Politics Home has reported that:
A group of peers, think tanks and economic experts are set to launch a new parliamentary group focused on pressuring government to overhaul the Bank of England's current powers, including its ability to print money and buy bonds through Quantitative Easing (QE).
As they note:
Lord Hannan, a Conservative peer since 2021, will host the launch of Honest Money Initiative (HMI) which aims to lobby for reform of Britain's monetary system. It is supported by Mark Littlewood from the Institute of Economic Affairs and Eamon Butler from the Adam Smith Institute.
Let's call this yet another Tufton Street initiative in that case.
The report also notes:
The event in parliament on Monday will include a screening of a documentary produced by free market think tank the Cobden Centre. It is aimed at encouraging MPs to “remove the power of the Bank of England to create unlimited quantities of new money”.
No doubt they are entirely happy that private sector banks can do just that. But, oddly, they have massive reservations about the state doing so. The true agenda slowly becomes apparent in the report:
Former Brexit negotiator Lord Frost, a strong supporter of the HMI campaign, and expected to attend Monday's launch event, said he believed it was time to “change the Bank of England's mandate so we can start to turn the tide".
"The best thing government can do to improve hardworking families' everyday lives is learn to live within its means - just like everyone else has had to. Money printing and a long period of super-low interest rates has been at the root of the country's move leftwards,” he added.
So, there are really three things that this is all about.
The first is to promote the household analogy.
The second is to stop state intervention in markets.
The third, of course, is to limit the size of government and to restrict the scope of what it might do for people.
Why the paranoia now? Let me suggest a reason. The biggest challenge we have ever faced is now not on the horizon but is instead staring us in the face. It is, of course, climate change. All those promoting this activity are climate change deniers. All of them want no action taken on it. They most definitely want to limit the scope of government to intervene on the issue. There are already signs that they are succeeding on this. Just look at how Labour is crumbling. So, their aim is to say that the government should not intervene. We should live within out limits, they say, even if those limits will apparently lead to our extinction on current trajectories. That, I suggest, is the true agenda here.
I wonder which MPs and powers are up to promoting the alternative?
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The Conservative/Tory Party have been trying to privatise money for 300 years; since the South Sea Bubble. To understand this people should read the illuminating history surrounding the Sword Blade Company (the Tory answer to the Whig Bank of England). For the whole South Sea Bubble disaster, not least as an insight into Toryism read Thomas Levenson, ‘Money for Nothing’.
It is worth remembering that while all money is debt, all debt is not money. Not all promises to pay are money. Not all IOUs are money. How do you tell the difference? The hierarchy of money (see Mehrling).
“The Inherent Hierarchy of Money” by Perry Mehrling
https://ieor.columbia.edu/files/seasdepts/industrial-engineering-operations-research/pdf-files/Mehrling_P_FESeminar_Sp12-02.pdf
Whatever the truth of the Sun’s allegations about the BBC presenter it has certainly proved to be exactly the kind of Dead Cat on the Table needed to bury all stories like the above and Parliament’s failure yesterday to sanction any of the Tory MPs found guilty of trying undermine the democratic processes of the UK.
Like the strange Philip Schofield affair that according to the UK media coverage was the biggest news story in the world for a whole week you could be forgiven for thinking that far right Newspaper owners are desperate to stop the public from being reminded why we desperately need to get rid of this law-breaking, corrupt and incompetent Tory government.
In Rupert Murdoch’s case, with Talk TV struggling, attacks on ITV and the BBC also have personal financial benefits.
The news media will have realised they can’t compete with the internet and that their only hope of survival is to eke out a last few desperate years as propaganda outlets for the govt, who oblige in turn by clamping down on social media in order that one and only one narrative (theirs) reaches the eyes and ears of the public. As desperation becomes even more acute, expect more and more bizarre items to appear none of which are to be believed, though really a universal disbelief in the news media’s output should have been firmly in place for some years now.
The last week or so has been interesting given that yet again the Tory press have got their hands on a story that appeals to a certain type of individual, while other news is just “buried”. Distraction politics you could call it. For the Murdoch press anything that attacks the BBC is fair game, doesn’t matter if it’s true or what the full facts are. I imagine that if that email about a certain former Tory chancellor had been about a BBC celebrity it would have been running for weeks.
Then there is the “whisper list”.
40 MP’s to avoid, especially if you are a woman.
Charlotte Nichols, the MP for Warrington North, said she was warned of colleagues to never accept a drink from or be alone with. The list, which is not written down, includes people known for “bullying or sexual misconduct”.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/nov/10/whisper-list-contains-40-politicians-never-to-accept-a-drink-from-mp-claims
Parliament needs to get its own house in order before it starts preaching about the BBC.
Now, I think if we ever get PR in the UK there would need to be major reform of many institutions including the media. The Tories would likely never rule again under PR, yet they have powerful friends in the media, especially the press, that could clearly do a lot of damage. The Tory media would effectively be a hostile force against PR and any progressive coalition. We currently have the joke of supposed news channels like GB News that has Tories working for it, who just happen to have part time jobs as MP’s. That would need to stop.
The current system is rotten to the core and the Tories are responsible for that. About time the Labour leadership distanced themselves from it.
As for the climate change deniers they just come across as a bunch of “I’m alright Jack” types. Leave it for someone else to sort out. They are so dumb, but dangerous. That right wing media just see it as a bit of bad weather. They are a big part of the rotten core.
Glad you are talking about this Richard.
So, Daniel Hannan is still at it then I wager? It wasn’t enough that he contributed to BREXIT and has called the NHS a ‘mistake’ that needs to be reversed (by destroying it).
We know about Frost – he’s just an idiot – but I bet its the evil, mischievous Hannan who has given the latest escapade the catchy HMI label.
Note the re-writing of history – its low interest rates and QE that are the problems – not the 2008 crash and the multitude of crashes before fermenting the Left. And don’t mention the environment – as you suggest.
So, the crackpots are still with us causing trouble and are even ennobled this time! That screams to me that something is going on here that even the most sceptical of conspiracy theorists must take note of. It’s all coming together very nicely.
But this is still really bad news isn’t it? I’ve been struggling to label contemporary politics for some time with its rigid orthodoxy, lack of ideas and a worrying authoritarian streak (whether Just Stop Oil or Neal Lawson).
I think I now have the name: We are in the age of COMPLIANCE folks. TINA for all.
What’s going on here, PSR, is unrestrained capitalism, red in tooth and claw.
Helen
I think that it’s a lot deeper than that – as Clara Mattei would say, the capital order is becoming the social order once again. It is a class war – as well as capitalism.
That is why AI is being promoted, that is why the chaos coming out of Covid, BREXIT, is being exploited to destroy working people as capital seeks to seize the money supply for itself and reign over us.
Well paid jobs did Boris say? Nonsense.
Yet another example of lazy clown politicians. Where do these clowns think the money came from to support businesses during the Covid pandemic or for that matter to stave off the inherent deflationary effect of the 2007/2008 GFC?
None of the UK’s political parties are worth voting for they all subscribe to the one single explanation historical nonsense of the Quantity Theory of Money to explain inflation. It’s going to take a long time to shift this lazy perception!
Honest Money Initiative. Hmm. Perhaps the chimps promoting this would first care to define Dishonest Money?
Sadly that would require a discussion, details would start to emerge plus information and we can’t have that.
Hannan is typical of most vile-tories who are to a man/woman congential liars. The comments by Frost further prove the point . “a long period of super-low interest rates has been at the root of the country’s move leftwards” – I guess that would include the period 2010 to 2015 when Gidiots policies led directly to the deaths of ++130,000 people – that swing leftwards? led by a left-wing chancellor? In a normal country such people would be patted on the head and ingnored, that they have a platform shows how far the Uk has sunk.
”The biggest challenge we have ever faced is now not on the horizon but is instead staring us in the face. It is, of course, climate change. All those promoting this activity are climate change deniers. All of them want no action taken on it.”
Are they completely insane? Do they think climate change will just affect foreigners and poor people?
I guess so
I suspect they’d rather see the end of the world happen with the existing status quo in place than accept any necessary change.
Because at some level the money sadists realise that whatever our response to climate change, there’s going to be less to go around, and they don’t want their class to be the ones with less.
You make a very important point.
All the evidence suggests that is just the way the average right wing politician, media baron and city speculator thinks.
Like Trump, you are dealing with rat-like cunning and little else. Although possibly I am being unfair to rats.
Most of these comments on Richard’s post strongly suggest the baby boomer generation is the idiot generation but I think it goes much further back than this there never has been much of an effort to understand how money really works amongst human beings until the MMT economists started the ball rolling but even here there is much work to do especially in regard to the causes of inflation.
In earlier decades people questioning the nature of money were derided as currency cranks. They definitely existed before the boomers.
If the Tufton Street mob want to join the ‘Honest Money Initiative’, perhaps they will finally tell us honestly about where they get their money from?
It would be nice to know exactly who deserves the blame!
I like it. A variation has been tweeted.
Here’s a little video from the Economist the Tufton Street clowns need to watch. Attention span required only one minute! It just might be possible they pick up a clue how the government creates money!!!
http://mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.com/2023/07/how-do-banks-actually-create-money-we.html
That video is wrong
There is no such thing as fractional reserve banking now
Yes there isn’t but I was just amazed the Economist even put out such a video!
It’s called ‘fictional reserve banking’ now, for sure.
“Paris to charge SUV drivers higher parking fees to tackle ‘auto-besity’ ”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/11/paris-charge-suv-drivers-higher-parking-fees-tackle-auto-besity
What a shame you can’t charge people for “money-blindness”!
Eyeballing the last ~40 years of UK money supply data (M4):
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/money-supply-m4
the amount of “money in the economy” appears to have increased from ~200 billion GBP to more than 3000 billion GBP, with almost 1000 billion of that added in the last ten years.
I’m curious.
How much of this has been created by the state (BoE) versus the private banking sector?
Am I right in thinking that much of the increase correlates with property value inflation?
Apart from property, what else has happened to all this money?
Does this tell us anything about the so-called “Honest Money Initiative” and its proponents?
About £1trn is government created money
It has inflated house prices
Osborne always intended that it should