Sovereign Money: Beyond Reserve Banking

ISBN-13: 9783319421735 / Angielski / Miękka / 2016 / 206 str.

Joseph Huber

Opis

In coming to terms with the still smoldering financial crisis, little attention has been paid to the flaws within our monetary system and how these flaws lie at the root of the crisis.This book provides an introduction and critical assessment of the current monetary system.

Spis treści

Introduction

1.  Money 

1.1 Currency, money and capital

1.2 Types of money

1.3 Creators and issuers of money

1.4 Coin currencies

1.5 Tally sticks

1.6 Banknotes and the ascent of fractional reserve banking

1.7 Bankmoney on account

1.8 Electronic cash

1.9 Money as an informational token

1.10 Where does the value of money come from?

1.11 A monetarised and financialised economy

2. Chartalism

2.1 State theory versus market theory of money

2.2 Money is a legal instrument by state fiat

2.3 The sovereign monetary prerogative and its two historical challenges

2.4 The Currency versus Banking controversy

2.5 Full chartalism versus state-backed commercial bankmoney

3. Money and Banking Today

3.1 The two-tier split-circuit structure

3.2 Bankmoney. Credit and deposit creation in one act

3.3 Interplay between public and interbank circulation

3.4 Minimum reserve positions and the unreal multiplier model

3.5 The unreal loanable funds model of banking. Savings as deactivated deposits

3.6 The golden bank rule and the question of maturity transformation

3.7 Restrictions to credit and deposit creation

3.8 Creation of bankmoney. The entire picture

3.9 Deletion of bankmoney

3.10 Quasi-seigniorage of bankmoney creation

3.11 Growing competition to primary bank credit from secondary credit offered by financial intermediaries

3.12 The rhetoric about endogenous and exogenous money

3.13 The false identity of money and credit

4. Problems of the bankmoney regime (fractional reserve banking)

4.1 The monetary system—the misjudged root cause of financial crises

4.2   Incomplete analysis of financial crises

4.3   The monetary quantity equation

4.4   Channels of bankmoney issuance

4.5   Inflation

4.6   Asset inflation, bubbles and crises

4.7   Over-indebtedness

4.8   Financial market failure

4.9   Monetary policy failure

4.10 Bankmoney is unsafe

4.11 The distributional bias of bankmoney and financial-market capitalism

4.12 From around 1980 to 2008. The Great Immoderation

4.13 The question of lawfulness of bankmoney

4.14 The disregarded constitutional dimension of the monetary order

5. Bankmoney to Sovereign Money

5.1 Basic traits of a sovereign money system

5.2 Central banks as the fourth branch of the state

5.3 Separation of money creation from banking, and of monetary from fiscal functions

5.4 The prohibition of the government from issuing money

5.5 The role of the banks in a sovereign money system

5.6 Capacity-oriented quantity policy

5.7 Channels of issuance and first uses of new money

5.8 Is there a necessary sequence in the circulation of money?

5.9 Sovereign money debt-free vs interest-bearing

5.10 How to account for sovereign money on a central-bank balance sheet

5.11 Conversion-day transition

5.12 Little to lose, much to gain. Stability, safety, seigniorage

5.13 Seigniorage to the benefit of the public purse

5.14 Transition through raising fractional reserves to 100% of deposits?

5.15 Government-issued money adding to bankmoney?

5.16 Sovereign e-cash and money accounts in addition to bank giro accounts

5.17 International connectivity of sovereign money

O autorze

Professor Joseph Huber is Chair of Economic Sociology Em. at Martin Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. Previously he was Associate Professor at the Free University Berlin and has also held guest and interim professorships at Science Centre Berlin, University of Zurich and Technical University Vienna. Professor Huber is a pioneer of what is now known as ‘green ethical banking’ and is one of the founders of ecological modernisation theory. He has written extensively on monetary policy and reform topics, is a longstanding policy advisor on matters of economic and ecological modernisation and is actively involved in the international movement for monetary reform.

Blurb

In coming to terms with the still smoldering financial crisis, little attention has been paid to the flaws within our monetary system and how these flaws lie at the root of the crisis.

This book provides an introduction and critical assessment of the current monetary system. It begins with an up to date account of the workings of today’s system of state-backed ‘bankmoney’, illustrating the various forms and issuers of money, and discussing money theory and fallacy past and present. It also looks at related economic challenges such as inflation and deflation, asset inflation and bubble building that lead to market instability and examines the ineffectual monetary policies and primary credit markets that are failing to reach some sort of self-limiting equilibrium.

In order to fix our financial system, we first need to understand its limitations and the flaws in current monetary and regulatory policy and then correct them. The concluding part of this book is dedicated to the latter, advocating a move towards the sovereign monetary prerogatives of issuing the entire stock of official money and benefitting from the gain thereof (seigniorage). The author argues that these functions should be made the sole responsibility of independent and impartial central banks with full control over the stock of money (not the uses of money) on the basis of a legal mandate that would be more detailed than is the case today. This includes a thorough separation of monetary and fiscal powers, and of both from banking and wider financing functions.

This book provides a welcome addition to the banking literature, guiding readers through the inner workings of our monetary and regulatory environments and proposing a new way forward that will better protect our economy from financial instability and crisis.