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Something Carol had said once came suddenly to her mind: every adult has secrets. Said as casually as Carol said everything, stamped as indelibly in her brain as the address she had written on the sales slip in Frankenberg's. She had an impulse to tell Dannie the rest, about the picture in the library, the picture in the school. And about the Carol who was not a picture, but a woman with a child and a husband, with freckles on her hands and a habit of cursing, of growing melancholy at unexpected moments, with a bad habit of indulging her will. A woman who had endured much more in New York than she had in South Dakota. She looked at Dannie's eyes, at his chin with the faint cleft. She knew that up to now she had been under a spell that prevented her from seeing anyone in the world but Carol.
[...] She looked at Therese. "Anyway, it's a living and I'll like it. The apartment's a nice big one—big enough for two. I was hoping you might like to come and live with me, but I guess you won't."
Therese's heart took a jump, exactly as it had when Carol had telephoned her that day in the store. Something responded in her against her will, made her feel happy all at once, and proud. She was proud that Carol had the courage to do such things, to say such things, that Carol always would have the courage. She remembered Carol's courage, facing the detective on the country road. Therese swallowed, trying to swallow the beating of her heart. Carol had not even looked at her. Carol was rubbing her cigarette end back and forth in the ash tray. To live with Carol?
Once that had been impossible, and had been what she wanted most in the world. To live with her and share everything with her, summer and winter, to walk and read together, to travel together. And she remembered the days of resenting Carol, when she had imagined Carol asking her this, and herself answering no.
"Therese," said a voice near her. "Do you like champagne?"
Therese turned and saw Genevieve Cranell. "Of course."
"Of course. Well, toddle up to six-nineteen in a few minutes. That's my suite. We're having an inner circle party later."
"I feel very honored," Therese said.
"So don't waste your thirst on highballs. Where did you get that lovely dress?"
"Bonwit's—it's a wild extravagance."
Genevieve Cranell laughed. She wore a blue woolen suit that actually looked like a wild extravagance. "You look so young, I don't suppose you'll mind if I ask how old you are."
"I'm twenty-one."
She rolled her eyes. "Incredible. Can anyone still be only twenty-one?"
People were watching the actress. Therese was flattered, terribly flattered, and the flattery got in the way of what she felt, or might feel, about Genevieve Cranell.
Miss Cranell offered her cigarette case. "For a while, I thought you might be a minor."
"Is that a crime?"
The actress only looked at her, her blue eyes smiling, over the flame of her lighter. Then as the woman turned her head to light her own cigarette, Therese knew suddenly that Genevieve Cranell would never mean anything to her, nothing apart from this half hour at the cocktail party, that the excitement she felt now would not continue, and not be evoked again at any other time or place. What was it that told her? Therese stared at the taut line of her blond eyebrow as the first smoke rose from her cigarette, but the answer was not there. And suddenly a feeling of tragedy, almost of regret, filled Therese. [...]
To bring global capital back onshore would be transformational of the global monetary order. Only then could we hope to restore stability, prosperity and social justice to a polarised and dangerously unequal world. Only then could we hope to manage the challenge of climate change.
this is like the main proposal of her book tbh. the "climate change" part feels v throwaway
[...] As Michael Hudson writes, 'the financial sector's aim is not to minimize the cost of roads, electric power, transportation, water or education, but to maximize what can be charged as monopoly rent.'
However, the power of private, commercial bankers to create and distribute finance at a ‘price’ (the rate of interest) they themselves determine is a great power. It is bestowed and backed by public infrastructure (the central bank, the legal system and the system of public taxation). It is a power that must therefore be carefully and rigorously regulated by publicly accountable institutions if it is not to become ‘despotic’. The authorities should ensure that finance or credit is deployed fairly, at sustainable rates of interest, for sound, affordable economic activity, and not for risky and often systemically dangerous speculation. Above all, the great power bestowed on banks by society – the power to create money ‘out of thin air’ – should not be used for their own self-enrichment. Nor should banks use retail customer deposits or loans as collateral for the bank’s own borrowing and speculation. That much is common sense, and should inform a democratic society’s regulatory oversight of the banks.
basically saying, with great power comes great responsibility
Furthermore, because neoclassical economists conceive of money as having (like gold or silver) a scarcity value, they theorise as if money is subject to market forces, as if money’s ‘price’ – the rate of interest – is a consequence of the supply of and demand for money. Many argue that like commodities, money or savings can become scarce.
But money is not like a commodity, and to define it as such is to create a ‘false commodity’ as Karl Polanyi argued. On the contrary, with the development of sound monetary systems in developed economies, there is never a shortage of money for society’s most important needs. Instead the relevant question is: who controls the creation of money? And to what end is money created?
A small group of distinguished economists all understood that money as part of a developed monetary system is not, and never has taken the form of a commodity. Instead money and the rate of interest are both social constructs: social relationships and social arrangements based primarily and ultimately on trust. The thing we call money has its original basis in belief. Credit is a word based on the Latin word credo: I believe. ‘I believe you will pay, or repay me now or at some point in the future.’ Money and its ‘price’ – the rate of interest – became the measure of that trust and/or promise. Or, if trust is absent, the measure of a lack of trust. If the banker does not fully trust a customer to repay, they will demand more as collateral or in interest payments.
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.
[...] The outcome of low yields on government bonds is the massive inflation of property prices [...]
something to keep in mind