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It is not defined in "Money's worth" of assets or of production from assets or anything else constituting "Value" - as opposed to a bank-created CLAIM on Value ie "anti-Value".
Wherever Money is created as Debt, then at the instant of creation, the money to pay the interest on the newly created debts does not exist, and must be created.
So the money supply grows exponentially, and the economy - MEASURED in these deficit-based units - must grow too.
You refer to only two solutions.
I am pointing out that there is now emerging another solution which is the change of the nature of money and capital itself which actually results from using:
(a) mutualised (without a credit intermediary) credit creation through a "Guarantee Society" approach which is interest-free, but not cost free, because defaults and admin costs are shared;
(b) mutualised investment through "co-ownership" of productive assets ie the sharing of production or revenues as between Capital providers and Capital users.
In this "Open Capital" model there are no "jobs" or "employment" in the sense of "Labour" working FOR the "Financial Capital" Marx wrote about (ie the legal claims over value of "Equity" and "Debt").
Instead individuals work WITH Capital to mutual advantage: there is no "Profit" and no "Loss" in such a quasi partnership.
Governments are reinvented as networked participative "partnerships of partnerships" in which citizens are Members. "The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson
There is a profound confusion here between stocks and flows. The money created as debt and destroyed when debt is repaid may be reused an indefinite number of times in income circulation. So the total amount of income, out of which interest payments are made, and the total stock of money do not have a fixed relationship.
The bulk of the money stock is indeed leveraged off of the stock of fiat currency created when the government purchases (and destroyed when the government collects taxes and other payments), and some of the primary drivers of that leveraging process are also drivers of the income-multiplier process, so that when the central bank does not interfere with a particular broad monetary aggregate, it tends to track income growth.
But the argument about interest payments requiring creation of new money is a simply fallacy, confusing a stock quantity and a flow quantity. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
The vast bulk of money created - around 70% in the UK -came into existence as mortgage loans, and - due to the nature of fractional reserve banking - is the direct cause of property (actually LAND) price inflation.
Much other credit=money is also secured against assets, and again, is not actually in circulation, but is "static".
Clearly it is the case that is only a relatively small amount of credit=money which circulates as Society's "working capital".
Some of this is created by banks and is being recycled in the way you mention ie short-term credits. But there is a huge amount of other value in circulation - interest-free - as well, and that derives from "trade" credit.
As far as economists are concerned, I suspect that this trade credit barely appears on the radar screen at all, since it is not bank-created credit.
Correct me if I am wrong: I am not familiar with the Alice in Wonderland World of national accounting. It does my head in.
The simple fact of the matter is that wherever a business barter system - such as the Swiss WIR, or proprietary barter systems like Bartercard - allows participants "time to pay" aka bilateral trade "credit", then the result is a "bank-less" monetary system requiring a "Value Unit" - typically a "Trade Pound" or a "Trade Dollar".
This demonstrates empirically that Banks are entirely unnecessary credit intermediaries and could quite easily provide their only REAL value creation (that of a guarantee of a borrower's credit) as a service provider instead.
What you are missing is that it is the payment of interest on the enormous "fixed capital" stock that is driving the requirement for economic growth.
This is the real Inconvenient Truth which virtually all schools of economic thought gloss over through the use of faulty assumptions.
Capital - by which I mean assets, such as land, intellectual property,anything "owned" by companies and so on, which are the subject of property rights - is "productive", in the same way that Labour is productive.
Both have a value in use, and they combine to create "Value" - which is indefinable, but which I prefer to call "Money's Worth".
Conventional economics would have it that when a factory is automated through vast capital investment, the sole remaining employee who switches it on and off magically becomes infinitely "productive".
Complete balderdash.
However, it suits those who (increasingly) own the bulk of assets that any consideration of the inequitable distribution of capital assets, and particularly property rights in "commons", should essentially be defined out of discussion or consideration.
No equitable taxation system would fail to tax the privilege of private property rights over commons such as land and knowledge.
But our modern day to day narrative does not even permit consideration of such a possibility.
I digress.
My point is that you simply ignore the fact that the driver for economic growth is nothing to do with the financing of money in circulation (which actually need cost nothing, other than shared costs of administration and defaults) and everything to do with the financing of a nation's "Capital Stock". "The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson
All money except fiat currency itself is secured against assets ... but the speed of the velocity of a certain type of commercial bank liability that can be used, in some transaction, as money is entirely a matter of flows.
A money stock exists at a point in time. If we could take a snapshot of all commercial bank balances at a point in time, and add up the total bank liabilities that function as money at that point in time, that is the stock of money.
A monetary flow exists through time ... it is a count of a number of monetary transactions that occur within some period. The "static" idea above is simply a flow of zero, which is certainly possible for some commercial bank liabilities that function as money, especially for short periods such as a month or a week.
But At All Times in a reserve banking system, barring shenanigans in which an insolvant bank is being temporarily hidden from the bank examiners, total commercial bank assets equal total commerical bank liabilities, with the account liabilities that function as money providing the lion's share of the money supply, and fiat currency in circulation (rather than held by commercial banks as assets) providing the remainder of the money supply.
That supply is a stock. There is no necessity for the stock to increase in size in order for the total amount of monetary transactions in a period to increase, since the average velocity of circulation of a unit of currency can increase instead.
However, since commercial banks create additional purchasing power as an immediate side-effect of extending new credit (and with nothing whatsoever to do with the need to allow interest to be paid), money stock broadly measured does tend to move with the income-expenditure cycle that is in part driven by that extension of new credit. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
Money as it really is - as opposed to the toxic bank-created Object we are accustomed to - has no "cost" any more than an inch or a kilogram has a cost.
At any given point in time in the global accounting universe or "Ledger of Ledgers" comprising all accounting transactions there is:
(a) a complete equal and opposite set of "Accounts Receivable" and "Accounts Payable" ie a global "transaction repository".
(b)a complete set of who "owns" or has rights of use in what - ie a global "Title Repository".
The former is essentially "working capital" and the latter is essentially "fixed capital".
In sum, this may be thought of as "Capital". It is both "Static" Value and "potential" Money.
"Money" is the result when "transaction" messages pass within this accounting universe - and changes are then made in the database in relation to creation and settlement of obligations, and transfers of title to assets.
But "Money" in reality is ephemeral - it is "Dynamic Value", existing only in the transient moment of the transaction event.
Money is a Relationship, not a bank-created Object.
Banks as credit intermediaries are simply not necessary. They are not a necessary part of the accounting universe in fact.
There is in truth no REAL money "stock" - we have simply been fooled into thinking that bank-created credit constitutes Value, rather than its antithesis. There is only a stock of POTENTIAL money aka Capital.
Capital is to Money as Matter is to Energy: Economics is the Physics of Value. "The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson
As I have said often enough on this site, Bank (Deficit) Money bears the same relationship to Value as anti-Matter does to Matter. It is an IOU or a "claim over Value".
Bank money is a promise from the bank to clear a payment provided you have been credited with a sufficient amount in the correct account. Provided they fulfill that promise, it functions as a medium of exchange, store of value, unit of account, and standard of deferred payment.
Its a good thing that it is not valuable in its own right, but instead is valuable, as with any other financial asset which is a liability of another party, to the extent that the other party fulfills its promise. Having intrinsic value would interfere with its functioning as money. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
The existence of this is a very large part of "the problem".
My point is that banks as credit intermediaries are simply unnecessary, when an alternative monetary system comprises:
(a) a barter network; (b) bilateral credit, with a mutual guarantee, backed by a default fund; (c) a "Value Unit", (d) a Credit Manager formerly known as a Bank - as service provider.
Money is a relationship, not an object. "The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson
Of course money is a relation, not an object. Social institutions are not objects, even when they feel like objects in use. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
But the point is that "Money" is not in fact a "thing".
A Value Unit is abstract, and is a necessary part of the Money relationship.
A Value Unit is a "Unit of account" and also a "Medium of Exchange".
As for "standard of deferred contract payment", yes, a monetary system exists to split barter transactions over time.
But a "Store of Value"? Conventional interest-bearing money operates in this way, of course.
But in reality, definitely not. A "Store of Value" is what "Capital" is all about. "The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson
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