(continued, from the linked article)

Money creation

A key point of Finding the Money is governments, and banks for that matter, create money. Governments by spending, banks by lending. Additionally it argues government taxes "destroy money," which is probably something those of a libertarian bent could agree with.

We certainly witnessed money creation in the Reserve Bank's efforts to prop the economy up during the pandemic.

When Covid-19 hit in March 2020, tipping the world into massive economic disruption and uncertainty, the Reserve Bank embarked, for the first time, on quantitative easing, or QE. This saw the Reserve Bank buy about $53 billion worth of government and local government bonds from a range of banks with newly created money. Additionally home lending banks were able to access $19 billion of three-year money priced at the Official Cash Rate, just 0.25% for most of the period, through the Reserve Bank's Funding for Lending Programme.

The Government hadn't first raised taxes or embarked on bond issuing programmes to fund these central bank initiatives. So if money can be created, or printed, to buy government bonds or be provided for banks to lend, surely it can also be created to do other things?

On the issue of banks creating money (when they lend):

As for banks, the film argues private banks create money, rather than the conventional idea they lend other people’s money, and this can also add to inflationary pressure.

If banks lent other people’s money; "we wouldn’t get global financial crises, we would not get speculative bubbles in housing," Wray argues.

Note, just as private banks create money 'out of thin air' when they write loans in the private sector, currency-issuing governments can be authorized to create money out of thin air when they spend money on available goods and services, to fund public sector policies (educarion, health, housing, infrastructure, research). 

Jasin wrote on Feb 25^th, 2024 at 11:41am:


Wrong; all humans say everything you said above is correct.

ie

Sunshine is free,
Solar (sunshine) powers (energizes) PVs,
Plant (solar) photo-synthesis is real.

Quote:


They have been converting fossil fuels (solar energy stored in secondary forms  created over millions of years)  to Money for more than a century.

We now have to convert solar (and wind) directly into energy, most sensibly funded by the state (public sector)  which doesn't need to make money out of the process, because the currency-issuing state can create money out of thin air (see previous posts...)

"They have an army" - that's how @DennisKelleher
describes the financial industry lobbyists who fight common sense laws and financial protection rules to protect ordinary Americans.


https://bettermarkets.org/

https://profstevekeen.substack.com/p/the-magnificent-failure-of-mainstream?utm_s...

The Magnificent Failure of Mainstream Economics

Henry Snow's critique of Yanis Varoufakis' book ' 'Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism'; a view of the current global economic system,  from the Left:

https://jacobin.com/2023/10/cloud-capitalism-technofeudalism-serfs-cloud-big-dat...

We’re Still Living Under Capitalism, Not “Techno-Feudalism”

Varoufakis’s account of recent economic and financial history is often commendable despite these errors. Key in his view to the rise of cloud capital is central bank policy. With money flowing freely from central banks, firms like Amazon focused on cornering “total market dominance” rather than profit, growing while hemorrhaging money. Varoufakis’s synthesis of internet and monetary events accessibly captures the flaws of our broken financialized world.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/04/exxon-chief-public-climate-failu...

Fury after Exxon chief says public to blame for climate failures

Darren Woods says consumers not willing to pay for clean-energy transition, prompting backlash from climate experts

........

Good one Darren, blame the consumers, not the producers.....

Anyway, it's good to know (if the increase in climate-related disasters continues),  the public sector can pay for the transition with public money created out of thin air...as opposed to "taxpayer money" extracted from taxpayers.

And Darren can retire on his fossil-fuel-sourced wealth....

The shocking thing is Woods is aware the damage his industry causes: 

"“The dirty secret nobody talks about is how much all this is going to cost and who’s willing to pay for it,” he told Fortune last week. “The people who are generating those emissions need to be aware of and pay the price for generating those emissions. That is ultimately how you solve the problem."

In other words, he wants consumers ("the people who are generating those emissions") to pay to maintain the profitability of Exxon while it changes from a fossil to a renewable company, or more likely (as is revealed in the article) , while it attempts to invent technology which can capture CO2 emissions from fossil fuels -  paid for by the public via carbon taxes.   

Another example of the damage caused by mainstream belief in Thatcher's lie (noted in the previous post):

https://www.msn.com/en-au/money/markets/tens-of-thousands-more-jobs-must-go-to-f...

Tens of thousands more jobs must go to finally crack this cost-of-living crisis, economists say

.....

"Economists"?

Obviously not - rather, purveyors of obsolete flat-earth ideology.