Guernsey is a historical example of the successful application of the principle of issuing a wealth-based public mint system rather than a private debt-driven privatate mint system. (Monetary Reform Magazie 1996). It should be in the archives on the website
CHeers, Ken Hanly
Carrol Cox wrote:
> 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