The Debt of Nations texts can be found here and here. The second text, in particular is an innovative and convincing thesis on the resources available to the European Central Bank and its role as a fiscal player.
Have a good read..
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What "second text"? The "here" link just goes to ONE document. Is there a second one?
Sorry RM, second link now posted.
Pawning the ECB seigniorage, which if the EuroArea broke up would be greatly reduced anyway, if not lost altogether. Brilliant. Diabolically clever, but the Germans will not buy it, and most government officials will not even understand it.
And the crisis has now has reached the point when Mario Draghi has to beg banks to take his cheap money and buy higher yielding government bonds, which they are afraid they will have to write down in their balance sheets, in accordance with the latest stricter criteria demanded by the European Banking Authority of all people.
Sovereigns have changed over time. but since the onset of mass taxation they have tended to stabilise - no longer dependent on excise, pillage, conquest, labour dues or slavery, and seigniorage. We've rather taken our political eye off the ball.
When the Euro was launched I cannot believe that there was any expectation that it would face such fair weather for so long, nor that it would be so successful. The European Bank's seigniorage is calculated at 3.3 trillion Euros which, as you say, would be lost possibly all together were the Eurozone to break up and the central banks of the member-states of the Eurozone resume their functions - now virtually subsumed by the ECB.
What we have, without provision for it, is a central bank without a sovereign, wielding huge sums that disappear if the Euro disappears. Mr Draghi is immensely powerful but with a light touch ( to coin a phrase) on power.
While the row has raged over the disabilities of a currency without a state, states with half a mind have been seeking to build a Eurozone sovereign in double-quick time and relying on Mr Trichet and Mr Draghi to hold the fort in the meantime.
Nasty globalista attempts to build a globalist sovereign called G20 or some such undemocratic, self-appointed body, have been seen off by the defeat of socialism, usually in its 'inoffensive' social democratic form, in all but one of the 27 European Union member -states (and even Austria is in coalition; Denmark isn't even in the Eurozone so it doesn't really count in all this).
(Takes deep breath). So far the 'Core Europe' states have stepped round the, even now, social -democratic dominated permanent institutions in Brussels (it's not called the EUSSR for nothing), by using the Schengen route which we might expect to later integrate their decisions into the Treaties. But if such integration as a goal is further blocked by a UK concerned to protect its own interests, then with such resources available to them - far greater than the resources available to the current European Union as a whole, a new European Union will be created that, it is to be hoped, might develop institutions more accessible to Europe's people than the EU that was aimed-for and built by social and socialist 'democracy'.
On the other hand, perhaps his numbers are not right, and/or member states of Core Europe will prefer to revert to nation statehood. But they are working on a new Europe and there is the funding to do it.
There may be trouble ahead, but meanwhile...
I am glad I ecaped several years ago!
I find it hard to grasp the crisis because it's all being cast in financial and economic terms. I wish someone would analyse what's happening in political terms.
There are a number of stand-offs going on: globalistas versus europeanistas versus nation statesmen; an inter-generational standoff (what's with all the pension-stripping that started with New Labour's assault on private pensions but is now all over everyone's pension, private or tax-funded?); a huge fight over worker's rights and capitalist production's needs; a free-trade or protection battle; a big staters versus small state-low tax fight; an ethical and moral row over standard of living claims and inequality (income and otherwise); and now, to top it all off, the resurgence of naivista socialists, red in tooth and claw, and unaware of realised socialism's failure, intent on re-inventing the wheel.
You're not really out of it, Nomad, you're just well prepared for anything that's coming - or has already arrived.
"The intertemporal seigniorage identity"
Is the Delta function in this equation correct? :->>
Says Elby, mourning his lost grasp of derivation and integral calculus. Gone. All gone.
"Sovereigns have changed over time. but since the onset of mass taxation they have tended to stabilise - no longer dependent on excise, pillage, conquest"
Indeed. That's for the banksters.
http://newsnetscotland.com/index.php/scottish-opinion/3909-plan-b-how-to-loot-nations-and-their-banks-legally (h/t Subrosa)
"Gone. All gone"... Hold on to your Tennyson, Elby ,and keep on working at the way of the soul.
(and if you think I'm going to join in questioning one of Willem's equations..., I'll leave that to better-skilled economists than am I).
Hello to everyone.
Could someone please explain me what the central point and solution in W. Buiter’s first lecture is about?
(Excessive debt in rich nations: what happens when sovereigns,
banks and households deleverage at the same time?)
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