Category Archives: 2019

Much Ado about 1974: The Bank of Canada in the 70s

By Adam Smith, 21st Century

This paper is dedicated to John Monroe and Michael Karp, without whose exposing of my ignorance on the monetary system I would not have found impetus to delve as deeply as I have.

Ah the Bank and Canada and 1974!  I don’t think there’s a central bank in the world with more wild mythology surrounding a precise point in time.  I must admit however, were it not for this mythology I would not have found myself motivated to dig as deeply as I have to find the truth. In revealing this truth to others I have been called a government apologist and/or shill, a secret insider of “controlled opposition”, and many other names by ideologues whose conspiracy theorist identity is so wrapped up in the myth that their confirmation bias won’t allow them to accept new facts that belie their prior misinformation. The truth creates a cognitive dissonance their mind cannot accept, the irony being these people spent so much time researching bunk sites for false info but refuse to look elsewhere because the truth doesn’t fit their narrative.

Continue reading Much Ado about 1974: The Bank of Canada in the 70s

Top 10 Liberal Betrayals 2015-2019

One could make quite a list detailing all the dirt the Libs have built up the last 4 years, but here’s our (admittedly subjective) list of the…

TOP 10 LIBERAL BETRAYALS 2015-2019

1. Lying about electoral reform

2.  Buying a pipeline for the oil sands

3. Approving and supporting other pipelines and projects for new extraction of fossil fuels

4. Continued to disrespect and oppress First Nations, especially fighting valid claims in court spending more defending than what was requested

5. Continued lack of support for our veterans, including cutting their healthcare funding

6. Using every lame excuse to sell the Saudis armoured vehicles despite knowing full well their history of violently oppressing civilians

7. Despite it never results in growth or jobs, creating more corporate tax breaks

8. Trying to get one of the world’s most corrupt corporations, SNC Lavalin, off easy for past misdeeds

9. After railing against them, hypocritically using an omnibus bill to…

10. … Create an infrastructure privatization bank to enrich institutional investors

1. Lying about electoral reform

While one could argue other items on this list did more actual harm, this out and out lie to steal progressive votes was the most cynical. Swing voters who may have been more likely to go NDP or Green but were terrified of Harper were seduced by the Liberal promise of electoral reform, feeling comfortable in the knowledge that a Liberal victory now would mean a truly fair election the next time around. The Libs made the promise a staggering 1,813 times on the campaign trail. Even more diabolical, Justin Trudeau stole Fair Vote Canada’s slogan “Make Every Vote Count” in making this false promise.

Upon taking power the Libs made a show of faith by erecting the ERRE to explore the issue. A majority of members on a multi-party House committee recommended a referendum on a form of proportional representation but that was ignored. Well, not only does Fair Vote Canada endorse proportional representation, which by definition compared to first-past-the-post or ranked ballots is the ONLY system where every vote counts, but 88% of respondents to the ERRE also endorsed some form of proportional representation. That wasn’t the answer the Liberals wanted to hear! Apparently Justin prefers preferential ballots and claims that means there’s no consensus, but really the Libs could never permanently dilute their own power now that they had it again. Either way, they out and out lied through their teeth about it.

UPDATE: Recently a reader who claims to be non-partisan, but then actively ignores any contention that cannot explicitly be proven to their personal satisfaction, claimed Trudeau and the party weren’t lying about electoral reform, they just weren’t that smart. But the proof of the lie isn’t in the final result (or lack thereof), it’s in the conflicting words of Trudeau. If Trudeau was always in favour of ranked ballots, why would his party campaign on “make every vote count”? Ranked ballots DO NOT make every vote count, only PR does that. So, was Trudeau and his entire party and election team oblivious to that fact, or, was it just another tactic to cynically steal votes based on false promises? History suggests the latter, there’s no way a party as elite and well-heeled as the Libs were ignorant of the reality of ranked ballots vs PR, and certainly they knew full well they were stealing the slogan of Fair Vote Canada. They out and out lied to steal votes, the proof is everywhere, they had zero intention of following through.

2.  Buying a pipeline for the oil sands

The gross hypocrisy of this just boggles the mind. The day after announcing a climate change emergency, the Libs ironically negated that empty proclamation by spending billions in corporate welfare overpaying for a pipeline for the oil sands. The oil sands are:

Simply put, we must leave it in the ground.

3. Approving and supporting other pipelines and projects for new extraction of fossil fuels

Furthering the hypocrisy of the Libs’ climate change rhetoric, they approved Enbridge Line 3, approved, then lost, then re-approved the Kinder Morgan expansion, fully support Keystone XL, and approved a new LNG plant reliant on fracking. Every Canadian cheering on the Libs as serious about climate change must be living under an ideological rock wrapped in a partisan security blanket.

4. Continued to disrespect and oppress First Nations, especially fighting valid claims in court spending more defending than what was requested

Like every single government before them, the Liberals shamelessly oppress the rights of our Indigenous peoples while proving how two-faced they are with claims of reconciliation. From lying that they will adopt UNDRIP’s “free, prior, and informed consent” to then not even living up to consent’s poor cousin consult by not consulting properly on projects like Trans Mountain, the Libs’ betrayal of reconciliation goes deep. Like challenging compensation for apprehended First Nations children harmed by the on-reserve child welfare system and under-funded child and family services, or this ridiculous court battle, spending more than $110,000 fighting a First Nations girl in court to block payment for orthodontic treatment that cost just $6,000, or spending millions losing a battle about testing fish farms for a virus, or spending nearly twice the $380,000 needed by Wapekeka First Nation for emergency mental health care after the northern Ontario community uncovered a suicide pact last year. Health Canada denied them the funding and two 12-year-old girls, Jolynn Winter and Chantell Fox, took their lives in January. How cruel is that?!? How indifferent to the suffering of First Nations children does one have to be to fight these battles? All this after the MMIWG report concludes our discrimination amounts to genocide.

5. Continued lack of support for our veterans, including cutting their healthcare funding

The Libs continue another government tradition, total disregard for our veterans. Despite their clear need for services Libs underspent hundreds of millions on them, putting the burden of their healthcare costs onto hospitals, all while fighting valid lawsuits and tinkering with pensions to further reduce support for disabled vets. Worst, is when Trudeau lied to an injured vet when he said, “You’re asking for more than we have to give.” We are a monetarily sovereign nation that owns our central bank, the feds can fund whatever they want easily, and stiffing the veterans who went to battle for them, put their lives on the line, in unconscionable and should warrant better than a lame duck excuse that is simply false.

6. Using every lame excuse to sell the Saudis armoured vehicles despite knowing full well their history of violently oppressing civilians

This one really shows the Libs’ true colours as corporate war profiteers. The arms deal with the Saudis was started under Harper, but after criticizing the deal while in opposition the Libs had every chance to scuttle the deal and came up with a new excuse every time they were called out for continuing the sale. All this despite firstly, the Saudis’ history of oppression and using force on civilians in general, and secondly, dismissing evidence Canadian-made weapons were likely being used against civilians. And now, after empowering the Saudis’ interference in Yemen, Canadian-made war machines are falling into the hands of rebels. This has landed us the dubious honour of being the largest arms exporter to the Middle East second only to the US.

7. Despite it never results in growth or jobs, creating more corporate tax breaks

Is there more music to the ears of corporations than yet another undeserved tax break? The Liberals decided to continue yet another neoliberal tradition, the last few decades of corporate welfare, by introducing more corporate tax breaks to spur growth and investment, despite the fact such breaks NEVER result in promised jobs or growth.

8. Trying to get one of the world’s most corrupt corporations, SNC Lavalin, off easy for past misdeeds

This one was such obvious corporate cronyism we had to write a blog post on it.

9. After railing against them, hypocritically using an omnibus bill to…

The hypocrisy continues, a classic case, where you oppose in opposition what you practice in power, in this case omnibus budget bills, of which they did more than one.

10. … Create an infrastructure privatization bank to enrich institutional investors

The Canadian Infrastructure Bank is flying under the radar of most Canadians (possibly because it’s barely done anything to date) but it was quite contentious in economic and monetary reform circles because it is quite literally an infrastructure privatization bank as opposed to a public bank to build infrastructure as was promised. We also railed against it in our letter to the Finance Minister.

One could write a book on all the betrayal and two-faced nature of the Liberals the last four years… oh wait, someone did. “The Trudeau Formula” is an excellent resource for anyone wanting to fully understand just how much in bed the Trudeau Liberals are with corporate Canada, and how their core policies are about maintaining the status quo for the wealthy elite, and what little socially beneficial policies they enact are merely superficial bandaids to create the appearance of progressiveness and equality to appease and quiet the masses.

Adam Smith, 21st Century

SCANDAL: Trudeau, SNC, and the DPA

Seeing as the SNC-Lavalin scandal has everyone excited in an election year, and there is a ton of information, history, and varying views, we thought it prudent to write a post that details the whole story in a linear fashion.

Our information comes mainly from these articles:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/jody-wilson-raybould-snc-lavalin-regime-1.5248561

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/philpott-snc-report-1.5247792

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/rcmp-snc-report-examining-carefully-1.5247119

https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/ethics-report-1.5247595

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-snc-ethics-commissioner-violated-code-1.5246551

https://thetyee.ca/Mediacheck/2019/08/20/SNC-Lavalin-Scandal-Sideshow-Corporate-Control/

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2019/08/20/mistakes-misinterpretations-and-irrelevant-facts-mar-the-ethics-commissioners-report-on-trudeau.html

Let’s begin with the simple historical timeline:

  • SNC is in trouble for various shady doings around the world. Most recently they got in trouble for bribes to Qaddafi’s son.
  • SNC needs to clean house, replaces CEO and some other senior execs, but the charges of bribery remain
  • SNC feels the charges should no longer apply because they’ve cleaned up the company, and if charged they would no longer be valid for Government of Canada contracts (a large part of their business). SNC then starts lobbying the feds for a “deferred prosecution agreement” (DPA) which is basically just a settlement, paying out for the problem without the whole company being held criminally responsible.
  • The Liberals, being as corporate-cozy as they are, don’t just agree to the idea of a DPA, at SNC’s request they devise legislation for a DPA and undemocratically slip it into their omnibus budget bill.
  • With the DPA legislation in place, and the investigation into SNC underway, Trudeau and others from the PMO start pressuring MP and Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould to “consider” a DPA in the SNC case.
  • Wilson-Raybould does not acquiesce nor relent, and pressure mounts to the point she feels it necessary to secretly record a conversation confirming that pressure. Wilson-Raybould keeps her mouth shut however, even though she feels unduly pressured to do as the PMO is suggesting.
  • Trudeau, claiming other reasons, removes Wilson-Raybould from the Attorney General appointment.
  • Wilson-Raybould goes public about the pressure for the DPA. Responding to a Globe and Mail article Trudeau out and out lies about the pressure.
  • Fellow Liberal MP Jane Philpott finds herself defending Wilson-Raybould, and they both get ejected from the Liberal caucus. They are both running as independents now.
  • Lastly, the ethics commissioner report comes out saying that Trudeau acted improperly violating the Conflict of Interest Act. Trudeau counters saying he’s not sorry for defending Canadian jobs.

And that about sums it up. There is one interesting side note to the articles above, that actually helps blow away a commonly held conspiracy theory: that the CBC only does the bidding of the government of the day, casting them in a golden light. Well, if those damning articles don’t wholly refute that I don’t know what else will. Those CBC articles could very well lose Trudeau the election, so ANY notion that the CBC is just a government mouthpiece should be put to rest.

There are some other tidbits worth mentioning, showing just how cozy a relationship SNC has with many government players, like the fact Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci, acting as lawyer for SNC at the time, also added pressure. If that’s not enough, another retired Supreme Court justice waded in with another supporting document for the PMO. Other than Wilson-Raybould, who doesn’t SNC control?

Finally we must address one of the detractor articles, where barrister David Hamer attempts to pick apart the supposed faults of the ethics report. Straight out the gate, one must acknowledge what a shameless die hard supporter of the Liberals Hamer is. He’s one of those ideological dyed-in-the-wool Liberals that will cheer for their political gang no matter how shady they act. Just look at his Twitter page, rife with blind support for a long-corrupted party.

The main issue with Hamer’s article is it’s simply a distraction, a lame attempt to run interference and try to diffuse and dispel the stink of Trudeau’s clear and unambiguous violation. His claims of a “predetermined conclusion” are quite ironic, as it seems that’s what he started with, the conclusion his hero Trudeau is blameless, and then worked to debunk the report based mostly on semantics. Excerpts like this “The Conflict of Interest Act is meant to prevent the improper furthering of private interests by elected politicians, not to control interactions between politicians and attorneys general” are particularly telling, as in light of the full history there is no better way to describe Trudeau’s actions than “the improper furthering of private interests by elected politicians”. His supposed distinction falls rather flat.

His semantics games with the word “improper” show just how great a lawyer he must be, because only a lawyer could twist the reality of those words to such an extreme it garbles their meaning to the point of doubt. Point in case:

“No public office holder shall … seek to influence a decision of another person so as to further the public office holder’s private interests or those of the public office holder’s relatives or friends or to improperly further another person’s private interests.”

The word “improperly” is key — it modifies the words “further another person’s private interests,” not the phrase “seek to influence a decision.”

On the commissioner’s interpretation, it is as if the word “improperly” were moved, so as to read: “No office holder shall use his position to seek improperly to influence a decision so as to further another person’s private interests.”

See, Hamer wants to distract you from the actual law to claim some interpretation that changes the purpose or focus of that law. When really, one need only take “No public office holder shall … seek to influence a decision of another person so as to further the public office holder’s private interests” at face value as it applies perfectly to Trudeau. He made it about Quebec, and Quebec votes in his Quebec riding. No more obvious use of public office to further private interests could exist.

Hamer then continues on, demonizing and projecting his own version of Wilson-Raybould’s actions as “unreasonable”, from an highly subjective point of view. So, an AG subjected to unusual pressure from multiple people from the PMO including the PM himself, to utilize a brand new and untested law THAT THE COMPANY IN QUESTION LOBBIED FOR, is somehow “unreasonable” in her resistance? Or that it is not within her purview to act as such, wanting to ensure massive multinational corporations face consequences for their actions? That the only way for her to be considered “reasonable” would have been to roll over to the pressure?

The most shocking of Hamer’s fallacious logic though is the complete and total dismissal of SNC’s intense lobbying for the DPA that saw them get a piece of legislation passed just for their specific needs. Hamer seems to think context is meaningless and that we shouldn’t bother paying attention to how the DPA law came to be. Now who’s being unreasonable?

All in all, Hamer’s lame duck attempt to deflect from the PM’s wrongdoing by projecting onto and demonizing Wilson-Raybould makes him look no better than the biased partisan shill he clearly is. He really exemplifies just how many high level cronies the Libs have in their pockets.

The conclusions are obvious:

  • we have a government and PMO solidly in bed with our largest corporations, to the point where the government will not only go to bat for them defending them to the public, they’ll even go so far as to create legislation for them and then pressure it to be used
  • we truly do live in a corporate oligarchy, where our largest multinationals can and do write their own rules
  • we have a PM either ignorantly oblivious of his wrongdoing, unaware of the legalities of his actions, or he knew the potential consequences but prioritized political concerns, drunk on his own power and privilege.

No matter how you shake it, we are electing the neoliberal representatives of the corporate oligarchy and it’s driving us into the ground. This election, vote something other than Lib or Con, maybe find a “reasonable” independent to vote for.

Adam Smith, 21st Century

Making the case for public money creation in Canada

There is a very strong case to be made for monetary reform in Canada, in particular increasing public money creation to fund deficits instead of always borrowing from capital markets. This type of money creation is called “monetary financing” and is achieved through the central bank buying government bonds instead of investors and private banks (so we owe the debt to ourselves) and spending that money into the economy without neutralizing it*. This would mean less burden of debt payments to investors, which take up a substantial part of the budget, and which is used an an excuse for unnecessary austerity measures to “balance the budget and reduce debt” (although paradoxically for conservatives you cannot reduce the debt without running a surplus, taxing more than spending).

*central banks, and notoriously the BoC, typically use open market operations and government reserve deposit auctions to “neutralize” or “sterilize” government spending. That is to say, the CB takes actions to ensure its spending new money into the economy is balanced by taking money or other assets (like bonds) out of the economy.

There is absolutely nothing standing in the way of this other than neoliberal ideology, particularly the ideology emanating from the Bank for International Settlements and their desire that central banks be neutral and autonomous. Now, while there is a case to be made for central bank neutrality considering the past mistakes of some governments, in a historical context those mistakes are usually symptomatic of larger often exogenous problems, and moves to use the central bank to solve the problem only exacerbates it. There is no reason a responsible government (and not in a panic trying to solve a crisis) would cause any ill effects to financial markets or the economy with a little more monetary financing. In fact, in a global economy of persistent stagnant growth, a little deficit spending through monetary financing could actually perk things up significantly. Deficit spending grows economies, austerity shrinks them.

Please enjoy my first attempt at making the case for public money creation in Canada, I will add to and evolve the argument over time as new evidence emerges.

First of all, debunking the intentionally inflammatory and fear mongering misinformation about past hyperinflations, the two most common tropes being Weimar and Zimbabwe.  Well, money printing was the symptom, not the disease.  In particular in Weimar the hyperinflation was happening FASTER than they could print the money, so clearly money printing was not the culprit:

“The empirical reality, both when looking at quantitative data and qualitative descriptions of what actually happens in hyperinflations, shows that they are not the results of well-governed states abusing the money creation process.

Indeed, the case study of Weimar Republic shows that it was not even Public Money Creation but private bank money creation that triggered hyperinflation.

The lessons from the above case studies suggest that hyperinflations do not happen simply because of an increase in money creation; indeed, the private banking sector in the UK more than doubled the money stock from 1997-2007 and we did not see experience hyperinflation. Hyperinflation in Germany and Zimbabwe was preceded by a fundamental collapse in the productive capacity of the economy, which started the inflationary pressure.

In both cases the economy collapsed and the government could not mobilize resources via taxation to fund expenditure. As was the case in Zimbabwe, desperate for funds, the government resorted to financing their spending through money creation. Hyperinflation was thus not a consequence of monetary policy but a symptom of a state that has lost control of its tax base.”

https://positivemoney.org/2015/12/hyperinflation-how-the-wrong-lessons-were-learned-from-weimar-and-zimbabwe-a-history-of-pqe-part-2-of-8/

On to Venezuela and the reality of what is happening versus the gross oversimplifications and demonizations of mainstream media. My knowledge is cobbled together from multiple sources over time, so there’s no one source that sums it all up, but these two get close:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAJIpPPftwY

mintpressnews.com/us-led-economic-war-not-socialism-tearing-venezuela-apart/218335/

More info on Canada’s embarrassingly obvious extreme neoliberal bias against Venezuela here and here. Now, that’s not to say Venezuela didn’t make some missteps and do some shady things, but it must be understood, in a globalized economy nothing happens in a bubble, and any nation not following the neoliberal playbook will be punished by other nations, as the US has done to Venezuela.  And when I say “neoliberal playbook”, I mean, as one BIG example, the (supposedly non-binding) dictates of the Bank for International Settlements.  Here’s it is from the horse’s mouth:

“Concerning the first aspect, monetary policy autonomy may be at risk if the central bank can be obliged to lend to the government or provide it with implicit or explicit subsidies in other ways, for example by supporting the price of government debt. Where financial markets are well developed, this risk is the principal reason why lending to government is typically prohibited when the central bank law is modernised, for example to comply with the Maastricht criteria in the case of actual or prospective euro area participants (Table 4 provides a snapshot of the frequency of such prohibitions). In emerging market economies, it is also important to address this risk, but there is a second reason why it is desirable to limit access to central bank credit by the government. This is to provide an impetus for the development of local money and bond markets, which will benefit from the government being motivated to develop a local market-based source of credit, and the critical mass the government’s borrowing needs may provide. 

At the same time, practical experience shows that it can be very difficult to convince governments, particularly in low-income countries, to agree to a reform of the central bank law that includes the wholesale prohibition of lending to government. To address this problem, great efforts have been made to draft central bank laws that limit government access to or facilitate a gradual weaning of the government off central bank credit, but not much is known about how effective such provisions are in practice.”

https://www.bis.org/events/cbcd06d.pdf

This shows clearly the favouring of private financial markets over public money creation, ensuring that the ideological claims of public money creation being problematic become a self-fulfilling prophecy by punishing nations that stray from the playbook, while developing nations are forced to rely on foreign capital and end up indebted to foreign interests.  Interests that will force austerity, privatization, and cheap resource extraction onto developing nations if they don’t get their pound of flesh. 

The irony here is that during the Great Depression, WWII, and the post-war period, what we now call developed nations were doing all kinds of public money creation to build themselves into the powerhouses they are now, but that kind of activity has been virtually banned since neoliberalism took firm grip in the 70s.  So what allowed those nations to prosper and grow and advance then is denied to developing nations now.  Criminal.

This policy entrenches the supremacy of private financial markets in providing the funding of the economy, which also means that the entire economy becomes built on the notion of earning profits.  This is further reinforced by the fact one of the main daily functions of central banks is to neutralize the spending and taxation flows of the federal government, so it doesn’t impact the precious private banks and markets.  The ENTIRE financial system is designed to cajole and appease and coddle and facilitate financial markets (and by extension the rent extraction and wealth vacuuming of the corporate elite), regardless of the negative impacts on the general public.  Is my disdain too subtle?

For some extra context on how neoliberal policies are based on false assumptions, here’s a great book by Warren Mosler.  You don’t need to read the second half about his life story, but I highly recommend reading the Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds:

http://moslereconomics.com/wp-content/powerpoints/7DIF.pdf

It has become obvious since the financial crisis that the global economy is stagnating, growth and inflation are low, they’re even having trouble keeping inflation to target, so much so a Deputy Governor at the BoC made a speech about it:

https://www.bankofcanada.ca/2018/11/choosing-best-monetary-policy-framework-canada/

The answer is obvious:  MORE MONETARY FINANCING!  Not only is deficit spending proven to grow economies (while austerity shrinks them), if the neoliberal assumptions about inflation and monetary financing are meant to be true, then we could use a little monetary financing to keep inflation to target.

But even those inflation assumptions are not accurate.  It is well understood that inflation is poorly understood, and that a confluence of variables, known and unknown, contribute to it.  Here’s a paper showing empirically that past higher levels of monetary financing in Canada did not prove inflationary:

http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_848.pdf

Bill Mitchell, one of the fathers of MMT, advocates for overt monetary financing, even claiming (incorrectly in my view) that governments should not fear the reactions of financials markets and should do as needed to finance the needs of the public (within reason of course, there are limitations to resource and labour supply that if strained would cause inflation):

http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=32361

Now, the reason I find his dismissal of the private sector reaction troubling is because of what happened when Bob Rae became Premier of Ontario and brought in a super progressive agenda which then caused a private sector revolt to resist his policies:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/second-reading/the-hidden-history-of-bob-raes-government-in-ontario/article1314254/

Of course, that was not a federal government and the province does not have a central bank or the ability to create money, but employing such monetary financing could prove difficult depending on market reactions, possibly causing a divestment of Canadian industry, a reduction in our credit rating, a depreciation of our dollar in exchange rates (making the MANY imports we rely on more expensive, especially food), and worst case scenario a la Venezuela, economic sanctions and/or tariffs for daring to make money creation work better for the public good.  And whether a baseless assumption or not, it would affect the inflation expectations of the Almighty Market which would wreak havoc in capital markets. 

Now, none of that is a reason not to enact some increased monetary financing, and it could be done gradually while assuring markets that stability and predictability and target inflation can be maintained, but none the less, there will be ideological opposition based solely on the fact banks and the financial industry do not want governments competing with them to finance public works.  Really, the ONLY thing standing in the way of increased public money creation is neoliberal ideology.

When the Liberals created the Canada Infrastructure Bank I wrote a letter to MPs about it.  It was also a reaction to Morneau’s flippant baseless dismissal of increasing monetary financing as inherently inflationary despite that being an entirely ideological assumption belied by historical empirical evidence:

http://understandingcanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/BoC-VS-CIB.pdf

There are numerous recent papers exploring the idea of monetary financing, especially since QE experiments showed pumping untold amounts of money into propping up the economy did not have the disastrous results many naysayers claimed. Here, even one of the largest most powerful banks in the world, Deutsche Bank, is practically advocating for monetary financing:

https://www.db.com/newsroom_news/GDPBD00000292870.pdf

Lastly, even players from the IMF make the case for monetary financing, repeating more or less what I said above, that there is really no technical or physical reason we can’t do more monetary financing, it’s a political choice:

https://www.imf.org/external/np/res/seminars/2015/arc/pdf/adair.pdf

I will end with one of the most famous quotes about public money creation in Canada regarding the financing of WWII from the first governor of the BoC:

“In 1939, before the House of Commons’ permanent committee of banking and commerce, a question was put forward by Norman Jaques, M.P., and answered without hesitation by Towers. Here is the question and the reply as recorded on page 771 of the Minutes of Common’ Banking and Commerce Committee for 1939:

Jaques: Would you admit that anything physically possible and desirable can be made financially possible?

Towers: Certainly!”

https://www.michaeljournal.org/articles/social-credit/item/to-make-financially-possible-what-is-physically-possible

I hope this wealth of evidence helps make the case the ONLY thing standing in the way of creating a better more equitable society is the machinations of the psychopathic wealthy elite.  They hold all the power and dictate the policies, and they have molded and shaped various institutions, especially post-secondary education in finance and economics, to their twisted selfish ideology. 

The system has always been a wealth vacuum for the rich, but the last 50 years it has been designed and tweaked and reformed to solidify and entrench the mechanics of that system as some undeniable and empirically proven best practice that should not be strayed from.  Well, as I’m fond of saying the last few years, the system is not based on some universal rules handed down by the gods nor did it emerge from the physical laws of nature; economics is not science and not based on empirical data and provable mathematical formulas.  It is a choice, pure and simple, and it is a choice made by a psychopathic wealthy elite to indenture and enslave the rest of us to their lust for profits and power.

We can do better, there are an infinite number of ways to run a more equitable and sustainable economic system. But the psychopaths and their puppets in power will not go down easily, we will have to fight hard for such reforms, which means educating the indoctrinated public so they can identify and debunk the neoliberal assumptions that have infected every corner of the economy and public discourse. We need to relegate neoliberalism to the same dust bin of history as a flat earth and intelligent design, because it’s just as laughably false but even more destructively enduring.

Adam Smith, 21st Century

Useful links to monetary theory resources

This is an ongoing list of links that are useful in learning monetary theory in Canada.

The only place to start learning about monetary theory in Canada, the primers on the Bank of Canada website:

A couple of federal government pages that very plainly state the realities of our monetary system:

A paper from the Bank of England being much more candid and honest about the structure of the monetary system (ours is nearly identical to theirs):

For those who wish to travel deeper down the rabbit hole, here are the main technical papers from the Bank of Canada:

Here are some great links making the case that monetary financing for public spending (money printing) is not inherently inflationary and that resistance to its use is purely an ideological choice:

A VERY revealing speech from a BoC Deputy Governor about some of the cracks starting to appear in a monetary system not designed for low growth:

And here are some great MMT links: