{"id":19856,"date":"2016-04-12T13:08:15","date_gmt":"2016-04-12T18:08:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=19856"},"modified":"2016-04-12T13:08:15","modified_gmt":"2016-04-12T18:08:15","slug":"mary-mellors-debt-or-democracy-why-not-quantitative-easing-for-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=19856","title":{"rendered":"Mary Mellor\u2019s \u201cDebt or Democracy\u201d: Why Not Quantitative Easing for People?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mary Mellor\u2019s \u201cDebt or Democracy\u201d: Why Not Quantitative Easing for People?<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Although it is widely assumed that governments are the source of all new money \u2013 through \u201cprinting it\u201d \u2013 the so-called private sector is the source of most new money put into circulation.\u00a0 In one of the most successful enclosures of the commons in our time, commercial finance institutions have captured the power to create most new money through their discretionary lending.\u00a0 This power has become so normalized and pervasive that hardly anyone acknowledges the startling fact that commercial lending accounts for more than 95% of \u201cnew money\u201d created.\u00a0 Government has in effect surrendered its enormous power to use its money-creating authority for the public good.<\/div>\n
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Perhaps the leading champion for reforming the current money system is Mary Mellor, emeritus professor at Northumbria University in the UK and author of the recently published, eye-opening book\u00a0Debt or Democracy:\u00a0 Public Money for Sustainability and Social Justice<\/a>\u00a0(Pluto Press, 2015, distributed in the US by\u00a0University of Chicago Press Books<\/a>).\u00a0\"\"<\/p>\n

Mellor recently published an oped piece in\u00a0The Independent<\/a>, the British newspaper, that summarizes some of the key themes in her book. Her essay focuses on the \u201cmyth of handbag economics\u201d \u2013 the idea that government budgets are comparable to household budgets.\u00a0 This distorts our understanding of how the money supply works, says Mellor, and inexorably leads governments to adopt fiscal austerity policies.<\/p>\n

The critical political question that is rarely asked, said Mellor at\u00a0a policy workshop last September<\/a>, is:\u00a0Who controls the creation and circulation of money?<\/em><\/p>\n

She notes that the government, as the sovereign, has the authority to issue new money \u2013 an ancient authority known as\u00a0seignorage<\/em>.\u00a0 But in practice, governments have surrendered this authority to the commercial banking sector, whose lending creates nearly all of the money in circulation as debt.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mary Mellor\u2019s \u201cDebt or Democracy\u201d: Why Not Quantitative Easing for People? Although it is widely assumed that governments are the source of all new money \u2013 through \u201cprinting it\u201d \u2013 the so-called private sector is the source of most new money put into circulation.\u00a0 In one of the most successful enclosures of the commons in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6551,195,204,379,13437,2069,536,3731,662],"class_list":["post-19856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-david-bollier","tag-debt","tag-democracy","tag-government","tag-mary-mellor","tag-monetary-system","tag-money","tag-money-creation","tag-quantitative-easing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19856"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19857,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19856\/revisions\/19857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}