kenneth.mackendrick at utoronto.ca wrote:
> Ok - what would the problem be for the Bank of Canada to buy up the loans from
> private institutions? Then the "public" debt would be owed to "public" bank?
> This is done for RRSP's (say, when you use your RRSP to purchase a house) - why
> can't a (theoretically democratic) national bank do the same thing? If the gov
> needs money, it's just stupid to go to a private institution.
>
> somewhat perplexed,
> ken
I think one of the economists on the list better take the time to answer this in some detail. Through years of reading Pound, Pound's critics, and some of Pound's sources I know to mly own satisfaction (a) how impossible this is (b) how politically dangerous it is and (c) how appealing it can be to someone outraged by conditions but not familiar enough with the right history and with counter-arguments.
>From the *Cantos*
A factory
has also anothe aspect, which we call the financial aspect
It gives people the power to buy (wages, dividends
which are power to buy) but it is also the cause of prices
or values, financial, I mean financial values
It pays workers, and pays *for* material.
What it pays in wages and dividends
stays fluid, as power to buy, and this power is less,
per forza, damn blast your intellex, is less
than the total payments made by the factory
(as wages, dividends AND payments for raw material
bank charges, etcetera)
and all, that is the whole, that is the total
of these is added into the total of prices
caused by that factory, any damn factory
and there is and must be therefore a clog
and the power to purchase can never
(under the present system) catch up with
prices at large,
and the light became so bright and so blindin'
in this layer of paradise
that the mind of man was bewildered.
(Canto XXXVIII)
And, in the Pound tradition, one unclogs it with money created by the state, which is what Ken is proposing. But the state of course must be prepared to make that money be honored. Hence, from a later Canto:
Story told by the mezzo-yit:
That they were to have a consortium
and one of the potbellies says:
will come in for 12 million"
And another: three millyum for my cut;
And another: we will take eight;
And the Boss [Mussolini] said: but what will you
DO with that money?"
"But! but! signore, you do not ask a man
what he will *do* with his money.
That is a personal matter.
And the Boss said: but what will you do?
You won't really need all that money
because you are all for the *confine*."
(Canto XLI)
>From the state loaning money to the state (i.e., issuing
fiat money) almost always flows some form of authoritarian
utopia.
Carrol