This a copy of part of an email from Positive Money dated 14 February 2013:
Where to start first? So much has happened: Our biggest conference to date, we launched our new book, some amazing statements from the financial regulator, and incredible media coverage…
1) Videos from Positive Money's conference
The conference this year was about how we can build a popular movement demanding a reform of the money system. It was the biggest money reform gathering in our lifetimes, worldwide; almost 300 people attended the sold-out conference. Our new book Modernising Money was launched there.
And here you can watch the first video from the conference. [as above] * We’ll release the next videos shortly.
2) Breakthough Historic Speech by Adair Turner
The Chairman of the Financial Services Authority, Adair Turner, advocated in his recent speech entitled “Debt, Money and Mephistopheles: How do we get out of this mess?” a policy that is very close to our proposals. You can readour comments here .
3) Financial Times – this is huge!
Something that was impossible just 2 years ago is happening now. There were two extraordinarily good articles published in Financial Times:
The Chief economics editor for Financial Times has written an article in which he debunks some of the myths about banking and monetary policy that we have been talking about since 2010.
The book " Where does money come from? " was quoted in this article discussing how bankers need to educate themselves about how money is created before they are allowed to teach in schools, a recently proposed plan.
4) Monetary reform in the World
There's lots of great mainstream media coverage on money creation abroad too:
New Zealand - A programme on national TV asked viewers on prime time: What if you were told the money a bank lent you never existed? It’s an excellent report – watch here Switzerland - the Swiss national television’s main economic programme reported for the first time on monetary reform. read here
Ireland - Sensible Money had published their letter in the Irish Independent. read here
Unfortunately, I am not surprised but apparently the "experts" were predicting growth. A 0.6% fall is consistent with the austerity policies of this Government but it appears that the politicians do not understand "The Rules".
As such it should be absolutely no surprise that if you reduce debt, you reduce the amount of money people have to spend. If you reduce the amount of money people have to spend, you get a fall in retail sales. It really is not difficult to understand, unless you are a politician or an "expert", apparently. It is about time our Government understood this brutal logic.
If you are interested in understanding "The Rules" and how to change them, then please visit this website: www.positivemoney.org [link opens in new window]
My advice: Do not ever take out a Payday Loan. No one EVER needs to do this for ANY reason (except stupidity). Payday Loans are just WRONG!
So will regulation sort out the problem? No. Just make legitimised "loan sharking" illegal. Sorted!
The Financial Conduct Authority will be pretty toothless as the Financial Services Authority has been. The so called "financial experts" in the FSA never saw the Banking Crisis coming. A ship of fools! FSA - Regulatory Reform - Background [link opens in new window]
"Hath given forth upon usury, and hath taken increase: shall he then live? he shall not live: he hath done all these abominations; he shall surely die; his blood shall be upon him." It appears that people running payday loan businesses (according to The Bible) "shall surely die". It would be pretty neat if the Government just stopped this legitimised loan sharking instead. Death is probably a bit of overkill?
Interest rates at the Bank of England are 0.5%. It used to be a rule of thumb that bank loans were 3% over base rate. That is reasonable. I have ALWAYS thought that Credit Cards are a form of usury and look at the trouble DEBT is causing now.
If only people understood how money actually works. www.positivemoney.org [link opens in new window]
So, RBS is to pay massive fines over their part in attempting to rig LIBOR, as reported by the BBC: Libor scandal: RBS fined £390m [link opens in new window] So the question is, after the last Government [Labour] put in £45bn to save RBS from failing, are Taxpayers going to pay the RBS fines as well? The Government want all the fines to come from their bonus pot. If the fines are paid from this then the bankers 'get it' and are making a cultural change to their business. If they do not cover the fines from their bonus pot then they still will be the "lying, cheating, thieves" as described by a Government Minister.
I await what is done with interest.
As a footnote. How do we think Scotland on its own would have coped with the RBS failure? We are stronger together, we are stronger as a United Kingdom.
No And, by the way, why is my view not being sought about the break up of the United Kingdom. If this happens it will have some pretty negative effects on England, Wales, Northern Ireland, Channel Islands, etc. Don't we have a say on something that WILL effect us? If we are winding back time like the Scottish National Party want to. Then how about the Kingdom of Wessex? Alfred the Great was a fine monarch and so why not declare Wessex an independent Nation?
Scotland needs to forget about the past and just move on.
In addition on Andrew Neil's show the same issue was raised about the vast difference between the Deficit and the National Debt. Explanation by Paul Johnson director of the IFS [link opens in new window]
It strikes me that with the likely massive rise in the National Debt during this Parliament that Cameron and his crew really do not have a clue how to address the problem. HS2 will not solve it! £33bn in goodness how many years is a drop in the ocean! So, let's go over the rules again. Under the current financial system: More money = More debt [the thing that caused the crisis in 2007-2008] Less debt = less money [austerity] What we actually need now is less debt and more money.
These ideas are being expressed within the Bank of England and the International Monetary Fund. Iceland appears to be the first Country in the World to seriously look at this as a viable solution to the continuing Financial Crisis. i.e. Sovereign Money. If you want a detailed but elegantly simple explanation of the solution, please visit: www.positivemoney.org [link opens in new window]
