Ann is author of “Just Money: how society can break the despotic power of finance”, published by Commonwealth, 2014.
The Financial Times is hosting a major debate on whether the private banking system should be allowed to continue creating 97% of the credit or money circulating within the economy. Martin Wolf, its respected economics commentator, supports the ‘Chicago Plan’ that effectively calls for private banks to lend out only as much as they have in “reserves”: “Banks could only loan money actually invested by customers.” Private banks would be prevented from creating money, and instead all money would be issued by the state. The quantity issued would be decided by an independent committee as argued by amongst others, the IMF’s Kumhof and Benes and Positive Money. Continue reading
It is almost unbelievable, but true, that at the highest levels of today’s capitalism it is being proposed that the asset-backed securities which provoked the banking crash in the first place should now be relaunched as the best avenue for recovery. Both Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, and Carney, governor of the Bank of England as well as chair of the Financial Stability Board, have given their support in the last few days to a resumption of securitisation. The latter may have an arcane name, but the idea is clear enough. 
George Osborne preened himself – yet again – at the IMF conference 2 days ago that the Western economies are now set for a prosperous future, even as central banks steadily withdraw the lifeline that kept them afloat after the 2008 crash. Apparently normality is returning after the unfortunate blip five to six years ago. That blip that required more than $3 trillions of funds to be pumped into the US economy, and £375 billion of quantitative easing into the UK economy to prevent a catastrophic credit crunch.
Next Thursday I have secured a debate on the floor of the House on the sanctioning of benefit recipients. The details about the sheer injustice of the practice, its inappropriate targeting and its devastating impacts, all of which are horrendous, I shall spell out in full, but I will also be making another comparison.