The European Tribune is a forum for thoughtful dialogue of European and international issues. You are invited to post comments and your own articles.
Please REGISTER to post.
If you have a Treasury with a drawer full of shovel-ready, useful infrastructure projects, then the Treasury can shoot the private banking sector in the back of the head, dump the corpse in a shallow grave and nothing excessively bad will happen (except maybe a coup d'etat), irrespective of where you are in the business cycle.
Because with sufficiently activist fiscal policy, you get to abolish the business cycle.
- Jake Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.
We need a banking system so that the fiscal authority can concentrate their attention on those tasks that a banking system cannot or should not be doing. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
Not that you would want to do it unless your banks needed a lead pill delivered intercranially for other reasons.
Obviously we could shoot all the TBTF banks in the back of the head, and so long as we did it by taking them into receivership long enough for people to shift their accounts to small community banks and credit unions, there wouldn't be any massive calamity in the short term, and in the long term we'd be better off.
But shooting the entire private banking sector in the back of the head and having to recreate the entire sector from scratch ~ that seems likely to deepen the current depression. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
by Frank Schnittger - May 31
by Oui - May 30 44 comments
by Frank Schnittger - May 23 3 comments
by Frank Schnittger - May 27 3 comments
by Oui - May 13 66 comments
by Oui - Jun 91 comment
by Oui - Jun 58 comments
by Oui - Jun 256 comments
by Oui - Jun 112 comments
by Oui - May 31110 comments
by Oui - May 3044 comments
by Frank Schnittger - May 273 comments
by Oui - May 2742 comments
by Oui - May 24
by Frank Schnittger - May 233 comments
by Oui - May 1366 comments
by Oui - May 928 comments
by Oui - May 450 comments
by Oui - Apr 30273 comments
by Oui - Apr 2666 comments
by Oui - Apr 8108 comments
by Oui - Mar 19145 comments