permaculture

[Nicholas Roberts <nicholas@themediasociety.org>]

hi all

a while back I posted asking the question; where did all the lost money go ?
can we find it and get it back ?

got a lot of responses about fiat currency and the fed, lots of stuff about
debt as money, the corporate creation of money as loans... lots of stuff
about gold

all of these counter-intuitive and highly technical details may be true, but
I came across some very interesting and simple things that could be done
without creating new money systems etc

http://www.counterpunch.org/sasan01232009.html

As I told my reader, whether this was the first time that betting on the
market price was outlawed I am not sure. But as a historian of economic
thought, and as one who has been interested in the market mechanism in the
early stages of development of capitalism, I know that hedging and gambling
in the market place are old practices, at least as old as the "commercial
revolution" or the development of "merchant capitalism" in the 13th century.


Indeed, as I have argued in my book, *Money and Exchange: Folktales and
Reality*, and in some other essays, in medieval trade merchants regularly
tried to cheat one another in the market place. [3] In so doing they used
other merchants' ignorance of arithmetic to swindle them. Arithmetic—which
at the time consisted mostly of knowledge of the Arab numerals, four basic
mathematical operations and the "golden rule," or the "rule of three," where
a missing fourth number in two equal ratios is found—had just reached Europe
by way of Arab merchants.

Between the 13th and 16th centuries a group of merchants in Europe,
particularly in Italy, wrote manuscripts to teach merchants' children, who
attended special training schools, the newly received arithmetic. But what
is perhaps most interesting about these manuscripts is that almost all of
them teach how to use arithmetic, particularly in the act of barter, to
cheat their trading opponents and increase what they called the "overprice."


As such, these medieval manuscripts taught that the rule of exchange was to
come out ahead in transaction and that barter was "nothing but giving a good
for another in order to get more."

ps: personally I am putting my efforts into going beyond capitalism and not
simply refounding, reforming, taming or whatever capitalism... siure the
former need to happen, but thats just the start... the next step is
democratic control of finance and the economy and ending capitalism and wage
slavery
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=1332

1. close all tax havens, especially those in Europe i.e. Switzerland.. and
get money from dodgy deals back
2. tax corporations - close all tax dodges for multinational organisations
i.e. corporations and make them pay proper taxes - most mno;s pay very
little tax
3. tax rich people - re-establish a progressive tax system i.e. tax the rich
and make being super-rich like Gates or Buffett illegal.. i.e. 90% tax ...
its been done before...
4. control speculation and tax it
5. ban "pump and dump" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pump_and_dump
6. make advertising illegal, products and services can sold through
publishing product information, but no ads.. therefore no public relations
industry, no ad supported media.. no media-corporate cartel controlling
information
7. shut down the shadow banking system

http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=1331

The Economic Collapse By Mark Levinson
In the fall of 2008, a little more than a year after the Bank for
International Settlements (a Switzerland-based organization that fosters
cooperation between central banks) warned that "years of loose monetary
policy have fuelled a giant credit bubble, leaving us vulnerable to another
1930s slump," the combustive concoction of free market fundamentalism,
corporate-dominated globalization, stagnant wages, growing inequality,
greed, excessive leverage, and financial innovations such as securitization
finally exploded.


-- 
Nicholas Roberts
[im] skype:niccolor