Economics4change's Weblog

Can you lend me 120 million quid? Pay you back tomorrow…

Martin — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 21:47:42 +0000

Have you noticed that the coalition ministers and MPs have been briefed to counter the anger against the cuts by explaining that the govenment has to pay £120 million Every Day in Interest Alone on the debt?

This is certainly madness, but I have one simple question: who are we paying this interest to? They must be seriously loaded! When you’ve googled the answer, you won’t be surprised to hear that Big Finance take most of the (unearned) income. Which is funny because about 85% of the debt is caused by…bailing out the banks.

It’s called Usury…

Martin — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 18:08:17 +0000

If you want a bit of fun, simply divide all the numbers in the Irish financial “crisis” by 1 million. The results apply to household costs (since the population of the Republic is about 4.6 million).
Today Irish 10-year bond yields stand at more than 9%, while yields on Greek 10-year bonds are almost 12%. That translates as a repayment of £1.56 billion for every £1 billion loaned, i.e. a total repayment rate of 56% (Ireland). For Greece that’s a whopping 77%.

Banking and VAT

Martin — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 10:31:18 +0000

Why don’t the banks pay VAT? Why are they offering bonuses of £7,000,000,000 to their City workers this year? Why don’t they make a little more effort to repay the money they graspingly took from taxpayers in the last couple of years instead?

Condescending Spending Review

Martin — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 10:27:14 +0000

Aaaah, the spending review – I felt sick watching Osborne perform to the gallery of sycophants – announcing massive cuts to welfare, social housing, higher education, councils, etc while his cronies cheered in their yah-boo way. The smirks and smiles and back-slapping that greeted him when he finished say it all.

It’s become clear that we have no opposition to this grand design. The coalition’s ideological commitment to the free market is clearly evident as they cut Corporation tax from 28% to 24%.

I’m tired of the lies – that we’re all in this together when most of the Cabinet are millionaires; that the cuts are progressive when the opposite is true; that there is no alternative to cuts when I can offer a dozen alternatives to cuts; that the deficit is due to Labour spending. I’m no fan of Labour, but it was the bailout of the banks and the elite that left us with a deficit problem, not reckless government spending.

If you don’t like the deficit, then why have you privatised seigniorage? The massive profits of creating new money go to the banks, not to the state. And the banks create new money as loans – money in parallel with debt. This is madness.

And if

Sustainable money

Martin — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 18:56:33 +0000

The battle (for sustainable, debt-free money) is a battle of ideas. Kaoru Yamaguch’s economic modelling of debt-free money, based on the American Monetary Act (similar to the UK’s Bank of England Act proposed by Positive Money campaign) finally proves that the current money system is not sustainable and that debt-free money is.

$1 trillion Eurozone bailout

Martin — Wed, 12 May 2010 09:44:37 +0000

The Eurozone have announced a “bailout” package of 750 billion Euros – that’s nearly $1 trillion.
Question: if it takes nearly 12 days for 1 million seconds to pass by, how long does it take for 1 trillion seconds to pass?
Answer:

Nearly 32,000 years

Creditors

Martin — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 17:00:53 +0000

Every country in the world is in debt. Even China.
In the UK we owe about £1,000,000,000,000. Who do we owe this money to? And what will they do with it?

The Times: different era, same old problem

Martin — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 19:08:13 +0000

While I’m here, I can’t resist repeating this quote from the esteemed pages of The Times of London. I love the undertone of panic. The “mischchievous financial policy” relates to the Greenbacks issued by the state – it was this that helped them win the civil war:

“If this mischievous financial policy [the government issuing money], which has its origin in North America, shall become endurated down to a fixture, then that Government will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off debts and be without debt. It will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce. It will become prosperous without precedent in the history of the world. The brains, and wealth of all countries will go to North America. That country must be destroyed or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe.”

Join the UK campaign for monetary reform at www.call4reform.org

UK Debt repayments

Martin — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 18:57:43 +0000

The UK government spends over £24 billion in a year just paying the interest on the public debt (it will be far more next year, obviously). Guess who gets the money?

Brilliant letter

Martin — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 19:41:43 +0000

In today’s Guardian letters page:

In their manifestos, Labour lump immigration in with “Crime”, the Tories have it under “Change the Economy”, and the Lib Dems have it under “Your Community”. Does this not tell you everything you need to know about how each of them value people?

Liz Williams