most common parallel currencies, by far, consists of the vouchers.

These coins earmarked for a specific use, and restricted, can be created as good for a government to a category of population. This mode selective distribution discriminates between members of society and shows that it is "multi-speed".

These vouchers can be given to the poor, in the case of "Food stamps" in the United States. This distribution, designed to give them food aid, therefore requires a humiliating poor approach: they must apply for aid and justify stating their income too low (or no income); it may even be harmful, for example Milton Friedman had the idea of ​​distributing vouchers teaching through which the state provides for children from poor families access to less expensive schools, so inferior education, and selection is on the registration fee, only wealthy families can afford the best schools. Such warrants are to privatize school while proclaiming that all children can access it.

Instead, vouchers can be distributed in the event of a shortage, at preferred to book their access to certain products become scarce. For example, petrol coupons were issued in Italy for foreigners, at a lower price than the price at the pump, when it was particularly high. It was to attract affluent tourists.

Specialized companies can manufacture and sell another type of affected currencies, this is the case, for example, meal vouchers. These companies make it advance to the employers who pay part of the salaries in this form. Employees who receive them so they can not spend their wages by depriving themselves of food. The advantage for employers is twofold: on the one hand, they benefit from tax and social security cuts when they use them, and secondly, their employees can not complain that their salary is not enough to feed them. These vouchers are used by 5 million employees in France.

Internet now allows the use of point systems that are, in fact, site-specific currencies including income from a share of advertising revenues and partly from the sale of customer information.

But the most popular vouchers are those traders distribute to customers they want to attract or "loyalty". To "capture" the client (? Trick or) their marketing science makes them invent all kinds of vouchers: chéques gift, sweepstakes, loyalty cards, promised benefits after several purchases, etc. Almost all brands of supermarkets offer loyalty cards free and all purchases (or only certain purchases) are eligible for points in addition to these cards and give a right or reductions later, or gifts according to scales that vary with the market chain. In all cases it is directing customers to particular products or loyalty to certain brands; it is always the push to buy, for example, if the points awarded cease to be valid after a period of time, obviously set by the chain. But it may happen that the gift promised not "available" ...

Examples of coupons, briefly consider the case of "miles" air, so common recently that they are called new world currency (45). Created in 1981 by American Airlines, these points are plotted on personal loyalty cards offered by airlines to their customers, and allow them to get free tickets in proportion to the distance traveled on their lines. For example, a flight from Paris to New York in economy class relates 7.280 miles (the distance in nautical miles) and gain that same flight must be purchased on the card, 50,000 miles. Airlines with fully integrated this use in their trade policy, they sell these "miles" to their partners on the ground (hotel chains, car rental companies, phone companies, etc.) who distribute, too, to their customers ; This assesses the current stock price of approximately 765 billion dollars, more than the total amount of coins and euro banknotes in circulation! In other words, these miles are the world's second currency in use, after the dollar! It was calculated that if the creation of a parallel currency continues to grow at the same rate, 20% per year since 1995, it will exceed the stock of greenbacks (USD) within two years. (2003 ...)

Epandage to rain

Note a feature of this world money: it does not circulate. When she once served, it is canceled.

She's so spent in customs in the United States that consumer groups are demanding the payment of interest on their miles, the IRS is considering imposing this extra pay provided to employees who travel for business (and often Highest paid) and that in some divorce proceedings the couple share the account of family miles. There is even now a black market for miles. But like any currency whose issue is not confronted with a physical value, it is a kind of time bomb: the companies have good stuff on the miles they issue, to anticipate what these miles will cost them Free tickets were beautiful predict that the majority of voucher recipients have not accumulated enough to qualify for free tickets, the fact remains that the world stock of miles held in this form by some 89 million airline customers was rated by the Economist in 2001 to 8.500 billion can be calculated that it would take 23 years to clear all the cards ... and provided stop-issue!

The use of vouchers business in one form or another distorts the market at least three ways:

First this practice neutralizes competition. For example, an airline miles program can give a company a dominant position.

Then use this information confuses price ultimately paid: what is the price per minute of mobile phone that works with a card that makes you such and such a price under certain conditions and such other rate as such? What is the price of a liter of petrol when any purchase of more than 10 liters is entitled to one good and so many good qualify for a free cleaning and nothing if the number is good enough? And what is the price of a flight paid by a company to its employees so that will take his card to pay for an upgrade to business class? Worse: Who will free acquired through the miles earned on professional employer paid tickets tickets? Such a question goes even further when the employer is the State and the traveler an MP two German MPs were forced to resign for using these free for family travel miles.

Finally the use of these warrants an immaterial impact or moral: customer becomes part of the capital (intangible) and these companies calculate the net present value (NPV) of a customer by the profits they anticipate purchases that will loyal if so, for example, it is known as "marketing" that "increase by 5% retention rate of customers increases the NPV of 35-95%" ...

Local currencies

When the economy of a country is failing, currency, economists are as a medium of exchange, is perceived by its residents as a barrier to trade. This leads them to seek ways to "get away" and react locally, unable to do so on a larger scale. Virtually all cases, the first initiative is to pass legal tender (which makes them default) by inventing a private currency, a parallel currency of their own, which is issued and controlled by themselves, and that has no other purpose than to allow them to live better or survive .

So in times of economic difficulties that arise from the experiences of local currencies.

A prime example is that of the Great Depression that began with the fall of the New York Stock Exchange in 1929 and lasted through the Great Depression until World War II.

She was described as a crisis of overproduction which for economists, does not mean that everyone was provided with the essentials, but that large quantities of products were not creditworthy buyers, because the millions of unemployed and their families, who were in great need, do not have money. It was the first manifestation of what Jacques Duboin denounced as "misery in abundance" (46).

Jacques Duboin

The second followed the great neoliberal transformation that installed the dictatorship of the financial markets on the economy.

The post "Great Depression"

To accelerate the consumption Silvio Gesell imagined a depreciating currency, that is to say, tickets whose purchasing power, if he had not spent after a while, was systematically devalued at a rate of 0.5% per month or 6% per annum. Experiments have been conducted, the first to Worgel, a mountain village in Austria, and the second in France in Lignères-en-Berry, after the war. Both have resulted in a remarkable revival of the economy through consumption and both were ordered to stop claiming that the demurrage was illegal.

It is not surprising that the increase in unemployment in industrialized countries has prompted the re-emergence of such movements demanding a depreciating currency to boost the economy. A system running such a currency was experienced, for example, in Saint Quentin en Yvelines from 1 January 1997.

*

For the founders, in October 1934, the WIR Economic Circle (Ring Wirtshaft Gesellschaft), the same Great Depression was caused by a lack of supply of legal tender and should be avoided for small and medium businesses to suffer the consequences. It is therefore a system of exchange of goods between firms organized for profit by a sort of clearing house that charges a fee for each exchange and is also charge for services such as information, facilities credit and even lobbying governments to defend the interests of member companies.
The currency of this circle of mutual support can be exchanged between businesses that are members.

The after "Thirty Glorious"

Struck by the number of people who can not participate in economic and social life because they lack the money, Michael Linton created with some friends in 1982, the first local exchange trading system, English Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS) to Vancouver (Canada). It will be copied first in Australia and New Zealand and the United Kingdom, etc. There are even more exchanges in a LETS he has a lot of members, so the challenge is to attract the world.

A denier of the Empire

In France, the LETS (local exchange system) is gradually removed from the LETS system, since the first, held in 1994 in Ariege are associations of people who count, using a unit of account of their own, the transactions they make them, transactions involving both housework, repairs, childcare, making meals or language courses.

Offers and requests are listed in a catalog in which all members have access to a SEL. There are no notes in circulation, accounting takes place in an imaginary currency, each SEL has his own, the unit value, sometimes linked to the national currency but usually in the past tense, is the subject of mutual agreement. If Aurélie wishes repaint her kitchen while Peter offers to do painting, she gave him the job and they agree among themselves that it will allocate, for example, 10 hours. If their currency unit of account for the minute when the kitchen will be painted, the SEL will subtract 600 units of account and increase Aurélie especially that of Peter. It will then be Aurélie provide a job to a member of SALT, not necessarily Peter, and it will be entitled to 10 hours of assistance from a member of the SEL. The time is counted regardless of social or professional level of the person performing the service. There is no guarantee that the job will be done. No appeal is possible. Members are asked to limit their debt, but a deficit account is not penalized with interest. The accounts usually start at zero and members should limit their debt to the equivalent of -3000 minutes, for example. In other SEL, it immediately offers 5 hours from (300 units) to members to prevent them from starting on a debt.

Despite the availability of suitable computer programs, accounting for exchange units in the SEL ask them a vital problem for these accounts is very heavy and their leaders are forced to repetitive work. Gold traded in a work SEL are occasional principle, if it would work 'black'. The debate is whether to convert this task in paid work, so said, or make up less cumbersome to manage systems. Some SALT, much of the trade is not recorded, and the system then dissolves into the group of friends, but also loses its ability to regularly make new members "number", unlike SEL "count" in the SEL ask them a vital problem for these accounts is very heavy and their leaders are forced to repetitive work. Yet the work exchanged in an SEL are occasional principle, if it would work "to black ". debate is whether to convert this task in paid work, so said, or invent lighter to handle. some SALT, much of the trade is not recognized systems, and the system is then dissolved in the group of friends, but also loses its ability to regularly make new members "number", unlike SEL "count".

In 2003, in France, the number of SEL is the total number of members is estimated at 350 to 30,000, which would find, not the means to live, but more often topping up the opportunity to acquire a service that they would not have access otherwise, and they perform without fuss.

The system of exchange gardens universal (SET) works from books on which members record their transactions, independent pairs, these notebooks are shown only to the person who is sharing, there has no control.

The Ithaca-hour or time-dollar local currency born of the refusal of the 30,000 inhabitants of the city of Ithaca (upstate New York) to be subjected to the effects of decisions made far from large corporations not caring little survival of small communities. Its goal is to reorganize the local business economy, create local jobs and circulate locally income of its population. 30 cities in the United States, communities have formed to take advantage of these time-dollars, tax-free money that allows a help than an hour against an hour spent helping someone. He who receives a service to sign a certificate to that which makes him all these certificates is managed by a bank of time (time bank) that centralizes the offers and requests of time.

On the same principle, a group of Italian women created in Bologna in 1991, the first Italian bank time. This accounts, credit or debit, hours of women who intend to enhance their daily activities, it organizes their schedules based on the offers, requests and skills. This time banks have strong links with local governments, which are often even their origin and provide them necessary financial and premises.

Larger are the barter systems in South America. Argentina, whose natural resources are immense, residents found themselves almost overnight, without purchasing power because their domestic currency assets, their bank accounts, they were confiscated. A very large number of them surviving on these systems bartering goods, they happily held before the bankruptcy. In 1995, Bernal, a suburb of Buenos Aires, neighbors exchange the surplus of their gardens. They rediscover barter. On the local First, the system becomes regional and national levels. In three years, thousands of Argentines, victims of the crisis, and which do not receive unemployment insurance or family allowance, or an equivalent of the RMI, join clubs where barter exchange the goods or services.

Both producers and consumers, their club members receive a number of "creditos" (47), a sort of local currency that allows them to exchange products and services of the club. As trade in 1999 is estimated at more than $ 500 million in total. Today, these clubs are called "nodes" as they gathered in networks (Red de Trueque) extended to all of Argentina and even in neighboring countries (Uruguay, Brazil, Nicaragua, Peru, ...). These are not closed structures: people can move from one node to another. They come in various sizes, from a few dozen members to over a thousand. At first they came from the middle class, which grew into a class of new poor. With the extension of the crisis, and to cushion the effects on them, it would be over 6 million Argentines who, in 2002, participated in the activities of about 8,000 nodes.

Two major networks coexist: the Barter Network solidarity (RTS), which includes seventeen provinces and overall Barter Network (TMN) which has the largest number of members.
The government had to take into account the importance of these networks by 2000 barter was declared of national interest by the government. Moreover, many municipalities now accept that their constituents pay their taxes in creditos. In some cities traders or traditional service providers also accept regulations creditos. The principle is as follows: initially, a club makes a certain amount of money "alternative" and equally distributed among its members, who use it to swap them. If these exchanges are increasing to the point that members feel they need more money, they vote for a raise, for example, 10 units per member.

A close scrutiny of this inflation was necessary to avoid that the currency is devalued. Governments, particularly those in the city of Buenos Aires, have agreed to support this system as long as its currency is not convertible into currency.
But it was found that participants had difficulty not to confuse the currency "nodos" with the traditional currency and we must insist on the irrelevance of the cash value in the exchange system, which in fact corresponds mainly to the value of work. Finally, to avoid the inconvenience of counterfeits, it is recommended that major interclub exchanges are made into products rather than using different currencies. One wonders about the value of mixed systems combining traditional and alternative payment payment.

The proliferation of local currencies is not without its downside: it facilitates the massive falsification of the Notes (48) by mafia networks, and issue thoughtlessly creditos led to rampant inflation such as that in classical economics.

This is what is happening in the GTA. Heloisa Primavera (49), working with networks since 1996, especially denounced a "falsification of principle" because inflation in the GTA "is the result of over-issuing creditos in this network, which causes excess liquidity on the market. "It complains that the GTA to "destroy the economic and social dynamics of barter by flooding the country of its notes to create a centralized national network, the essential currency. The result is unfortunate: money is disconnected from the real economy. As a peso ... The fair correspondence between level of production and volume of outstanding creditos is broken, the credito loses its value and above all the trust of users "(50). That is why she is campaigning to the mayors that they will not accept any local currency. For her, it is urgent to strengthen the potential of alternative barter "must become the ground of an economy of abundance where the game is not won / lost, as in capitalism, but wins / win, thanks to the effective sharing of wealth. ""Barter is for the first time, a way to lift the poor out of the exclusion without war, without taking up arms [...] It is something pioneering and no regression". "We are at a point of exit from the paradigm of scarcity and into the realm of abundance. There is no scarcity. It is artificial "(51).

*

Many other local currencies were invented, they are too numerous to be mentioned, since smoking and playing cards replacing the legal currency in colonial United States, to those that currently abound in the world . For example, "In Brazil, the municipality of Braga decided to pay its employees by printing its own banknotes. Baptized "Bonus", tickets can be used to pay local taxes and are accepted in shops of the city "(52). Or "In Russia, in the Novosibirsk region, a company prints its own currency. More than 800,000 tickets with a face value of one ruble were published and distributed to employees This issue allowed to pay three months' salary late ... Only three shops and a gas station, also belonging to the company in question can exchange goods against these bills, which are also accepted by local authorities in payment of local taxes, while paying their municipal officials with these tickets "(53). And also in Italy (Rete di economia local), Germany (Tauschring), Japan, Thailand (Thailand Community currency systems), New Guinea, Indonesia etc.

*

These exchange networks recreate the social link, and oppose and, in fact, the current economic system that enhances and develops the individualism of "every man for himself", and even gratifies. Neoliberal governments might be tempted to see in their development the way to get rid of them the problem of survival excluded from the competition. But they lie in wait rather with the trap of "moonlighting", as services traded between them by members of a network of trade does not result in payment of taxes, especially because professional merchant services complain that they are competing with them and see them as shortfalls.

Another reason given for the sentence is to say that the currencies they create are illegal. This is strictly true, but then why all private currencies, all other parallel currencies, the most numerous are those emitted by commercial channels, are they not banned long under the same argument? It seems surprising that no lawyer has been able to denounce the denial of justice which is to say that an illegal currency is tolerable when it is purely profit-oriented but becomes intolerable when its sole purpose is to create solidarity.

monnaie money Tribe Eduens

Move from local to global

All of these use of local currencies were born almost spontaneously, in an emergency:

serious economic and social problem is revealed, then experiments are launched in an attempt to overcome locally, immediate and pragmatic. But even if their design is not universal, always acting with specific agreements for a few hours of work that remains limited to the field of crafts, and even if they allow the recovery remains self-centered, these networks are very effective socially: breaking anonymity conveyed by the capitalist currency, they create relationships between their members as the market, on the contrary, develops selfishness of "every man for himself." So, regardless of how it will evolve, it is important for the economy of tomorrow adopted the slogan: "The link is better than good" and it is organized to encourage and develop these locally "exchange of best practices ", both recognized and they will not be.

But the economy of human society is not limited to the local level. Not only was he services (transport, water, energy, heavy medical care, basic research, information, culture, heritage maintenance, etc., and justice, for life in society requires a code that must be enforce without this turns reckoning ...) that must remain organized on a much larger public scale, the regional minimum. Even national, such as caring for an aging population. Internationally, the SEL can not, for example, prevent the drug trade, or constrain the development of violence engendered by misery created by capitalism. And even staying on a small scale, it often produces better individually when we agree to work in teams so that all benefits from the skills of all, loosely coupled intelligently organize their cooperation. An infrastructure is needed, which is part of a larger-scale organization, supporting other needs than those who are set by individual exchanges, even multilateral.

There is another reason, more important, which is that there is urgency to have the courage to innovate, as did the SEL locally, but thinking globally and acting for the whole society. Is that humanity is immersed in a real change; heirs of expertise and knowledge accumulated over thousands of years, we know now produce everything, even the worst. Yet it is often the worst product in today's economy, by setting markets work of a minority that feels free to monopolize all resources. And also produces anyhow. It is therefore urgent to reflect on another transformation of money that would guide modern economies to ensure mankind a more dignified and secure future. Such is the meaning of the findings qu'Héloïsa Primavera draws from his own experience in Argentina when it focuses on the fact that capitalism is an economy of scarcity but is unable to share the wealth as we are entering a era of abundance.

It is in this truly humanist aspiration, as bearer of a project for the whole of society, as are the two types of proposals.

The social dividend

In the early 1930s, the proposals of the Scottish Major CHDouglas had national social significance, if not universal. Putting the arbitrariness of money creation by banks causing the lack of purchasing power of the poor, also condemned unemployed by mechanization, he pointed out that the true wealth of a country is not not indicated that its financial system but its real potential to produce: its land, mines, roads and know-how. This heritage is common to all the citizens of a country, he considered legitimate for each regularly hits the dividend in the form of a sum paid annually by a national credit agency issuing a new currency for it. Yet applied this principle in Alaska has earned all the inhabitants of this American state, man, woman or child to receive a dividend in 2002 to $ 1,540 oil-collateralized basement.

The SOL project

The project of a united currency, SOL, is designed to promote an inclusive society with the human rather than the profit objective.

Specifically, a citizenship would be SOL on specific goods and services in the social and solidarity economy (SSE: mutuals, cooperatives, for example) or by having a civic behavior by getting involved in social life (literacy volunteer , for example). These allow SOL to purchase goods and services of SSE (fair trade, insurance or even financial investments), access to public goods (sports equipment a common example) and cultural or supporting local initiatives or large community causes.

This initiative is part of many current experiments in the search for a social economy, analyzed by Pantaleo Rizzo (54). It is the blatant demonstration of the need to escape the imperatives of capitalism that now dominates the world, but it faces its own limits if it is to put up with this system and not to seek ways replace it.

(44) Jerome White, Parallel currencies, unity and diversity owing money.

(45) See Le Monde, August 20, 2002, page 11.

(46) subtitle of his book "Kou, the bewildered," which was first published in 1934 and, 62 years later, as the misery in abundance he described was, alas, yet news, it was staged at the theater by Christine Delmotte in Belgium and Paris. Jacques Duboin great humanist, was brought in the great crisis of 1929, to explain the nature of the change in civilization which then was beginning, and the need to conclude a distribution economy then it defines as Économie Distributive name.

(47) In fact, there are several versions of credito corresponding to regions of origin, but they flow easily into the country.

(48) Some creditos now carry watermarks and serial numbers.

(49) Professor of Public Administration at the University of Buenos Aires.

(50) in Christian Testimony, No. 3030, 3/10/2002.

(51) Heloisa Primavera, International Meeting "Reconsider wealth", Paris, 1-2 / 3/2002.

(52) Marianne week 25-31 / 1/1999.

(53) Le Midi Libre, of 13.03.1999.

(54) P. Rizzo, The social and solidarity economy to monetary experiments. http://www.docstoc.com/docs/91268733/Pantaleo-RIZZO

Sources: http://www.france.attac.org/

Continued to Part 2

 

Yves Herbo, 14-10-2014

Foray into an area reserved too: money - Part 6

Part IV Part Two

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

"Come and help me! Whoever made ​​it clear to his fellow man the meaning of these words is the unknown founder of all human societies."

Jacques Duboin (Liberation)

IVb
Currency and Society

The consequences of a currency debt.

Whatever the considered aspect, and unlike the liberal contention that money is neutral, the reality is that the fact of using the currencies of debt not secured on a manifest wealth created by private companies whose only profit objective is a huge impact, even if they are not generally perceived:

At the national level: a common commitment.

We saw above that the law (35) that requires all citizens of a nation (or group of countries, such as "Euroland" (36), accept payment in the currency, the -Ci became the recognition of a collective debt: it engages all citizens of this nation to provide the equivalent of the amount referred to anyone present that currency and that, therefore, a right to draw on goods and services sold by that nation.

So money is a national link (or community) between the citizens of the country (or group of countries) which issues they are united, says Benjamin J. Cohen (37), by the common commitment that is their currency as they are united, for example, by the use of a common national language.

So the question arises: who can make such a commitment on behalf of a State? It seems clear that in a democracy it can not be that the elected representatives of the people, and it is this fact that makes most people believe, in good faith, make it the experience by asking your neighbors, that it is the public authorities have a monopoly on money creation and control.

We have seen that government control over their national currency introduced at the beginning of the XIX century and it had its heyday in the middle of the XXth. But that in the 1980s, in the wake of the famous "liberal turn" described above, it was abandoned.

And the consequences are serious, if not well received: by giving this power, which nevertheless seems legitimate, governments are not only deprived of the possibilitépour state to use money creation to cope in an emergency to public expenditure necessary and unforeseen. They also gave up a key management tool of the economy through taxation (including the redistribution depends) and through interest rates or exchange rates: by creating more money, the state could decide to accept inflation, reducing the burden of debt, favored debtors over creditors, or, conversely, deciding to limit the money supply, the government reassured creditors. The devaluation of a currency was offered to the country's exporters immediate competitive advantage.

Finally, the public monopoly on money naturally strengthens the authority of politics: it is obvious that the more a government is able to ensure its monopoly unless its policy is subject to foreign influences. But since the free movement of capital has deleted these monopolies national currencies, they can be used outside of their territory (including tax havens), and they thus provide transactions and investments. Winners are private actors who can escape the constraints of any monetary policy, and the losers are the government, so those who elected them.

internationally

As most currencies were convertible into gold, universal reference standard, exchange rates between currencies were the result of a simple calculation, purely mathematical, the relationships between their weight in gold. The transactions are settled in any currency and only debit balances between countries were settled by reference to gold.

Since the abandonment of this reference, international trade can be established in any currency; the exporting country can set its price in its own currency, the importing country may require to pay with its own currency, or if the buyer and seller decide to, they can use the currency of a country not involved in their transaction .
In short: there is no international currency, there is more than defining a universal reference exchange rates between currencies, which are the currencies of debt securities whose value fluctuates with the market.

Now we have seen that to use in a commercial transaction, a currency debt introduces a delay and a risk to the seller: it is found, after giving his goods, with a lending it then going to have to be accepted as payment for other goods. It is therefore very important for him to be paid in a currency that he thinks she has and she will keep, or better she will gain purchasing power. A currency is said to be strong because its purchasing power is rising: it is the trend that is important, rather than the actual value. So it happens to the value of money what happens to the stock market value of the shares: a large international investor can influence the share price:

when placed on a currency or security by buying in bulk, the value of that currency or the stock goes up and then everyone wants it, and its rating continues to rise. And so suddenly, conversely, an investor decides to get rid of any security or currency, his fellow
as with the herd, think he has reason to believe that this title will lose value when they sell too, and indeed the title down. As currencies, such as shares, can be amplified by speculation. Thus, since it obeys the liberal ideology, the global economy, and with it the world's currencies, is not controlled in the public interest, but to thank you vogue runaways or winds panic which it is impossible to predict the magnitude and scope.

Hegemony for the country whose currency is used

International trade has become accustomed to using the dollar for foreign trade during the period 1933-1971 during which the currency has remained the only one theoretically indexed to gold. This usage was reinforced after the Second World War because the economy of the United States was the first in the world, its booming industry was at the forefront of virtually every area, its businesses, which they had not been bombed, enjoyed huge reconstruction contracts worldwide.

The imbalance in the balance of payments of the United States with the failure of their war against Vietnam threatened the dollar's role when it became clear that American banks did not have enough on deposit to honor such debts. But at that time, no other currency was managed to inspire more confidence than the dollar.

Since then, the European Union is built economically, the Airbus is an example: its planes compete with those of the American Boeing. Yet Airbus, EADS became still sets prices in dollars, the height is that it gets paid in dollars even when it sells its products in Europe. It is true that the widespread use of the euro in Euroland is still new ...

Such hegemony translates into a tremendous advantage when it comes to bank money (for which, as we have seen, there is no hard limit to its creation ex nihilo) and that all countries asking for their trade, the country that can produce at will emit.

The North Americans in turn benefits and signing shamelessly these IOUs that nobody them back asking for the honor they have lived for decades at the expense of other populations worldwide buying on credit. Professor of Political Economy at the University of California, Benjamin J. Cohen is well placed to explain: "A country whose currency has international status finance its deficits by issuing its own currency:" A country whose currency enjoys international status finance its deficits by issuing its own money "(38), taking the 1999 figures, he said that this was equivalent to an interest-free loan of 25 to 30 billion per year made in the United States by the rest of the world.

This assessment should be revised upwards since, not only because of the slowdown in the American economy, but also because the federal budget was in surplus in 1999, was set deficit policy GW Bush (lower taxes 637 billion in 10 years and huge increases in military spending, which reached $ 400 billion). It is planned to more than $ 300 billion for 2003 and over 400 in 2004 before taking into account supplements for war against Iraq. Thus the trade deficit accumulated by the United States is that they have to the rest of the world the equivalent of about a quarter of gross domestic product (GDP). Such debt is unthinkable from any other country, which would be well before we get to such excesses culminating in the collapse of its currency ... and IMF intervention.

Recent example:
all accounts denominated in Argentine pesos have been abruptly cut by over a third of their purchasing power in dollars.

This can not happen to the American dollar accounts when the reference is the American dollar! So the United States, no savings, neither the State nor in households and businesses and there it became normal to live on credit. The rise in debt levels has been overwhelming, tripling between 1964 and 2002, reaching nearly one third of global GDP (39).
Household debt rose from 200 to 7,200 billion and that of enterprises, with their frenzy of mergers and acquisitions financed by loans, increased from 53 to 7620 billion (nearly 7 times GDP). An American economist has calculated (40) between 1995 and 2002, the deficit of the trade balance had allowed the United States to confiscate 96% of global growth.

The operating risk

The risk, as we have seen, the nature of the currency of debt has led to a transformation of the economy if its offset.

First, the risk has developed a lucrative trade, the insurance. We can judge the weight taken in the company by insurance companies in finding their pressure to be entrusted with the management of pensions (41). Some recent scandals in the United Kingdom and the United States have shown the dangers of private management.

Risk is also the source of new financial instruments, based on speculation in futures markets, options, margin calls, hedge funds, etc., which are called derivatives because they are variations on paris courses, or indices or interest rates. These new "products" have proliferated because in all cases, whether prices rise or they lower their manipulation can yield very large ... All these creations lead either to expand the range of what speculators can buy and sell, or to use the multiplier effect of credit to allow speculators to pay credit (but without using their own money) that they hope to sell more expensive, conceding the difference.

This expansion greatly increases the dangers of the credit system:
weakening of the currency, increasing the number of wheels that can fail, and if the system collapses, extending the scope of the disaster. The greater this "leverage" over the blast growing in scale.

And all this is done at very high speed and the initiated. For the latter, it's a bargain, but the fact that derivatives are used to move a lot of money across the planet "without any radar signals do" (42) puts unpredictable to those who produce the real wealth risk. Hence the multiple crises, crash, etc. ruining brutally States. For example, while a report by the World Bank stated in 1997 that market liberalization would result in an overall economic boom including Asia, disaster struck economies and Asian currencies, which began as early as next: falling stock indices: 80% in Indonesia, 74% in Malaysia, 42% in Thailand, 29% in south Korea, and 73% collapse of the Indonesian rupiah, won 33% of the south Korean, and 12% of the Thai baht, followed by that of the Malaysian ringgit, which preceded little one Singapore dollar, after which it was the stock market crash in Hong Kong. The yen was deemed healthy because Japan had the largest reserve currency of the world, but the yen collapsed too. Such crises are not confined to countries in East Asia: Russia had hers in 1998, then it was the turn of Brazil, Argentina and the havoc since December 2001.

The powers of the currency

The national currency is a link between citizens by balancing two opposites that are necessary for a society to exist and function: the assertion of authority, which issues the currency, and the affirmation of personal liberty, that how to spend the money we have.

The authority that issues the currency therefore has the authority to require members of society on the one hand they believe in the value of the currency since it is no longer collateralized real, and the other hand they recognize the right to buy their goods or products to all who have this money, as it has forced currency.

Beyond the power of authority, there is a real fetish related to money and which originated perhaps the fascination with gold coins used for millennia.

Finally the money is a vector of domination that shows inequality. And it becomes a means of grabbing so violent when he was loaned against interest.

Pay: help or make an investment?

Throughout history, most religions have preached against lending at interest, considered in its moral aspect: giving to the poor is a virtue, but pay a fine, it's not quite give it, is to accept deny it momentarily, so provide a service. Or the company that calls itself "modern" hijacked the word service from its original meaning and tends to make paying any service, even the most mundane. All services that were naturally become free pay, to the point that it becomes abnormal, however, is that a loan is free.

However, it should distinguish between:

- A loan for a certain period of time, which is a service against payment
- An investment of money we do not have immediate use, it is no longer there to be of service to someone whose need is known, but to "grow" their savings
- An appropriation by a bank through the "multiplier effect."
In the second case, the money is placed, usually through a bank, which then agrees to pay a certain percentage of the sums entrusted to a specific term for this purpose.

In the third case, for against the bank cash to have it manages customer accounts and does not pay. These deposits used to open credit, by writing and leverage games, and it was she who earns interest on these credits ex nihilo. Or they impinge seriously on the purchasing power of the borrower must pay a lot more than he was paid. For example, if borrowed at 15%, it shall, within 5 years, pay double the amount that was credited.

Effect snow-ball Loan Interest:

The small investor who puts his money on a book to buy later his car will spend their savings plus interest at the time of purchase.

It is not the same for the big saver, because his savings earns him enough to live on his income and even place ever. Take an encrypted to see the importance of this snow-ball effect that is the very nature of capitalism example. Imagine that someone has a million and up to 10%. After a year, he received 100,000 euros in interest allowing him to live and to raise capital. Suppose he spends 40,000 euros for a living, he may place a year after 60,000 euros in addition to its first capital and is 1.060.000 euros that will bring him the second year.

If still providing capital to 10% and saw its interests, here are the numbers:

capital at 1 January - annual expenditure - capital position at year-end

1,000,000 40,000 1,060,000 first year
second 1,166,000 1,123,600 42,400
third 1,235,960 1,191,016 44,944
Fourth 1310117 47640 1262477
Fifth 1,388,725 1,338,227 50,498
Sixth 1,418,222 53,528 1,472,050
seventh 1,560,374 56,740 1,503,634
eighth 1,653,997 60,144 1,593,852
ninth 1,753,237 63,753 1,689,484
tenth 1,858,432 67,578 1,790,854
eleventh 1,969,939 71,632 11,898,307
twelfth 2088138

We see that the capital will have doubled in a dozen years, while allowing him to live his lifestyle increasing by 6% per year.

Debt in the world

This mechanism is of interest to understand the problem of Third World debt: countries that called developing and who borrowed the rich countries should in turn provide much more than they have received from them. Some are even forced to borrow again to pay the interest due on previous loans they have already repaid the capital: it is a downward spiral, orchestrated by the IMF, we discussed the role.

Here are some telling figures on the external debt of the Third World:

In 1979, the sharp rise in interest rates (from 5 to 20%) requires the southern countries to borrow at usurious rates of interest to pay their previous debts. In about thirty years, the debt increased from 50 to 2500 billion dollars, a 50-fold increase.

Alone in Latin America between 1980 and 2000, has spent an additional $ 106 billion on what it was. In general, during these 20 years, the countries of the South have transferred to the North 3.450 billion, which is six times the debt (567 billion) that they had in 1981.

In 1998, the 41 most indebted countries in the Third World have contributed to the rich countries of the North 1,680 billion dollars more than what they received.

In 1999, developing countries had to pay $ 350 billion for debt service (repayment and interest), especially the Brazilian government had to pay 95 billion reais of interest while its health budget public was only 19.5 billion.

The debt of Third World countries (excluding Eastern European countries) is now 2.000 billion (43). SSA reimburses each year four times more than it spends on health and education.

What is to give the poor if financial rules bind him to his poverty?

Interest rates and inflation

Inflation, by cons, reduces the debt. Take the example of a loan of ten million to 10%.
Contracted today, then it will pay off in a little over seven years, 20 million. But if by then the currency was devalued by 5%, $ 20 million will pay, in seven years, a purchasing power equivalent to a little less than 14 million today.

Whoever does credit is favored by higher interest rates.
Whoever is obliged to borrow is favored when the inflation rate increases.

During the post-war boom, the inflation rate was very high, it exceeded 15%, which contributed to large investments and allowed all those who then enjoyed a large income to build wealth. Then the slogan was "curb" inflation, which has kept the value of these assets. The policy imposed by the Maastricht Treaty to the European Central Bank, giving it sole directive to prevent price inflation exceeds 2%, goes in this direction: it protects the owners of capital at the expense of those who are required to take. When interest rates on loans are higher than the rate of price inflation, the interests of "bancassurance" are provided and the number of indebted households increases.

(35) "being forced" and "legal tender" of the national currency.

(36) All European countries have adopted the euro.

(37) Benjamin J. Cohen is Professor of Political Economy at the University of California

(38) in the special issue on the currency, No. 45 of the magazine Alternatives Economiques (Q3 2000).

(39) See, for example, figures recalled by Frederic Clairmont in Le Monde Diplomatique in April 2003.

(40) See World 20/11/2003.

(41) We have included studying the pension problem. Read about the # 989, entitled "Pensions, brainwashing for pension funds" and the numbers 1008, 1017, 1022, 1026, 1028, 1032 monthly Big Relay, BP 108, 78115 Le Vésinet cedex.

(42) R. Hahnel, "Panic at the controls.

(43) People's Tribunal, Porto Alegre, Attac info 312, March 8, 2002.

Sources: http://www.france.attac.org/

Continued from Part V: parallel currencies

Yves Herbo - 12-10-2014

Foray into an area reserved too: money - Part 5

See beginning   Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

IV
1: Large monetary theories

What is striking when one delves into the literature on the currency, the number of major theories that are dealt out there with perfect assurance even when they contradict each other. We absolutely can not pretend that this area is a science, it was rather the impression that economists vis-à-vis the currency in the position of the sorcerer's apprentice: their instrument eludes them.

For we find him, we trusted in the synthesis brought forward by Jean-Marie Harribey (29) in a summer on these issues (30) university, then we wondered what remains of classical monetary theories , Keynesian and Marxist when they face the current reality.

The classical and neoclassical designs.

These two concepts, which are the basis of liberalism, have a common position on the currency, based on four ideas:

• 1 money, simple intermediary, only conceals in fact it is always the goods that are exchanged between them.
• 2 any change in the quantity of money in circulation causes a proportional change in all prices.
This creed of monetarism, which is the basis of the quantity theory of money, itself rests on three assumptions: a) the velocity of circulation of money is constant, b) the trading volume is constant and c) market equilibrium ensures full use of all capacities (so there is no unemployment). (ahem ...)

It is not necessary to be an economist graduated to see how these assumptions are unrealistic.

• 3 therefore any change in the money supply has no effect on output or employment, so it is called neutral with respect to real economic activity.
This does not prevent the economist Milton Friedman to draw a paradoxical conclusion but that is law since the Treaty of Maastricht on European Central Bank: Although the change in the money supply is "no effect" on the economy, monetary policy should be to limit the issue, because it may cause inflation ... (so she has an influence).

The news does not lack examples of the role of money on the economy between 1994 and 1999 ten countries developing experienced at least one major financial crisis. Such "accidents" that put their failed banks, annulled the economic gains accumulated over several years of painful reforms and even often provoked serious social problems (31). The case of the Argentine crisis since December 2001 is perhaps the most eloquent on the evils of these dogmas imposing precepts, those of the Washington Consensus that we mentioned above about the IMF on fiscal discipline, the rates competitive exchange etc., despite evidence to the disaster consequences.

Note that the assertion of the neutrality of money vis-à-vis the economy even more likely to be believed by the public that unlike simple transactions (purchases and sales by individuals) are easy to identify, large currency movements that really move markets are complex transactions on computer and developed in secret ivory financial and other hedge fund companies towers.

They are available only to insiders "underground world of finance (32)," which strives to make them secret.

4 • Another consequence of the fact that any exchange is under the veil of the currency being exchanged between goods, the law of markets JB Say that "any offer of goods creates its own demand." In other words, the amount of income distributed by the production is equivalent to the value of this production and the overall balance of all markets, said by Walras, recovers automatically (?) By price flexibility.

This law of markets has been criticized, for example by Jacques Duboin (33): "the law of markets is simply summed up in the statement that the product purchase products or, rather, that the goods are mutually opportunities. It can not be questioned, since noticed it at the time when we fell practiced barter goods against goods ... But Jean-Baptiste Say draws this unintended consequence, namely that overproduction can only exist in only one part of the economy, and it is easy to
remedy by increasing production in other sectors so that items are overproduced immediate opportunity. Hence he concludes that the fear of a general congestion of markets is pure fantasy. In witness whereof we must always produce more, which is the true way to finish this is incorrectly called the economic crisis, because it will never happen if we sacrifice to the god of "productivity ". This refrain is sung today by all unrepentant liberal, because the law guarantees opportunities, not only in eternity capitalism, but the gradual improvement in the condition of all human beings. He has only to produce more "...

Indeed, this view will not consider a major problems: first, the poverty which is the lot of those who do have access to any purchasing power are out of the market, then the impact of productivism that this ideology appears as a panacea, and finally the consequences of growth, assumed without damage and without limits. (but not necessarily destroy rapidly renewable resources or little (including animals and plants, rare commodities and destroy the planet in the end (pollution, soil depletion) ...

Yet it is these dogmas on which were based the European institutions ...

Karl Marx.

Money is for Marx a value-door associated with the products. For it is not the value of a property that interests the capitalist, therefore its use value, but its exchange value, because it is likely to swell the capital, once the merchandise sold. Money thus being related to the goods and being accepted as a general equivalent of all goods, we must consider itself as a commodity. Thus Marx agrees with the conventional to give the money as an instrument of exchange, without uncertainty.

According to JM Harribey, the most innovative and most fruitful of Marx in this field contribution has been to show the role of money in capital accumulation: it starts from the idea that money does not the same meaning when used for human labor or buy bread. In the first case, it is only a purchasing power. In the second, it is a right of ownership on the employee's ability to create value, and that it functions as a capital: so she conceals a social relation of alienation of labor. Indeed, the work purchased the employee produces a fruit, and it becomes the property of the person who paid the salary. If he manages to sell this fruit more than it spent, it is he who sees the gain, so that profit seems born of his capital as he comes from the work of the employee. In addition, by materializing the value created by labor, currency reduces it to a corrupt act, she empty her creative nature. Finally, if the salary is barely enough for the worker to live, he is forced to return to work, so to enrich the employer. Hold more or less money distinguishes one who holds a capital of the poor bugger (as Bourdieu) who has only his labor.

So the gain is the source of all kinds of profits, including interest earned by creditors because it is not over-work interests the capitalist (unlike the lord demanding work of his serfs) or goods produced is their monetary value, ie the added value when transformed by the sale in monetary value and thus social relations in the capitalist system, lead to commodification, reducing all human actions to a merchant act, the reduction of all human value to market value.

John Maynard Keynes.

In the 1930s, Keynes notes that the Liberals precepts are powerless to act against rising unemployment. He thinks it is a mistake not to take into account the uncertainty surrounding any economic decision: we do not know the future, and it also depends on the decisions of others. He deduces four ideas:

1 currency is a form of more liquid than any other wealth: it is immediately available, unlike movable property, land, machinery, etc. It can therefore be retained passively (hoarded) and offers the holder a choice of expectations. Note that this assumes that quality currency does not depreciate.

2 preference for liquidity offered by the currency depends on the interest rate at which it can be placed if it is low, liquidity is preferred, especially since we can assume that it will go up. As we are sure of nothing, this availability is a guarantee, and we can consider interest as a premium waiver liquidity.
We see that money, because it is the most liquid asset of all, gives the holder the opportunity to speculate. The source of currency instability and uncertainty is a way of speculation.

For Keynes, while "economic agent" (you, me, a business, etc.) has two decisions to make about the use of what they receive: a) how much will he eat, b) what shape will he choose for saving it. When interest rates fall, people betting it will go up, do not put their money: there is demand for speculation. And this varies depending on the decisions of the Central Bank.

3 away from the traditional view of monetary sphere completely separate from the sphere of the real or productive economy, Keynes believed that the currency is active, it plays a role in production and employment so it refutes the quantity theory of money, which would be verified if all factors of production were used (no unemployment) and if it was no longer possible to increase the production. He concludes that when the economy suffers from underemployment, monetary authorities can increase the money supply in circulation by lowering interest rates, which will have a double effect: to make more profitable investment projects, which a multiplier effect, increase aggregate income.
Note that the solution to end the Keynes unemployment is increasing production. It is a purely economic point of view, in that it does not envisage any limits to this growth, no barrier, for example ecological (or humanist). We did not ask, in his day, if the development was "sustainable" ...

4 Finally, as he finds that he has highlighted the uncertainty at the start did not lead to general chaos, Keynes concludes that the stability is due to a kind of implicit agreement: a good mimicry leads each agent economical to adopt the attitude of the majority, but in opposite directions conventions play consistently, so is stability prevails.

To summarize this theory, JM Harribey concludes following P.Combemale (34) that according to Keynes, fiscal policy of the state (and the policy of the monetary authority) on one side, and the detention of the currency the other is a kind of "dams" that protect the radical uncertainty but does not eliminate it.

*

Comparing these different viewpoints, JM Harribey stressed that it was Marx who first denounced the capitalist process that reduces the human being to a commodity whose use must provide a benefit to capital. This commodification today extends to all areas, as evidenced by the greed of large capitalist enterprises on all wealth, first the natural resources (land and water, oil and gas, air soon ...?) and the genome of the species (patents on life) on science, health, education, etc. The pretext is that market mechanisms would only be able to satisfy all human needs, without any alienation of their freedoms. They forget that the market is interested only solvent requirements, that is to say, those of the only humans who manage to raise money in any way whatsoever. (This is one reason why the mafia, the underworld, and reinject that divert much of the economy, have become so large and well protected by economic institutions (bought themselves) from between two world wars and the great economic crisis of 1929, becoming a key player in the system!) ...

Keynes and Marx have in common to have shown the role of money in capitalist economy, stressing that without money creation accumulation would be impossible: in fact, from a macroeconomic point of view, during a period given the capital could not recover by selling the production, more than the advances (salaries and other means of production). To make a combined profit, globally, must be put into circulation an amount greater than what corresponds to these advances Production currency, and it is this money creation that allows owners of the means of production transformed into capital surplus value produced by labor. Thus, for the credit, the banking system anticipates the monetary benefit and allows capital to appropriate at the time of sale of the products.

As JM Harribey points out, Marx's analysis illuminates financial speculation by showing that capital derives profits in two ways. On the one hand, shareholders appropriate the value of employees' work and secondly, they can make a profit by reselling their purely financial dearest they have paid shares, and this in three cases:

- If the profits of the company increased its capital

- If buyers anticipate future profits,

- And thanks to the widespread belief that the upward trend will continue during the financial long.

The latter is purely speculative: swelling corresponding financial bubble is in fact no real wealth since it is sufficient that all punters looking to simultaneously sell the same shares for their current collapses. But as the bubble swells, as prices rise, shareholders see their capital grow at a rate that has even become much higher increase in real output. This is obviously not a miracle, but the manifestation of the optimism of the capitalists, for example, the prospect of "restructuring" (layoffs, outsourcing, flexibility and increased job insecurity) that make their expected cost containment wage, so more profits, so they are betting that prices will rise: capitalist exploitation is lurking behind market speculation.

This shows why sell at the same time is an imperative for the capital, and that, therefore, capitalism involves a consumer society where salesmanship is supreme quality in defiance, if any, rights of man or the environment, since these rights are likely to make the sale less profitable.

Conclude that it is futile to try to repair the effects of the race for profits, for example on the environment. Much to fill the bottomless barrel of the Danaids because as motivations persist race similar effects multiply. If we want the environment to be respected, and if you want other aspirations to human society, such as the desire not to harm future generations by depleting non-renewable resources of the planet, we must dare to invent a system economic placing top motivations other considerations that the obsession with profitability, reporting, ROI, etc.

(29) Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University Montesquieu-Bordeaux IV.

(30) Summer University of Attac in Arles in August 2001.

(31) Read about Naim's article in Le Monde Diplomatique in March 2000.

(32) Read about the article in Le Monde Diplomatique I.Warde November 2001.

(33) Jacques Duboin, The political economy of abundance, ed. OCIA (1945).

(34) Introduction to Keynes, éd.La discovery.

Sources: http://www.france.attac.org/

Continued to Part 2 of Part IV

Yves Herbo - 09-10-2014

Foray into an area reserved too: money - Part 4

I come back on a very good study by ATTAC independent group that not only returns to the basic historical that led us to the current economic situation of the entire planet, but was widely anticipated and explained the risks that have occurred since the book which dates from 2004 ... the group continues its observations and interventions, and I am personally quite agree with their conclusions, and history:

See beginning  Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

III)

Exchange for sale - Value - Functions of money

Exchange sale

To understand how a changed economic exchange, return to the three ways to exchange goods or services. Either they are exchanged directly, immediately, without money, or we a commodity money is used as an input, is the currency of current credit is used.

*

Direct exchange without money, is the simplest way to exchange goods or services: Alice gives carrots to Brigitte and Brigitte gives apples to Alice, they agree on the amount to estimate the exchange is fair. Once this exchange took place, the two sides are even. Alice can eat apples and Bridget, his carrots. Such a direct exchange between people who know and who just by chance, what exchange, can not be applied to all economies since production there ceased to be handcrafted.

It remains possible that two extreme levels.

- Either between individuals who know enough to be trusted, then it is the exchange of services between friends or close relationships between that help.
It's a bit this "exchange of favors" that local trading systems (LETS) organize: their goal is to create exchange relationships who live nearby but who initially do not know . So they have no guarantee that the exchange is fair, hence the need for a true accounting of trade, leaving a total initiative to members of SEL. What is not simple.

- Either between countries, but it is then contracts trade involving preparation, negotiations on terms and conditions established by both parties under international jurisdiction ... which could be organized by World Organization the Exchange to ensure fairness.

*

The second method is to use via a commodity money.
Initially, Alice gives carrots to Brigitte, who, not having apples that seeks Alice gives him against another party well with a market value of which they feel both its value is equivalent to that cores provided by Alice.

After that first time, Brigitte can eat carrots. By cons, Alice has separated from his carrots and ends up with something she does not necessarily use, but it has the assurance of being able to swap later in the opposite direction, against, for example, apples equivalent value it needs. When she is found to be the second exchange, but only then also be able to eat leaves and apples.

So there is a period during which the person who received the commodity money instead of what he wanted is not really leaving because he has to find then the exchange against the goods it needs. Meanwhile, it may lose its currency being stolen, apple prices can increase, there may be a shortage of apples or just drop in the value of the intermediate object, such as it has become more abundant etc.

The intervention of a commodity money delays the time when the two parties exchanging are even. But until they have both a property that keeps real value, although it can vary.

This type of exchange has disappeared along with commodity money.

*

The third case involves the use of a receipt: Christian sells apples to Denise, who did not against party goods of equivalent value. She gives Christian a receipt in which it agrees to settle its debt to him later: Denise remains the debtor, the creditor remains Christian, they are not even.

Although Christian has provided its part, continues to affect sales as long as Denise has not produced the goods equivalent to receipt. It may require that its debtor owes. What guarantee is there that Denise on its commitment? It can be prevented to keep it by accident, die or lose his job, and may be dishonest and disappear without having paid his debt. And what guarantee is Christian that someone will agree to give value to that piece of paper that has no intrinsic value? And if he finds someone who accepts it, is it going to be good against the equivalent of what he has done?

The delay introduced by commodity money credit money, its lack of any link with a concrete richness clearly defined, not only adds a risk, because the question arises what is the commitment to pay, but also doubling it changes the nature of the transaction. On the one hand, one of the terms of trade has changed in nature, it is dematerialized and not the other. On the other hand, two interchanges now play different roles, one, the seller sells the other a real good (or service) and whose value is realized, when he receives the buyer or merchandise usable or equivalent service, so incontestable: the seller is paid by a symbolic promise for use later for an operation in the opposite direction remains uncertain.

Good (or service) that is not in one direction, from the producer to the consumer. Conversely it is a symbol that is transferred. There are more but exchange sale and purchase.

*

In fact exchange, we do not encounter in our economies, this buy-sell using credit money is now in circulation: the metal parts is worthless, tickets have never had intrinsic value and bank money is made by writing games.

The current system is a generalization of sale with credit money. There generalization debtor All nationals are debtors, since the law requires them to accept payment in the national currency and are thus obliged to honor this collective debt. There is widespread use of credit: anyone with that currency-IOU is a credit to the nation as it has a claim on it.

We shall return to the consequences of this system.

Value.

The value is a very general concept, as will the appointment of an abstract character when it is a moral value, that of a courageous act for example, or the talent shown by an artist, until to as concrete as the price per kilo of land measurement. It should at least distinguish the use value of the exchange.

The use value of a property is very personal because it is at the discretion of the one who is likely to use it and, as shown by Ricardo, each man has "a personal standard to assess the value of his pleasures "(27). It depends also on his environment and personal resources. As a result it is not possible to define a measure of the value in use.

The result is huge in human terms ... because when merchants, traders and economists use the word value, without specifying, as is common, each of us tends instinctively to think of the use value for himself. While it's always exchange value of a property is. And since the exchange between goods disappeared, this value has become, in fact, the price at which an item or service can be sold. So when we hear of value in economics, must result in market prices.

And ... wonder how it is priced. Because the reality is very far from the classical theory of the market that the price would be the manifestation of a balance struck in knowingly by the interaction of supply and demand from economic agents fully informed and acting always rational way. In fact, prices are posted by the seller, and there is rarely debate when a prospective client tries to make him change his price, it is called haggling instead of market. The confrontation between supply and demand occurs only on the capital markets (stock exchanges on debentures or that of raw materials) where the behavior of the players who set the course is the sheep of Panurge: relying on their impressions personal, they try to anticipate what they call the tendency for the sole purpose of profit, betting on the rise or fall on what will be, in their view, the behavior of others. There could be no more competent witness to describe this attitude as the Director of the Federal Reserve (the central bank of States of America): Alan Greenspan spoke of "irrational exuberance of the markets"!

So that the general utility the ethical purpose, human quality and other social aspects are considerations that are outside the concerns of those who set the "value" of an economic business or property.

Is not it time to think about how to fix the selling price of a property more seriously than punters ...?

(27) The Englishman David Ricardo (1772-1823), a pioneer in the study of classical economics is Originally from the "law" of land rent, and was the first to assert that human labor is the source of all value.

The functions of money.

To what extent can we still assume that any economics textbook states as the three functions of money?

*

The first function is to be a standard of value and unit of account because the money is interchangeable against a good, whatever it is. They say why money is a "general equivalent" which leads to not seeing standardization, loss of identity that entails when we know that this expression "property of any kind" includes time of human labor.

Indeed, and whatever its name, frank, grain of salt, or euro value unit ("UV"), the unit of account is, by definition, means to reduce everything to a common reference value. This leads to the absurd claim to measure because it is "on the same scale" as few comparable properties that a design by Leonardo da Vinci and several tons of rice.

There should at least distinguish what is measurable, quantifiable, and what does not. A ton of rice is probably a thousand times more than a single pound of this rice, but the quality of a painting or of a word processing software does not compare to that of a pastry.
These qualities can not be measured and it is not possible to compare objectively. Even with quantities of the same kind!

A standard, by definition, is universal and invariable. How can we use the term for the currency standard of value while even when the monetary standard was defined by a mass of gold, it has never ceased to vary, and formally? Then, let alone how to admit since it no longer exists at all real reference and exchange value our current euros, for example, varies at every turn? To measure wealth, it must be compared to a wealth of nature, as if to measure length, you need a length universally recognized and the meter has been defined for it. Imagine do we measure lengths with elastic meter?

Given what we have called on the evolution of the exchange, it would be more correct to say that the primary function of money is to be, not a standard of value, but a means of payment.

And if you wanted to stop mixing being and having, that is to say, distinguishing physical property and all that is imponderable, should the economy ceased to want everything to money, but only what is measurable.

*

We saw that in losing any intrinsic value and any reference to a real and available wealth, money has destroyed modern economies the exchange of goods or services. So unlike a very common expression, we are not, strictly speaking, in an exchange economy. Yet economics textbooks state that the second function of money is to be a medium of exchange and they add that the medium of exchange is "accepted everywhere and by everyone at all times in our monetary savings [that implying] that there is a social consensus and the belief that one can get at any time any property in exchange for money (28). "Confidence ... or obligation when the State imposes forced currency and legal tender of a national currency without reference value?

*

The third function of money would be a store of value. This implies that the currency is worth in order to keep it in reserve. Whereas, since it has ceased to have, she obviously stopped at the same time to be a reserve ...

It is obvious that for all the people who have low incomes, money is not a store of value because it is fast and completely spent!

As for those who earn more than they spend, they are quick to "put" their money ... just to keep it from losing its value!

Of the three traditional functions, it can be concluded that only the first survives, but only if it be stated by saying that money is purchasing power and that in the current system, it is constantly changing.

The other two, we held that when the economy is not made ​​up of individual exchanges, the currency remains necessary for the transfer of goods between producers and consumers to manage, avoid waste, adapt production needs, etc. and also to allow altering the timing to make a purchase, provided the nominal value of the currency is guaranteed during this period.

*

But the current currency has, in fact, other functions, while the standard textbooks do not usually set out ...:

One of the other functions of the "modern" currency is that of "grow" by opening a credit to its customers, the bank offers loan to the owner of the means of sharing the financial markets under its credit against financial capital, for example against a title in shares or against bonds, likely to bring him a regular income. This shows that the current currency debt has the ability to produce an annuity, so it has the additional function of being a source of enrichment.

It will ask who paid the price of the annuity.

But that's not all. Because "we do lend to the rich", this feature enrichment plays in favor of the (already) rich, who can offer a "guarantee" to the credit agency, our currency has also building function inequalities.

*

Conclude that the current currency, capitalist and modern, is:

• for low income, only one currency consumer

• for high earners, in addition, a way to get rich without providing.

(28) See the book's introduction Plihon D. "Money and its mechanisms."

Sources: http://www.france.attac.org/

Continued from Part V

Yves Herbo

Foray into an area reserved too: money - Part 3

I come back on a very good study by ATTAC independent group that not only returns to the basic historical that led us to the current economic situation of the entire planet, but was widely anticipated and explained the risks that have occurred since the book which dates from 2004 ... the group continues its observations and interventions, and I am personally quite agree with their conclusions, and history:

See beginning Part 1, Part 2

II) after

Cash and aggregates, another world

Bank money is being expanded significantly, we now distinguish the current means of payment, that everyone uses every day, and everything that can be a financial capital, such as shares of a listed company or a passbook. This led to the definition of monetary aggregates associated with liquidity, that is to say, the availability of means of payment.

The aggregate more "liquid", called M1, or all of the circulating currency, includes all means of payment available immediately, that is to say the currency and accounts.

The second aggregate M2 is M1 which we add all the credit in the short term, that is to say, the sums deposited in booklets or on deposit accounts available within less than two years. A particular amount can go from one aggregate to another, for example a deposit ticket handed over the counter to be set to a libretto goes from M1 to M2. And if, as in M2, the bank lends, it puts on a deposit account and it returns to M1.

To form M3, M2 is added to other debt securities and money market securities, which are pure credits.

The total domestic debt includes all loans, whether in the form of bank loans or issuing securities, and whether loans to companies, governments or individuals.

Some figures do understand that the circulating currency, that are manipulated every day, and that comes to mind when it comes to money, is actually almost nothing compared to all those credits which the economy depends , that is to say with respect to all payment methods: in 1999, the M1 aggregate was evaluated, France, 358 billion euros, while total domestic debt was nearly six times larger, nearly 2,100 billion euros, ... more a half times the gross domestic product!

Payment methods used for transactions in the financial markets are a much greater than the only currency circulating amount. Especially since these transactions involve all kinds of marketable securities, not only bonds issued by companies to finance their investments, and are of the credit, but also on the actions that are of Deeds. We will return.

There is thus much more money is owed to the banks than is outstanding. It is clear that the debt can never be completely refunded if anyone (individuals, industrial, commercial or government) who have a credit in a bank decide to repay their bank, not only all the money would be needed and he n 'there would have any more outstanding, but in addition, it is no longer sufficient, it still miss much. But how to pay when you do not have the money? - Borrowing from a bank, that it will pay interest, etc. It's a vicious circle, open to the infinite spiral.

The banking system, guard rails?

The Bank of France was in charge of bringing some serious organization.

We discussed the fact that it is the issuing legal tender Institute, that is to say, it is what controls the production of coins and notes. It is through payments at commercial banks that these "species" enter circulation: When these banks fail to "cash" for their clients, or they are buying "cash" already in circulation "is refinancing" with d 'private financial institutions (the interbank market), if they are addressed to the Central Bank. This then plays them for the role of "lender of last resort" by providing the monetary base in exchange for debt that they had "boarded" and are then called "rediscounting". The monetary base and created against party debt is called credit money first level.

On the other hand it is the Central Bank, which holds the current accounts of all commercial banks (said secondary to distinguish in this hierarchy) including the Treasury. It is the "bank of banks" which it requires him to file the required reserve fiat currency, it relates to their accounts and that it included in its liabilities. These reserves, the amount of which depends on the size of each bank, that is to say that this credit bank issues were, originally instituted to compel banks to ensure in cases of massive requests lawful money from their customers.

This feature is the way that has been found to allow the Central Bank to put pressure on money creation ex nihilo by secondary banks and other financial institutions. But note well that this is only an indirect pressure, changes in the rate of reserves allows the central bank to encourage or restrain money creation by commercial banks.

And looking more closely, one discovers that there are two types of interest rates, according to the lender and the borrower.

When it is the clients who lend to banks (current accounts, savings, savings plans housing), it comes to lending rates. To attract people's savings, these rates are guaranteed and often regulated, but they are low or even zero in the case of traditional checking accounts. The flexibility of banks on the deposit rates is low.

But when on the contrary it is the financial intermediaries who open credit to their customers, they apply their so-called lending rates, and although the money, they say, has no odor, these rates are fixed this time "the head of the customer", they depend on the "quality of the borrower," that is to say its ability to pay. In fact there is a benchmark lending rate, said the base rate, which is linked to interest rates, those refinancing of banks with the central bank. This base rate is the same for everyone, but it represents only what is required for borrowers "first class", those with their bank feels they "have deep pockets." For other clients, banks charge a margin above the base rate, margin increases as the customer is considered less safe. And in addition to these interest lending rates, banks are generally charge their customers various fees, commission fees, management fees, records, etc., which are rarely displayed, and can vary greatly from bank to another. These free rate can be very high; we simply say that a broker takes a "usurious" rates when including commissions, it exceeds 33% of the average rate as estimated by surveys!

Confiscated democracy

Until the early 1980s, most of the financing of the economy was so effected by credits granted by banks and financial institutions. Or they belonged mainly to the public sector. In France, in 1984, the nationalized banks
controlled 87% of deposits and 76% of appropriations. This is called "the economy of debt administered."

The scheme, in the "war boom" has created an environment adapted to the needs of the economy by promoting the rapid growth of productive investment. May grant certain sectors preferential funding, through soft loans, lower than market prices, the policy had a little control over the economy. Although banks, abandoned long ago, money creation was largely and indirectly regulated by the Central Bank, which provided as "the credit crunch". And the state maintained by the intermediary, "some" control over the country's financial activity.

And then, wham, in a few years, all this has been upset in the name of an ideology that is imposed on all so-called "developed, one after the other economies:

In the mid-80s, under the pressure of Think Tanks (20) inspired economists such as those of the Chicago school, in the wake of monetarist Milton Friedman or Friedrich von Hayek, the regime gave way to the regime "economy liberalized financial markets. "

(20) Read about Evangelicals market by Keith Dixon.

By 1985 the share of administered rate loans was gradually réduite.En 1987 is the credit crunch that has been deleted. And in 1989 it was the turn of exchange controls.

Meanwhile, in 1986, the nationalized banks and major financial institutions have been privatized. (YH: Historically, it is the "left" who did the work that the "right" could not do before with President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, although the movement was Inrush by changing laws President Pompidou ...)

At the same time was created the "single capital market", which means that all transactions, whether in cash, short or long term, are now available to all economic agents, whether or non-financial, whether domestic or foreign.

The great, the super, hyper-capital market

The creation of the "unique" capital market was the explosion of a market multiple ... who devoted the stranglehold of finance on the economy, the more total grip that even the state was subjected to this market by Act 1993 (see above "when the state is forced to borrow from the private").

Enumerate, without insisting, its multiple facets.

For starters, its interbank market allows banks to arrange them, one may have available cash that others need. It is for the Central Bank to fix the so-called policy rates: the rate "refinancing on the interbank market," who serves as a reference, and both said rate "ease" the ceiling and floors between which the interest rate may change. In fact, these rates vary from day to day, so it's not monetary policy that requires the interbank market, but the law of supply and demand, that is to say the law market.

The market in which the public usually hears about is the financial market, ie the Exchange. Two kinds of securities (or "securities") are not bought and sold there: shares of companies "listed" and bonds.

Buying shares in a company that is buying a portion of its capital. This obviously raises the risk if the successful business, its rating, or rather the symbol of its shares goes up and it is possible to realize a gain if you manage to sell more expensive they have been purchased. It can also happen if the benefits are very high, the shareholders' meeting decides to pay a fraction (a dividend) to all shareholders. But nothing is guaranteed and the company can see its shares lower, for example if a rumor suggests that it has problems. In exchange for the risk that they share and the shareholders are entitled to participate in the election of the Board of Directors of the company appoints its boss and is supposed to control. But this usually happens between "large" shareholders, insiders, and small does not make weight (a recent exception landmark: small shareholders of Eurotunnel just succeeded to agree to change the direction, the behavior had proved truly catastrophic).

By buying bonds issued by a company, it is no longer to become co-owner, but to lend him money. Indeed, when a company needs a loan and does not wish to approach a bank, it issues bonds by pledging on the duration and interest rate of the loan. Thus assured of compensation and reimbursement to date, the buyer of such debt securities takes much less risk than buying a stock and it has, therefore, no right to intervene in the internal company policy.

Financial markets are thus used to pump the savings into big business. And the pump running so strong that in 2003 it had pumped into the world a whopping 19.554 billion dollars (compared to the global GDP was about 30,000 billion).

The explosion of financial markets was also reflected by the birth of a new business, the contracts that are traded on the derivatives market and serve the businesses protect themselves against a variety of financial risks, such as changes in interest rates, fluctuations in exchange rates and even took raw materials.

For all those "financial products", there are the new home market in the second hand market. This is the first, also called primary market, new furniture securities are offered to the public, while the secondary market traded securities previously issued and sold (possibly by professional speculators).

Since 1991, the national market dung beetle is organized into sections: there is the first market, the official, whose values ​​are determined on a daily basis, the secondary market was created in 1983 for SMEs (small and medium enterprises ), the new market, opened in 1996, facing the financing of "ups" technology, and OTC on companies that are not yet or no longer listed on the official market the market.

Finally include the mortgage market, which facilitates the real estate financing by giving credit institutions the opportunity to sell their mortgages. This market has led to an innovation in the United States, known as securitization of receivables. Basically, say it allows lenders (banks and other credit organizations) to refinance by selling their receivables to non-bank investors and thus more safely manage the risks associated with these loans.

The stated aim of all these transformations, which constitute what is called a revolution, was to facilitate the comparison of all global supply and demand of capital in any form whatsoever. No longer reserved for banks choose to invest it is now exercised by "the invisible hand of the market" under the pretext that such a market on a global scale was the key to development and prosperity, the poor countries would have access to the rich countries. It was the end of poverty ...

The reality is the opposite of those promises: it is the big companies in rich countries that have benefited from this type of development, at the expense of the poor. Because the operation of the "main" is a fable, explains a witness JEStiglitz, and
can trust him since he was responsible for policy development as Vice-President of the World Bank, in 1997-1999.

Here is what this expert, Professor in five prestigious universities (Yale, Oxford, Stanford, Princeton and Columbia): "The famous" hand
invisible ", regulating the market? It is invisible because it does not exist. The market will not regulate itself. The "trickle" dear to Reagan, for whom the rich getting richer "trickles" always on the poor? This is simply not true. "(21)

Money has become ... capital (e)

In 1999, almost all banks in France as in all industrialized countries, had returned to the private sector and the capital markets have taken in managing the economy, a growing share compared to bank financing. Rest assured, banks will have lost nothing, they just expanded their activities to otherwise participate in the global economy, playing an additional role through financial markets. For example, whether the sale of new shares at an IPO or a capital increase or a bond issue, companies are forced to go through the through a bank, in which they must then, of course, pay a corresponding commission. This does not mean that banks have so far given their privilege of opening credits ex nihilo. In this area, the coverage rate (22), fixing a limit, is somehow a bridle on their neck. They recognize that the reserve requirement is for them a guarantee against bankruptcy, but if the strap is too tight, they fear that their investor clients to look elsewhere, that is to say in the financial markets, their funding. This shows that investment, that is to say, the dynamism of the economy even more dependent on this rate since the great turning "the economy liberalized financial markets." In addition, major American banks have established their risk assessment systems, allowing them to determine their reserve ratio which is obviously not without consequences on competition between banks themselves. And so it was that the era of "Cooke ratio" (c = 0.8) just ended with an agreement in Basel May 11, 2003: the ratio "Basel II" is not universal, it will be flexible. And it will, as the saying Professor at Dauphine (former CEO of Paribas) "the best investment" by "paying the risks one by one", it will increase the flexibility of the American giant. (YH: proven today (2014): Goldman Saks and JP Morgan for example, even with a few setbacks ... hold the world in their hands!)

Even without understanding the meaning and scope of these reforms, the public can see in the daily news bulletins, and for several years, that the movements of the stock market have the spotlight, and even those usually before football which is saying something! We see it as encouraging ordinary people to play its future on the Exchange, to persuade him that nothing beats the market to earn him the fortune he must dream.

The financial turmoil has indeed left the capital rein and the economy has been put at their service. But the promised fruits of this windfall spreading over the so-called developing countries are not at the rendezvous. The anti-globalization movement calling for a moratorium during which it would be possible to review these benefits. This moratorium is still denied, and during that time, the United Nations Programme for Development (UNDP) found that 840 million people still suffer from malnutrition in a world that has never produced so much ... (in 2003). - 1 billion in 2010 ...

Credit "old" to the "modern" credit

All these changes thus represent a radical change in monetary habits. But this change is insidious because the vast majority of the population still do see a value in the currency used to buy real economic assets, and possibly subject to delay purchases. Yes, and we will come back, there is more trade in goods, economic exchange has become the sale-purchase of a good or service against the currency, whose nature is different. Of these transactions, the most common, everyday, are a relatively small amount, so that the public sees money as the circulating currency. He is not aware that the currency has become a symbol experts call the consideration of financial capital. Now this symbol hides immense power over the real economy, and it is a decision tool used however irrationally, because we know that on THE market became single, motivation rather reminiscent
Players at the casino than responsible for the future of the world.

Be changed without the mechanisms of money creation, assignment of banks have been expanded, diversified and extended to other financial institutions, also denied acting brilliantly on the economy in general, but always with the sole aim their own interest. And capitalism was able to deploy his imagination, inventing new markets where it is now possible to make a fortune or to ruin by selling or buying of risk, options, etc. Speculation is an art reserved for insiders, which the common people could be adversely affected, but he can not know.

Thus, for millennia, Assyrians to the Iron Lady, or roughly 2,000 years prior to 2000 years AD, credit corresponded to the delay between the choice of a purchase and payment; but, as expressed F. Rachline (23), "on departure and arrival, regardless of the credit period, a material made ​​weight," emphasizing the fact that these terms banking have always been linked commercial or agricultural activities, then they never resulted in a stand-alone business, purely speculative, as is the case now. This "credit to the old" just to make room for a pure credit "is not based on anything other than himself," an advance as a bridgehead to be launched over a river whose the other side, if it exists, is invisible.

The franc to the euro

The principle of competition having been placed at the heart of the construction of the European Community, it was inevitable that, from its inception, the euro is under a single "control" the Market. The creation of the euro has not changed much of the way of money creation. Worse, public oversight tends to disappear a little more. The European Central Bank (ECB) now determines the discount rate of the euro, but it is not over run by elected than was the Bank of France and is less likely than ever to master the changes in the money supply. Its President is required to complete independence vis-à-vis the government, it should not obey their instructions, it does not even make their own.
One goal has been imposed by the Maastricht Treaty: prevent inflation exceeds 2% per year ... not to penalize investors.

Everything happens as if the financial and the "economists" in their service, were a world apart, an international statesman species exerting its own policy. The state organization of its own and manage its affairs independently (24). In Europe, for example, the government is the Executive Board of the ECB, it establishes its financial laws, it has its prefects, it is the national central banks, its electors, it is the Finance Ministers of States and its citizens are financial operators.

Note, however, a difference between the role assigned to the ECB and that of his American counterparts, the EDF. In Europe, the Maastricht Treaty requires each independently the ECB to ensure inflation and governments to reduce their deficit, whatever the circumstances. While in the United States, the relationship between the Fed and the administration are more flexible, is what has allowed President GW Bush to cut taxes while increasing military spending to a record deficit already mentioned . Europe and copy its neoliberal revolution in the United States, but adding a pinch, on this point, which hinders a priori its competitiveness against its biggest rival!

"Your money interests me!"

This unprecedented growth of international finance has revolutionized the global economy. Whereas before "the function of the international financial system to finance world trade and balance of payments, international financial flows have experienced explosive growth, no relation to the needs of the global economy" (25 ). In 1998, for example, 1.600 billion, equivalent to the annual GDP of France, have passed every day by the foreign exchange markets. These financial transactions are on average 50 times higher than those related to trade in goods and services.

International finance is derived from the financing of the economy to follow its own logic now, as denounced Passet "When the banker informed us, in an ad that had its moment of glory, that our money" interests ", it is our money that is, but it is he who derives power and influence. One can say the same for all institutions that concentrate our payment methods: banks and brokerage firms, pension funds, savings manager by which employees intend to finance their future pensions, hedge funds or fund performance, made for the purpose purely speculative, mutual funds, functioning as our Fund. These institutions concentrate a "firepower" formidable, much higher than that of the states "(26). Financial institutions (banks, insurance companies, investment funds and other pension funds) have objective search for the best performance from one currency to another, euros, dollars, yen for dollars, action to another, from one obligation to another. And it is to put these financial flows away from national taxation, protecting financial crime, that were created tax havens.

Anonymity money and banking secrecy and money allow the lucrative investment money, clean or dirty (that of drugs, weapons, mafia, etc.), so that companies and terrorists use the same ways to grow their finances.

Proposed by the Liberal Tobin to put some regulatory tax would penalize transfers that hedge the foreign exchange market and not those that are brought about by the exchange of international trade, as the former are distinguished by their frequency second "the long term, says one of these speculators, it gives me ten minutes! "

Evolving IMF: protect investors, not people.

In 1944 at Bretton Woods, was created when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to regulate the international monetary market, the right of individuals and companies to invest abroad leurscapitaux was limited by most countries, including the United States, to prevent the
speculative harm trade relations. But asset managers have pressured Republicans backed governments a wealthy voters (Reagan and Bush), for the lifting of such barriers. After that it's the Democratic administration (Clinton) who took the Republican initiative to fund its election campaigns; and the IMF charter was amended ... It then became, in the words of the most moderate, the manager of the credit system, with the objective in the short term to assist international creditors, and in the long term, to increase the return on their capital. For cons, the IMF is not affected by the domestic debt, for example, that consumer unien states that on average, at the end of 2002 was 40% of its income.

This brings us to the problem of Third World debt. Indeed, what's going to happen when the economy of a country, usually third world is sick and its local companies are forced to borrow abroad? - The IMF is involved because "outside of a conditioned IMF agreement, there is no possible international loan" and it requires borrowing governments to take, under the name of "structural adjustment pacts" (NOT) the necessary measures to ensure as soon as possible repayment of international creditors, that is to say, to maintain the value of the local currency. These measures, which involve privatization, austerity to limit imports and facilitate exports, reduced government spending and disruption of productive investments, resulting in increased unemployment and declining production, thus income, etc. form the so-called Washington Consensus. They are in the logic of the credit system, even if they are disastrous for the population. Because the IMF was not designed to help people in struggling countries, but to avoid international lenders to be harmed, that is to say, not to be repaid in full and with interest.

Investors stressed the risk to demand even higher interest it seems possible that the borrower country may not be able to repay them. But the worst part is that it's not them who take this risk, because if, despite PAS, a country can not pay, the IMF pays, and at taxpayer expense!

(21) Joseph E. Stiglitz, in When capitalism loses his head, ed Fayard, 2003

(22) See above "creation ex nihilo by banks

(23) Francis Rachline, "Let the money. Capitalism and alchemy of the future. "

(24) Details are provided on the organization of the ECB in the book The European Central Bank, and Francesco Papadia Carlo Santini. But this little book, published by Banqueéditeur and written by two bankers, the first of the European Central Bank, the second of the Bank of Italy is mainly a defense, uncritically, the directives given to the ECB by the Treaty Maastricht. For analysis and criticism, read The euro without Europe, how to see No. 61, January-February 2002, ed Le Monde Diplomatique.

(25) D.Plihon, the new capitalism.

(26) In Passet, In Praise of globalism. Chapter I, the real masters of the world, pages 31-32.

first conclusions

At this stage of our study we can conclude that at least two misconceptions are widespread. First they most often argue as if there was a fixed amount of money and should "do with." When in fact, such a constraint is exercised over the state. It also seems that many people are convinced that it is the government of a country that determines the mass of the currency in circulation, whereas it is in contrast to privately owned banks that issue bank money, which benefit and, in addition, the power to choose the beneficiaries of this windfall.

We realized that since it can be created easily by simple games paperwork, money-symbol has lost the guarantee that was his link with a wealth materialized. The development, first gradual, insidious, but has accelerated in recent decades, makes one see today (written in 2003 and unchanged since ...)

• monetary creation defies political decision, it has no general interest objective and increases inequality;

• creation mode that does not allow, for example, to finance a public-but not "profitable" utility, because it could not repay, nor, a fortiori, pay interest linked to the creation bank. Include thousands of examples of the dramatic consequences of the need to return any funding. For example, basic research: there is only the state that can fund basic scientific research that does not result immediately or never on a market and profitable application. In the particular case of medicine, private pharmaceutical companies, more and more large, research funding so-called "carriers", expected a rich clientele drugs, and they require market exclusivity through patents; by cons, research on diseases called "orphan" because rare is abandoned, potential customers are not sufficient to attract the investment! Constantly encountered similar situations in all areas: a common, or region, is facing a clear need, such as the construction of a bridge, a nursery or a highway for which existing skills, architects, workers available, and all materials and machinery needed. Lacks the credit. The construction can not be done because the human needs do not control the creation of money and the government are subject to these constraints;

• that this method of money creation does not weigh only this directly on society in all public areas: it requires any business that needs credit to repay more than it borrowed. This requirement directs the choice of companies which are thus induced either to offset their increased costs by "savings" made ​​about working conditions or neglect "by economy" precautions deemed too expensive, either to adjust their selling prices in order to pay the interest on their loans, in which case it is the customers who pay the interest, so that pay an annuity to the banking system.

Inability to fund unprofitable business obligation earnings growth, the need to reduce costs, this method of money creation weighs on society in all areas of health, working conditions, environment, knowledge, evolution, culture ...

Which should lead public opinion to ask a few questions:

• Where does the choice of method of money creation?
- No political debate is at its origin.

• A there was spontaneous?
- History has shown on several occasions (including in France, two coups Napoleonic) pressure on those in power to impose the privileges banks still enjoy.

• This choice is it immutable?

- Nothing to do, especially not the money, it has changed throughout its history ... (YH: and there was even, there are only 450 more years, entire civilizations that passed by...)

Sources: http://www.france.attac.org/

To be continued in Part IV

Yves Herbo

Foray into an area reserved too: money - Part 2

I come back on a very good study by ATTAC independent group that not only returns to the basic historical that led us to the current economic situation of the entire planet, but was widely anticipated and explained the risks that have occurred since the book which dates from 2004 ... the group continues its observations and interventions, and I am personally quite agree with their conclusions, and history:

See beginning Part 1

I) after

Creation ex nihilo by banks

Explain this effect with an example:

Let's say you make a deposit of 1,000 euro notes (also called base money "first level") with your bank. Not only that bank can then use its discretion to those 1,000 euros, knowing that you must (it is written in his books), but also because of the deposit, it is allowed to open, for another customer, a credit in the amount slightly lower, the difference being which corresponds to "reserve requirements". If this reserve is 10 to 100, a "reserve ratio" or "coverage" c = 0.1, your deposit of 1,000 euros allows your bank to open 1,000 x (1 -0.1) = 900 euros of extra credit (or credit second level) for another client. The latter, by spending it, draws a check which will inevitably lead to a bank, or another, and it will then open, too, an additional credit of 90 900 less mandatory reserve or 810 euro credit graduate level. The bank will therefore 900 + 810 = 1,710 euros on its deposit account. At the fourth level of the chain of credit from another bank will create even 729 euros, 656 euros a fifth, etc. This is a mathematical series whose theory shows that the sum of all these appropriations from the initial 1,000 euros is 1 / c, in this case 1/0,1 = 10 times the initial amount. In other words, if the reserve requirement imposes a coverage c, banks can increase the credit they create the multiplier N = 1 / c.

Until the 1970s, each country was free to set its own coverage. But the activity of banks has become increasingly international, it was necessary to harmonize these rates. The first agreement was signed in Basel in 1974 and a common value was first adopted by a dozen major Western countries, and then accepted by over 100 countries in 1988, it is the ratio Cooke which set the mandatory reserve c = 8%. This system gave then to the secondary banks the opportunity to multiply 12.5 by the amount of bank money in circulation.

The only limit to creation is the risk to the bank if ready for clients unable to repay, to be drawn into their bankruptcy. This "cover" had no other purpose than to avoid the danger to banks.

Arbitrary power, unknown and dangerous

This privilege to pay N times more than what is given to them give private banks and other credit institutions arbitrary power over the economy: they have the choice of customers for whom they are creating this currency, and they are taking full benefit by the interest that they require. While they do not bear all the risk because funds that are open and are private money without warranty, unlike the monetary base.

This is a huge hidden power, so misunderstood, because private money and monetary supply the same accounts, which can be drawn from the same checks. And private currency and legal tender blend for use, credits are created ex nihilo indeed change for those receiving checks as payment, regardless how were provisioned accounts on which the checks are drawn .

Everything is fine as long as customers have confidence in the banking system. But when they all come at the same time withdraw "liquid" supposedly equivalent to their holdings, it is the collapse of the system and ruin it for all its customers, as was seen in late 2001 in Argentina, s' occurred in 1998 in Russia earlier in Thailand and Malaysia, and Indonesia, etc. Where to next?

Or credit institutions not only have the power to create money and bring it back to them, which allows them to buy what they want, but they at the same time, an interest in the heritage of their debtors when they are failing. To understand it, still use an example: you have a field and you need 10,000 euros to build your house on it; you are forced to borrow it for the 10,000 euros to your bank. This one, for you open the credit, do not take them to another customer. She enrolled in the accounts that you owe him 10,000 euros, plus so much per cent interest (which, ultimately, can, say, 18,000 euros), and it takes a mortgage on your property. If, ultimately, you pay him 18,000 euros, it will void your debt, but it will collect 8,000 euros in interest.

And if you can not adjust the 18,000 euros, she is entitled to be paid on the sale, which it will force you, your property or your home. So that the permission given to banks to create counterfeit money, forgiveness, private money, makes them winners in all cases unless they have lent to insolvent clients.

It includes all the efforts, surveys, advertisements, procedures, often in collusion with real estate agents and other traders (who are licensees in sales to organized credit is the case for car dealers) to organize hunting to customers who pay to get the maximum, even for ... plucking. The fight against excessive debt is to discipline the customers trapped, but not to prohibit such practices. We can also understand why the offices of banks are beautiful buildings ... Compare the office in which you receive your bank to enter into a credit, with the "local" in which you received the teacher of your children to talk about their future !!

How else by these creations of money ex nihilo, companies such as France Telecom, Vivendi and how many more would they have been able to buy as "asset" to the point that their companies have found themselves in debt for tens of billions euro ...? Who can not make millions, but to borrow so many billions?

These examples point to the role of credit throughout the economy. And this preview is staggering. We discovered that the banking organizations that produce nothing tangible, actually, thanks to this private money they create from scratch (so to speak ...), control of the destinies of nations and the global economy : they can control the world's monetary resources, lead governments to beg, they can even handle, and therefore make or break entire nations.

Imagine, this is pure fiction, a landmark of the banks sufficiently venal politician to accept to borrow money to build up a formidable machine to destroy it incites then to plunder an entire country to repay its debt before collapsing ... it will be time when it lends money to the country to rebuild and make sure that taxpayers pay him interest ... this leads us to think of the financial obligations of the state.

The Treasury

The institution responsible for enforcing the budget law, which establishes, for each calendar year, the income and expenditure of the State is the Treasury. This mission asks her two balance problems. For one thing everyday, because the amount of revenue the state on any given day is obviously not equal to that of spending by him on the same day. On the other hand the annual state budget is rarely balanced, it is almost always in deficit, so the Treasury has to ensure all expenditure, also play a role of treasurer, not just a manager, for find additional funding to tax revenue, which is the additional public debt.

How does the Treasury to carry out these two balances? It features first in coin, since the state has control of its manufacture as we remembered.

But it makes very little since the amount of all parts is hardly one percent of the money in circulation. Most of the money available to the Treasury is essentially entry form, but, unlike other banks, without the right to create. This currency is made up of deposits on behalf of the Treasury and postal checking accounts (CCP). The former are made ​​by the Treasury correspondents. Before 1 January 2002 any individual could be corresponding Treasury, that is to say have an account, but since then, it is forbidden and Treasury correspondents are no longer exclusively, as public or semi-public and local authorities. By against, any individual, association, and any corporation, public or not, can have a CCP. These accounts are managed, such as bank accounts, by post (8), but they are included in liabilities of the Treasury

Explain this: when you have an income, such as wages or retirement, you can choose to file either a bank account or on a PCB. If you choose a bank account, the bank at which you are registered for this sum of its liabilities, which means that it agrees to pay you (and you trust it) and records at the same time this sum to his credit, which means that it becomes the owner, allowing him to dispose of, for example to lend or open loans, which earn interest to its shareholders. If you choose an account to Giro, the Post included this amount in liabilities of the Treasury, which means that the State agrees to reimburse you (which is guaranteed a priori more serious than that of a bank private), the Treasury can then dispose, but unlike the commercial banks not to open new credit and only to smooth, day to day, the revenue and expenditure of the state.

And by the way that all citizens, let alone any officer, did not scruple to choose a CCP for help rather public services that affect us all, that the private interests of banks, especially since none of those -Ci is nationalized, that is to say that the state does not endorse. It is likely that this attitude results, again, ignorance of the public vis-à-vis all these mechanisms, ignorance coupled with a state maintained by preconceptions mind: for example the Post is often referred contemptuously as the "bank for the poor", which does not make sense. (YH: Note here that even the Post has lost its status as an intermediary with the state and has since been privatized by the last French Liberal governments!)

dollar-toliet-paper.jpg

When the state is forced to borrow private ...

Since the deposits on the Treasury accounts are not resources for the state, one wonders what additional resources compared to the tax revenue the state treasurer may find when the budget is in deficit. We discover that the bank of the state has another disadvantage compared to commercial banks. Among the functions of the Central Bank, we will come back, it is the "lender of last resort" for all commercial banks who can call her when they need funding.

One naturally thinks that the banker of France may, like others, seek, if necessary, at the Banque de France. It was possible, and then it gave a credit to the government directly on behalf of the Treasury, which corresponded to a direct creation of central bank money.

But the Act of August 4, 1993 ended that possibility by redefining the status of the Bank of France (which like many other banks had been nationalized in 1945). To prepare for the Economic and Monetary Union in Europe, this law required the independence of central banks vis-à-vis governments. In Article 3 prohibits the Bank of France "to allow overdrafts or to grant any other type of credit to the Treasury or any other agency or public enterprise." The Bank of the State and was barred means that banks of all individuals and all businesses have! Incidentally such a transfer of part of the powers of government had been ruled unconstitutional by the Constitutional Council ... Never mind, we found an arrangement!

So what resources he remains in the state, which must make public investments that can potentially benefit many generations, while its current revenues can not insure?

Of course, the government may decide to "selling the family silver", while supplies last, that is to say, selling its real estate (9), privatize public enterprises, selling shares that still holds the State eg Air France, EDF, SNCF, etc.

And, of course, bring in private.

The Treasury issues for the purpose of treasury bills, negotiable medium-term, 2-7 years, and longer-term obligations. So the people who can afford it can move without risk, money to the state, and it is required not only to repay maturing but also to find additional resources to pay for their interests , which are also guaranteed.

The State thus puts a secure investment available, maybe not richer because they prefer better and faster returns, but of all those who have more money than they have the immediate use.

And since the banks, they have retained the right to create money, they can, like other private credit establishments, such as American pension funds or other ... pay the State to draw interest guaranteed!

In short, as it is not part of the "credit institutions that are approved by the monetary authorities to create bank money" and he abandoned most of its sovereign right to coin money, the state is obliged, when tax revenues are insufficient to invest in the public domain and to finance the public service, to borrow from the private organizations. And taxpayers should therefore repay, by paying more interest.

In a manual collection "Fundamental" Hachette higher learning, which is the collection "Library Basic Law student politics, economics and management," written by a professor at the University of Strasbourg, we read that when a community of payment, France for example, financing needs that exceed their ability to pay, "it is the role" of the financial system to address this imbalance by money creation, which is the mechanism by the banking system which meets the needs when fundraising is not enough. Point. It is taught as if it were a law of nature, an obligation as unavoidable as gravitation. It seems to ignore or consider that it is without significance since no allusion is made​​, the fact that this is how the currency created condemns all taxpayers to pay an annuity to financial institutions ...

So anyone wondering if it's not, on the contrary, the bank of the State should have the sole right to create money, even, of course, to limit this right by rules so that the currency of the public interest is created within the productive capacity of the country, but in the public interest without payment to private.

Served by a private taxpayer cash

It's not that the money is created ex nihilo is abnormal. It is absolutely necessary that a currency is created prior to production, it is natural that funds are advanced and used to allow the provision of means of production. What is intolerable is to give some individuals the power to decide these investments to make a profit for them and paid for by taxpayers.

Because these interest payments, called elegantly debt service, are far from being of the order of magnitude of "overheads". Instead, it is amazing to see their importance, what can be done easily by reading simply sheet sent annually by the Ministry of Finance with the declaration of income. This service is in effect one of the most important budget lines:

In 2001, after the biggest expense, one devoted to preparing for the future, that is to say, the education and research (21%), had five budget lines of the same size (between 12 and 13%) and the debt service, or 240 billion francs, was one of them! The taxpayer then paid almost as much to pay such interest, arising from the choice of method of creating our money, as for the whole of justice, security, environment, culture and agriculture (ie 244 billion francs)!

For 2003, the planned distribution of state spending, the largest share is still, thankfully, one that prepares for the future, 21% for education, research and development. The second line, or 15%, is expected to benefit local communities (the government has undertaken to discharge the state on them, it must be a part of their budget back). And the debt service comes third row just behind, with 12% of the budget is flush with spending for national defense (10). Thus the state has spent more in 2003 for "the service of the public debt" to ensure that employment and solidarity, or 10% of the budget (11). Taxpayers paid 2% more to pay the rent to private and to try to reduce the "social fracture" ... (YH = talking 2003 here ... but listen to these politicians who speak only of rigor and 'increases in taxes, VAT, debt repayment over the world in 2012 ... as if it had not been done for ages, to no avail ...)

Comparing the budget revenues, we find that two-thirds of income taxes from taxpayers are used to pay the interest to private individuals.

(9) even consider selling public buildings, such as prefectures, town halls or schools ... probably subsequently rented to the owner? (Yh = note in Greece in 2012, it became possible to hire the services and equipment of the national police ... that the majority of Greek ports and rail services have moved to private interests and completely .. Chinese. ...)

*

All countries today are in debt, but the cake back in the United States whose national debt already reached 6.116 billion dollars in August 2000, but the deficit has been greatly increased by the tax cuts, by d other fiscal measures and increased military spending of the administration of GW Bush. In October 2003 it reached 400 billion a year, the forecast of Congress adjusted on November 17, posing 480 billion for 2004 (12), not foreseeing a possible balance, we do not know, moreover, how that from 2012 (YH today we know that it's even worse and we no longer talk about balance but "limitations"). To finance the debt of the federal government, the United States obviously looking to sell in dollar government bonds. They are already for a mere 3.500 billion. But in recent years, the US Treasuries were mostly bought, not by a few rich Americans (who now prefer to invest in Europe, where interest rates are higher ...), but many (40%) by Central Banks Japan and China.

Although we talk a lot more, the debt of the least developed countries is less than that of the world's richest country known, but it exceeds 2.500 billion in total. That of France rose from 1.782 billion francs (271.66 billion euros) in 1990 to € 948 billion in 2003 (6.218 billion francs) ...

(10) including the famous asbestos removal Clemenceau just wander through the Mediterranean without finding a port ...

(11) At last report (March 2, 2004), public debt of France would be around € 1,000 billion, and "service" would be more than 40 billion euros, the second after the civil budget of Education.

(12) but in February of that year he already reached $ 540 billion.

II)

developments

The fascination with gold, with empirical measures taken in an emergency so that the public does not lose confidence in the banking system until the recent installation of the dictatorship of the markets throughout the economy, history of money, under each of its three forms appears as the ongoing struggle between the greed of those who want to be the instrument of their power and concern for those in charge of damage control.

The system of the gold standard

For centuries, the currency of France was defined as a certain weight of gold, that is to say, it was part of the system known as the gold standard. This reference does not yet guarantee stability, the weight of gold in the monetary unit declined gradually over time. Thus, John the Good franc weighed 3.87 grams of fine gold, while in 1785, that of Louis XVI in weighed more than 0.29 grams (13). The Convention, which gave the book the name of franc (14) and defines the size and weight of the pieces (15), fixed by the law of 7 Germinal (March 28, 1803), the value of the franc germinal to 0.290 grams fine gold. But the continued devaluation (16 since.

The mid-nineteenth century, the system of the gold standard was seen as a way to "unify performance and economic policies of nations" (17). He effectively ruled for fifty years, gold being then the only reference currency of 59 countries, which facilitated trade between them. These convertible currencies remained until World War II. In the United States the 1929 crisis led to so many bank failures (18 that, upon taking power in 1933, Roosevelt was forced first to close all banks to stop the rush of the audience from the counter claim his due gold, and subsequently abandon the convertibility of the dollar, but retained its reference to gold ($ 35 an ounce, or 31 grams) for trade against other currencies.

Bretton Woods, signed in 1944 between 44 nations, together constituted an international system which fixed the exchange rate. Gold continued to play a monetary role at the international level, through the dollar, who thus a leading role in other currencies. But the deficit of the balance of payments of the United States, related to their war against Viet Nam, altered the trust of other countries and external convertibility of the dollar could not resist, Nixon officially abolished August 15, 1971. since then, the creditors of the United States can no longer, as did De Gaulle, demand payment in gold amounts that are owed. The demonetization of gold at the international level has been effective since 1976 (agreements Kingston), where any reference to gold was removed from the statute of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Gold is no longer anywhere in the world, a legal tender, but central banks still retain in their coffers, because this metal is still considered a safe bet ...

(13 In 1541, the Gold Coin (2 pounds) of Francis I in weighed more than 1.46 grams.

In 1602, the golden crown of Henry IV (under 3 pounds 5) weighed 0.99 grams.

In 1640, the Louis Louis XIII (10 pounds) weighed 0.62 grams.

In 1700, that of Louis XIV, 0.44 grams.

In 1726, that of Louis XV (24 pounds), 0.31 grams.

(14) Law of 18 Germinal (April 7, 1795)

(15) Law of 28 Thermidor (August 15)

(16) The 25 / franc reduced to 0.059 grams of fine gold 6/1928, or 20.3% of the franc germinal

1/10/1936 0.044 g 15.2%

21/7/1937 13.5% 0.039 g

11/12/1938 0.025 g 8.6%

8/11/1942 0.021 g 7.2%

26/12/1945 0.0075 g 2.6%

20/9/1949 0.0025 g 0.86%

24/7/1958 0.0021 g 0.72%

12/27/1958 0.0018 g 0.06%

1/1/1960 g 0.001 0.000018%

11/8/1969 g 0.000016 0.000

(17) John Kenneth Galbraith Money, whence it cam, Where It Went.

(18) (659 bankruptcies in 1929, 1,352 in 1930 and to 2,294 in 1931)

The choice of gold as a standard was not the panacea for many reasons. The reference to a metal, whatever its physical qualities, is completely arbitrary and that this choice does not ensure the stability of the currency is not its biggest flaw. It indeed gives undue power to producers of the metal, simply because the money available depends on them. Thus the European economy in the sixteenth century was dominated by importing silver from the mines of South America newly conquered, while the metal was, in fact, far from being a matter first vital to the economy of Europe. Similarly we know the bitterness of the gold rush in the Klondike and power exercised by the owners of the gold mines of South Africa. Not only the economic role of the metal chosen does not match reality, but there is also no objective reason that makes the change in the mass of metal mined is one that suits the financial needs of the economy.

In fact, it is the abandonment of any reference to the currency in the reality that is far-reaching. If it is not secured on a measurable physical quantity, and if the state does not guarantee them, it is so easy to arbitrarily increase the weight that you can not know what one receives when we accept this money in payment.

The vagaries of legal tender

About the origin of banknotes, we saw that their use was first poured freely, then a group of bankers acquired the privilege of only the issue pretext thus limit their uncontrolled proliferation.

Several confidence crises occurring, sometimes turned into panic, he had to find "instruments" to avoid a catastrophe that will cost the public's faith in the banking system. Which? "The precursor of all the instruments of reform was the Bank of England. No economic institution has never enjoyed as long as a prestige ... and it's a well-deserved reputation as the art of managing money, as well as almost all of the mystery in which he exudes, was born there . "writes JKGalbraith (19), explaining how the Bank of England, from 1720 to 1780, was affirmed in the role of guardian of the money supply and manager of the financial problems of the government. She began by removing her London tickets competitors. Its own notes were then easily converted into metallic money, so ... no one asked the conversion! Tickets from its competitors is far smaller inspire the same confidence, the Bank of England became virtually the only source of paper money, the others being only commercial banks, which were willing to loan these deposits. Then later when Britain had to conduct two wars, against its American colonies and against Napoleon, and he took it for the money, the Bank of England suspended the convertibility of its notes in coinage : the tickets were then forced currency.

In 1844, after several adventures, the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel (1788-1850,) fixed by the Bank Charter Act the total amount of emissions allowed tickets (14 million pounds at the time), this amount being guaranteed by state good. In addition, the Notes will be guaranteed only in proportion metal crate. The Bank of England was no longer able to fulfill one of the functions that would have averted a catastrophe provide funds if all account holders came to collect their due from banks. The application of the law was nevertheless suspended whenever she would be too embarrassed the Central Bank ...

Similarly, in France, the government had to intervene whenever a crisis of confidence threatened. Until 1848, the notes were not legal tender, that is to say that no one was forced to accept them as payment, but they were convertible. At the time of the 1848 revolution, and the legal tender fiat were reported and then alternately removed and restored, and finally recovered since 1939.

This is the example of the Bank of England which was followed by other countries to define the roles of central banks such as the Bank of France or group of banks constituting the Federal Reserve (abbreviated to the "Fed" ), established in the United States by the Federal Reserve Act of December 13, 1913.

The Bank of France has never been required to maintain a ratio of the amount of its gold reserves and the amount of its notes in circulation. It expected commercial paper and consented lombard. The amount of notes issued depended, in principle, the needs of trade, but this program was limited in 1870 to a maximum set by law. But when the ceiling threatened to be punctured ... a new law would raise him!

Everything changed in France with the outbreak of the First World War. From August 5, 1914 the "carriers" of tickets rushed the counters of their banks for the issuance of their due. And there were obviously too many tickets for the commitment to repay, there was yet registered, to be honored! So the government decided that the Bank of France was released from his promise: he decreed the moratorium and forced air, which, since they had no intrinsic value, represented now nothing.

A very partial convertibility was restored from 1928 to 1936, but since then the notes of the Bank of France had legal tender fiat, until they give way to the tickets of the European Central Bank.

(19) Money, whence it cam, Where It Went be found throughout the epic of the creation of central banks and the definition of their duties.

Yves Herbo 02-10--2014 (more)

Foray into an area reserved too: money - Part 1

I come back on a very good study by ATTAC independent group that not only returns to the basic historical that led us to the current economic situation of the entire planet, but was widely anticipated and explained the risks that have occurred since the book which dates from 2004 ... the group continues its observations and interventions, and I am personally quite agree with their conclusions, and history:

Foray into an area reserved too: money

Foreword

The main themes of ATTAC, whether the tax on transactions between currencies, tax havens and financial crime, the abolition of Third World debt and the role of international financial institutions (IMF, WTO, World Bank) , retirement and pension funds, privatization of the public and the patenting of life services, all revolve around money. Yet this central theme is not directly addressed.

Why the citizen who refuses to undergo the dictatorship of the markets it not call into question the tool of the dictatorship? Leave this area and experts, that is, to a reserved area beyond any citizen control.

Although the complexity of monetary issues is daunting and discouraging, we wanted to address them in an attempt to bridge the gap between those who know and can take advantage of those who do not know, and suffer the consequences.

*

We left with a very familiar idea of ​​money: it is what allows to trade with those around us, so this is a social link. And we were ready to believe that the currency is only the intermediary between people, ie it is politically neutral.

We knew that his form had changed the course of history, but we were convinced that this development had followed naturally that technical, so she had no other effect on the relationships between people that facilitate their exchanges ... Some of us were even convinced without really having asked the question, that the currency of a country was naturally created by his government's decision !!!

We understand first that "money", we always talk about, is no longer valid. We discovered, but with astonishment, that the creation of legal tender notes, essentially private interest. Then we learned, among other things, it is not guaranteed by any real wealth, which has opened the market, lucrative, risk. And that parallel currencies, such as LETS, were no more than illegal tickets and restaurant vouchers and other loyalty cards that retail chains offer their customers for advertising.

*

Brought to reconsider conventional views, we asked a lot of questions. The discussion leads us to some conclusions and proposals:

First, that in a democracy, it is the political debate that should return the key decisions on the currency of the country, namely: its creation, its total mass and the roles assigned to it.

Then, as a country's money supply should represent the wealth it produces for the offer for sale.

And finally, we cease to confuse being and having mixing in a single accounting, materials with human resources. These, by their nature, are not measurable.

*

Which brings us to defend a transformation of money, that we sketch to finish. With this new transformation, the economy would be the management of physical assets.
And income received by an individual would not be the price at which he manages to sell itself, it would be based on his personal and intended to give him the means to develop according to their tastes, aspirations and skills needs.

But to achieve this, we must first a majority of people are aware of these issues the currency.

Thank you to Jean-Pierre, Gerty, Gilbert, Guy, John and Annie for spent together since June 2000 in an attempt to clear brush this area long evenings.

summary

Unlike any standard textbook economics that addresses the chapter on money by claiming that it has three functions (unit of account or standard of value, medium of exchange and a store of value), we preferred to understand the meaning and especially the scope of these claims, first to know, in the first part, with the three possible forms of money: commodity money, banknotes and bank money.

In the first chapter, so we look for each of these three forms, what is its nature, what is its mode of creation and what guarantee it presents; and in the second chapter, we recall how has changed the course of history the use of these three forms of money to the most recent transformations of liberalization and deregulation.

The third chapter asks us to consider the basis on which all economic exchange and is based on the concept of value, before presenting the three classic functions attributed to the currency for comparison with current reality.

In the fourth chapter are briefly recalled big monetary theories, those schools of classical and neoclassical thought, Keynes and Marx.

This package allows to consider the relationship between money and society are addressed in Part II.

In the fifth chapter are discussed the consequences, both nationally and internationally, since money is a debt that involves a national community:
- Operational risk associated with this form of currency, effect-ball snow-interest loan and Third World debt. The bank interest related to money creation is legitimate? Who wins and who loses in the fight against monetary inflation, which was given as the sole objective of the Central Bank European?

The sixth chapter examines the parallel currencies, whether the form, most widely spread, vouchers or cards issued by large retail chains to retain their customers, or the local currency intended to offset disadvantages of the official currency for the population.

Finally, the third section attempts to answer the question: what other transformation of the currency could eliminate the adverse effects on society transformations that led to the current currency? What could be the modalities and what openings it would offer?

part one

"The alchemists of the Middle Ages tried to make gold with some base metal, modern alchemists, we aptise bankers have discovered a way to make money avecun little ink." Jacques Duboin (eyes open).

I
Grain or sorrel, like a promise

There is no definition of money on which economists have agreed. While economic textbooks usually start by saying that money has three functions as if it were a definition. We prefer to begin by recalling the origin and method of creation of the three forms of money which the first, commodity money was casting for millennia, and the third bank money is, by far, the largest since less than a century.

The three forms of currency in circulation.

The parts, which are the first form of our currency, are the memory of commodity money primitive. The latter, appeared some 5,000 years BC, was a commodity, such as grain or cattle (1), to be used or exchanged later against another commodity.

The choice of this intermediate goods evolved then to the metal (copper, silver and gold) preferred over others for its qualities: unalterable, stainless and handy. The first metal parts would be the electrum staters (natural alloy of gold and silver) appeared in Lydia around 680 BC: a stranger had had the idea to melt the ingots into small plates of the same weight and the same way to avoid having to weigh every transfer since now enough to count.

But in the species is said "ringing and cents" divisional of our present currency, there is more noble metal.

(1) herd hoi said in Latin from which comes the word pecuniary.

*

Although we can trace its origin to the Sumerian civilization, the greenback, the second form of our currency, has unsafe roads in the Middle Ages, leading to fears of being robbed merchants and ruined if they carried their gold coins. In the seventeenth century English travelers became accustomed to entrust to the goldsmiths of the City of London, against a receipt assuring can get them when they pleased, upon payment of a custody justified. Then these receipts, the goldsmith notes or bank-notes were used as a method of payment and the public became accustomed to accept as money because they were easier to manipulate than the parts and that the one who had received guaranteed to be able at any time re-exchanged against gold deposited.

The goldsmiths were quick to realize that we never called them all the money they had on deposit, but only a very small part. They concluded that they could without much danger, to risk much sign receipts they had gold in their vaults and they used such receipts "short" for their own shop ... Former bankers from Italy and Amsterdam, which were issuing, too, the deposit receipts when they are deposited cash, proceeded as goldsmiths of the City of London. Hence the spontaneous generation of banknotes, received multiple copies of a single deposit. The value of the transaction is significant for the person who utters: indeed, when the currency ceases to be good, is just a piece of paper, make change provides against the value of the banknotes flowing in the market. This was all included counterfeiters long time!

But if anyone could open a bank, the risk was great, especially in times of trouble, the audience would claim the gold in exchange for all the notes and noticing too many and their alleged convertibility was a decoy ... to eliminate this risk, a group of bankers undertook to obtain the exclusive right to engage in this. But to exclude others, it was the intervention of the state. Seizing the opportunity of a need for money of their sovereign, a group of English bankers in exchange for an advance, obtained from William III that gives them the sovereign right to print money (the other being the sovereign rights right to raise an army, to administer justice, to make war or sign a peace treaty). It was an amazing privilege as it is the creation of the national currency! But so was born the Bank of England in 1694 (2). And a similar scenario, which had already been practiced in Sweden occurred in most other countries around the same time. The Bank of France, for example, was born thanks to two coups:

In 1799, the Revolution is nearing its end, two Parisian bankers, one answering the remarkable name of John Bartholomew The Coulteux Canteleu and the other to that of Jean-Baptiste Perregaux, sent to Bonaparte, then in Egypt a messenger for the offer him money, according to historian Dauphin-Meunier (3) plotting a coup. A few days later the Directory was overthrown "to save the Republic" and two weeks later, the two bankers put 12 million francs available to the new government. Bonaparte will thank: not only did he appoint senators, but shortly after his coup of 18 Brumaire, February 13, 1800, he accepted the articles they gave him a new bank, although qu'appelée Private Bank France with a capital of 30 million, of which they became directors with Bonaparte and his brothers and two other "conspirators" Cambacérès and Lebrun. The purpose of the bank was to discount commercial paper, but it had competitors, the main one being the Caisse discount and trade, that Bonaparte first tried to discredit. Unsuccessful, he even sent troops to seize the accounts and hunt staff. And as the bank still refused to surrender, the Consul Bonaparte, by the law of 14 April 1803 (4) gave the bank an organic constitution and he conceded the monopoly of issuing notes for fifteen years in Paris and major cities where it would branch. Then, as, in his view, its bankers were trying to take too much independence, Napoleon rewrote the constitution gave him "basic statutes," which remained in force until "in 1936, in which it was headed by a government kind of constitutional monarchy: shareholders always elected the regents and the censors, but management was under the tutelage of a governor and two deputy governors appointed by the emperor also his privilege was extended for 25 years and its capital. increased to 90 million. This privilege it was then renewed, and after the revolution of 1848, became the exclusive nationwide.

It is then for providing Napoleon III 12 million he needed to ratify his coup of December 2, 1851 that the bank still called "France", gained independence.

*

The third form, bank money, was born with the first banks: the time of the Greeks and Romans, transfers between current accounts of merchants were already made by bankers.

In the fourteenth century invented the bill of exchange, or processes for remote payments: the banker remuneration, stands between the merchants to centralize bills, evaluate and perform clearing and exchange between different currencies.

In the eighteenth century became the discount: banking, buying a bill to his client because of credit.

It was not until the twentieth century that bank money is released to the general public, who do not often aware however, that John Kenneth Galbraith commented: "The process by which banks create the money is so simple that the mind is still confused. "(5)

This currency is indeed a set of writing in the accounts of institutions that create it, and it is transferred from one account to another by means of an order, which can be written (a check) or computer (a credit card). Specifically the process of creating bank money is the simultaneous increase in assets and liabilities held by a financial institution account.

(2) two years after its foundation, it has issued 1,750,000 pounds in tickets when she was in reserve than 36,000 pounds of gold.

(3) Read "The bankers Bonaparte" by JM Vaslin in The World Economy November 5, 2002.

(4) Law of 24 Germinal Year XI.

(5) John Kenneth Galbraith "Money, whence it cam, Where It Went," in French "Money" translation.

It's so easy you might think that the issue of this form of currency is restricted to government, which would use it to adapt national money supply needs of the entire population ... Well, and also amazing as it seems, not only this facility is not reserved them, but it's not even a matter for governments!

It is the privilege of some banks and other credit organizations defined as follows:
" Every credit institution that received monetary authorities a" license "to be made available to customers or managing means of payment and conducting financial transactions with non-financial agents (ie the businesses, individuals or administrations) can create bank money. "

In France, the privilege of "managed transferable deposits" was in 1999 to 70.9% reserved for commercial banks to 9.4% in the Giro, 6.2% for savings banks (since 1978), 11.6% to the Treasury and 1.9% other (including the Bank of France). But on December 31, 2001, this privilege has been removed to the exchequer!

Our currency in its entry form is created by financial institutions that are predominantly private interest groups.

Dual enrollment, or "provision" of a bank account can occur:

by depositing cash (notes and coins) or by transfer from another account, or finally through a loan from the bank.

In the latter case, the credit results in a dual enrollment, just as if there had been real deposit, sometimes writes as follows: ". Loans make deposits"

This third method of funding generated by a virtual repository such as a draft, it is a promise, so generates ex nihilo bank money: it is subject to the same payment instruments (check books or credit cards (6)) that in both processes related to a non-fiction submission, so it causes the increase in the money supply in circulation when the flow of these new loans are higher than the flow of repayments of earlier loans.
The so appropriated by a commercial bank account several times the amounts that have been filed ... and thanks to the miracle of a process that we call back after thinking about the security relating to each of the three forms of currency.

Warranty? - Fewer insured

When they were gold or silver coins had intrinsic value, than the metal they contained. This value was guaranteed: manufactured under the control of a sovereign, his image therein, which showed that he was the guarantor of its weight and its "good quality". The problem with this form of currency has long been the variety of parts, that after dismemberment of the empire of Charlemagne, every lord wanted its currency valid in its stronghold. For centuries, kings failed to regain the right to establish the unit of currency in the kingdom, despite the name of Frank John II, called the Good, in 1360 gave this money which was used to pay the ransom that freed of the English, who had taken prisoner. It was not until the Convention (April 1795) for the monetary unit to be established, along with the weights and measures.

But today's metal parts, without precious metal, no longer have any intrinsic value and bank notes are not convertible against gold they are supposed to certify the filing.

And yet, and as incredible as it may seem when you discover that fact, these are the only two forms of currency that is legal tender! They are also designated by fiat money, from the Latin fiducia, trust. Why? Because only in the form of currency notes and coins has "unlimited legal tender", which means that its validity as a means of payment is guaranteed, and it is because it is created under control Central bank: it circulates metal parts that are made on the order of the Administration of Money and Medals, and it kept the monopoly acquired as was recalled, manufacturing tickets. This control appears as a kind of survival of the sovereign right to coin money and this is what remains of a sovereign right which gives the Central Bank the name of issuing institution.

This is probably the term that has become widely used the idea (or feeling) that all money is created by order of a state institution. But this is an illusion. Actually legal tender or "fiduciary" is only pocket money! It does not constitute an insignificant portion, less than 15% of the money in circulation. Because the amount of coins is so low that they are used only for small purchases. And for slightly higher amounts of payments and honest, even for everyday purchases, it checks and credit cards for tickets ... therefore mainly used for laundering dirty money because their preferred anonymity increasingly allows them to carry discreetly. Without this perverse use, the total amount of notes would be much less.

(6) which are often called "credit card" as they are cards for payment from an account.

*

Most of the money is bank money (note: the accounting and computer lines). But it has, by nature, no intrinsic value and, in addition, unlike paper money, it has generally no legal guarantee. Confidence that each attaches him is only that the customer against the commercial bank that holds the account. As this money is only a game of writing in registers or memory of the computer of the bank, it goes into effect if the bank fails. When a bank customer, you deposit cash or a check to replace the window, the corresponding amount is recorded as an asset of the bank: she is now the owner. The same amount is also included in its liability as it is understood that you must. It is now in your debt, you are his creditor. And if it is a day declared bankrupt, that is to say, if it's put into unable to pay what it owes, you're just one of his many creditors, some of which are often declared "priority" ...

The risk of the currency entry form comes from its mode of creation. Only that it is possible to register how much does anyone on an account, there is no natural limit to the money supply in this form. We will see later that this facility has obviously led to abuse, rules and controls were successively introduced, changed, deleted, etc. Previously, trying to understand the mechanisms by which commercial banks, as opposed to a false but often ingrained in the minds idea, are far from being content to live to lend to some of their customers what others have submitted them. They have indeed acquired the power, especially large deposits in their care are higher, to create money from nothing, "ex nihilo." And not only do they have the power to give what is not theirs, but in addition, they have one to lend it several times, because they take advantage of what is euphemistically called "the multiplier effect of credit."

Let's get a little into detail to explain this mechanism, as it seems critical to the entire economy (Part 2). Previously, three quotes show that we are not alone in this opinion.

First that of Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States: "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing army. Whoever controls the money of the nation controls the nation. "Then the thought of the famous American industrialist Henry Ford:" If the people of this nation understood our banking and monetary system, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning. "Finally Maurice Allais, "Nobel" in economics, described the process as follows: "In essence, the creation of present money ex nihilo by the banking system is the same [...] to the creation of money by counterfeiters [...]. Specifically it leads to the same results. The only difference is that those who benefit are different "(7)!

(7) "The global crisis today," ed. Cl JOUGLAR.

Sources: http://www.france.attac.org/

To pause after this first important part but already complicated for less accustomed to the economy (mixed with history), here's a video of Mini-Show that attempts to explain the process of money creation in 2010 .. . Will we get out of the downward spiral ...?:

Little Reminder: in autumn 2008, three scenarios were given for "out of the crisis" ...:

Scenario A: The central bank refinances commercial banks massively ...

We have seen, the current problem is a liquidity problem (missing commercial banks money "central bank"). Some may say, easy! Since it is not gold, central banks can simply start printing money, refinance commercial banks and everything will be fine (if the customers of these banks are looking for tickets mass, they can provide, do not panic).

Moreover, from a political perspective, it is interesting to note that such a decision could only be taken by an unelected person (Mr. Trichet, governor of the ECB in Europe and Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Fed in the USA (note: at the time!)). Note that they made ​​gestures, including lowering interest rates! This is all well and good, but would have the disadvantage of losing confidence in the currency itself! (whereas today it is in the banks that trust is lost). Indeed, how could anyone believe that money is "store of value" (one of the properties required of money) if we issue all you want, unrelated to the economic wealth of the country? In fact, this scenario A is highly inflationary, and if practiced on a large scale, there would be risks that we were in the same situation as Zimbabwe (inflation of 100,000% per year). The currency would then no longer say anything, and would probably be replaced by other forms of exchange!

Scenario B: States buying up banks ...

If banks are not refinanced by the central bank, one solution could be that used previously: states themselves buying up banks (nationalizing) and ensure their credit ratings Thus, banks may give away tickets to depositors who pick up their deposits because their new owner (the state) gave them cash. From a political standpoint, it's a problem "ethics": it is the taxpayers who will pay off the bankruptcy of the banks! But mostly this scenario B is not credible because the states are already hyper themselves in debt. For example, the French debt reached 1.25 trillion euros in the first quarter of 2008, or 63% of GDP! In the United States, the situation is no better: the federal debt reached 10,000 billion!

In other words, you ask a blind cataract reached driving blind! The risk that states themselves may one day not repay their debts and be themselves insolvent with all the consequences that implies: civil servants, pensioners, unpaid, treasury bills dishonored etc!

Scenario C: Nothing is done: Situation credit crunch

Another scenario could be that when governments do nothing. We find ourselves in this case in the same situation as that of 1929, known as the credit crunch and described by Irving Fisher: leaving do, bank failures are increasing, and the number of depositors cheated! The consequence is that a good portion of them are insolvent, no money, and there is a domino effect. In fact, in this situation everyone is looking for liquidity and it is willing to sell his property: there is thus on all markets numerous sellers and very few buyers: prices in all areas collapse (it is otherwise than in scenario A), nobody wants to buy, companies are unable to sell their produce ... - October 10, 2008 by €ric

April 2012: it will be noticed immediately that no real solution has been found for the scenarios of 2008, if not always a rather bewildering choice and contrary to the interests of citizens, ie Scenario B without even really guarantee the possibility of a refund any future: protecting the privacy and to saddle the past, present and future citizens with all possible assistance devices States intiaux diverted from their goals, and not renationalising the most obvious debts ... but largely avoiding any control or take a share of the writing system ...

Yves Herbo 29-09-2014 - ditto to date: all is confirmed ... to be continued ...