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This is a personal project by @dellsystem. I built this to help me retain information from the books I'm reading.

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Central to Keynes’s theory is an understanding of bank money not just as a means of creating purchasing power for the purposes of exchange, but also as a store of value. When, after borrowing and investing, the holder of borrowed money makes profits or capital gains, she will face decisions about what to do with her surplus. Keynes argued that, like other holders of capital, her decision about where to place and for how long to hold her savings is determined first by a need for cash, for immediate or near-immediate use in purchasing goods and services (i.e. short-term ‘liquidity’); second, by what he called the precautionary motive: the desire for security as to the future equivalent of her cash; and third, by the speculative motive: the desire to secure gains by investing the money in projects and knowing better than the market what the future will bring.

—p.55 The 'Price' of Money (41) by Ann Pettifor 7 years, 10 months ago

[...] The outcome of low yields on government bonds is the massive inflation of property prices [...]

something to keep in mind

—p.58 The 'Price' of Money (41) by Ann Pettifor 7 years, 10 months ago

The progressive ‘euthanasia of the rentier’ was for Keynes the price society paid for securing full employment, decent public goods and services, and economic stability. Given that the rentier was hardly likely to engineer his or her own demise, then the assertion of public authority over the financial system was essential.

—p.86 Class Interests and the Moulding of Schools of Economic Thought (77) by Ann Pettifor 7 years, 10 months ago

And if, during a boom, the demand for loans expands beyond the capacity of the economy – in other words, clients apply for and bankers create too much credit, which is then used to chase too few goods, services and speculative assets – the money supply expands. In this case, excessive borrowing and credit creation is likely to have an inflationary impact. If money is lent or borrowed at high real rates of interest, then it does indeed quickly become unpayable debt.

idk why i bothered saving this tbh

—p.106 Should Society Strip Banks of the Power to Create Money? (93) by Ann Pettifor 7 years, 10 months ago

Equally, its scarcity means that, unlike the endless and myriad social and economic relationships created by credit, the capacity of bitcoin to generate economic activity is limited (to 21 million coins). The currency’s architects deliberately limited the amount of bitcoins in order ostensibly to prevent inflation. In reality, the purpose is to ratchet up the value of bitcoins, most of which are owned by originators of the scheme.

In this sense, bitcoin miners are no different from goldbugs talking up the value of of a finite quantity of gold, from tulip growers talking up the price of rare tulips in the seventeenth century, or from Bernard Madoff talking up his fraudulent Ponzi scheme.

while i agree with her in principle, it would be cool to read a rebuttal (like, why do bitcoin supporters think they're different?)

—p.114 Should Society Strip Banks of the Power to Create Money? (93) by Ann Pettifor 7 years, 10 months ago

When the Fed offered to buy a large number of securities held by banks, both mortgage-backed securities and government bonds, bankers exchanged these bonds – some of which were likely to be non-performing and therefore loss-making – for the equivalent of a bigger ‘overdraft’. This ought to have cleared up bankers’ balance sheets, and encouraged them to lend more into the real economy. But QE did not have that effect. In the UK bank lending actually fell. Instead the Fed and Bank of England (BoE) effectively provided the private finance sector with additional purchasing power with which financiers could go shopping for speculative assets in the FIRE sector: finance, insurance, and real estate. Lending into a weakened real economy, weakened further by austerity, was regarded by financiers as far less profitable and far more risky.

—p.117 Should Society Strip Banks of the Power to Create Money? (93) by Ann Pettifor 7 years, 10 months ago

The key to tackling the problem identified by Adair Turner – the weakness of global nominal demand – is therefore expenditure, specifically, public expenditure that can be undertaken quickly: on the upkeep of roads and railways, on flood defences, on water conservation, on horticulture, and so on.

Of course, public expenditure has to be financed. The most prudent form of financing is loan issuance, not ‘deficit spending’ which implies permanent government overdrafts. Loan issuance, arranged by the government’s debt management office in concert with the central bank and fixed at low rates supported by central bank action, can finance ongoing government expenditure. Thanks to the multiplier, that expenditure on employment will quickly generate returns to the public treasury in the form of tax revenues for repayment of loans.

—p.128 Should Society Strip Banks of the Power to Create Money? (93) by Ann Pettifor 7 years, 10 months ago

Socialism is, essentially, the tendency inherent in an industrial civilization to transcend the self-regulating market by consciously subordinating it to democratic society.

in The Great Transformation

—p.131 Subordinating Finance, Restoring Democracy (131) by Karl Polanyi 7 years, 10 months ago

Keynes’s great contribution to monetary theory, and to the policies of his time, was based on his refutation of an important element of classical economic theory. He argued that the rate of interest was the cause, not as orthodox economists argued the passive consequence, of the level of economic activity. In other words, the level of investment, employment, and trade was caused by the rate of interest. If the rate was too high, the level of investment, employment and trade would fall. If it was low, the level of investment, employment and trade would rise.

—p.136 Subordinating Finance, Restoring Democracy (131) by Ann Pettifor 7 years, 10 months ago

Somewhat belatedly, the IMF in 2016 echoed the views of Professors Rey and Bhagwati outlined above, and issued a partial mea culpa in a paper titled ‘Neoliberalism: Oversold?’ [...]

[...]

None of this is news to the victims of neoliberal economic policies in many poor, heavily indebted countries, but the IMF’s mea culpa rattled the cages of many a neoliberal academic and media institution. This included the venerable Financial Times whose economic staff attacked the IMF and ‘its misplaced mea culpa for neoliberalism’, declaring that by far the most important ‘global economic issue is the persistent decline in productivity growth’. Ironic, given that many economists regarded the decline in productivity growth as a direct consequence of mobile capital eschewing investment in productive activity in favour of speculation in volatile financial assets. A state of affairs made possible thanks to neoliberal economic policies.

basically they said neoliberalism creates inequality which hurts growth

—p.144 Subordinating Finance, Restoring Democracy (131) by Ann Pettifor 7 years, 10 months ago