Sovereign Money

Beyond Reserve Banking
1. Auflage 2017
ISBN: 978-3-319-42173-5
Verlag: Springer International Publishing

Buch, Englisch, 206 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 3401 g

In coming to terms with the still smoldering financial crisis, little attention has been paid to the flaws within our monetary system and how these flaws lie at the root of the crisis.
This book provides an introduction and critical assessment of the current monetary system. It begins with an up to date account of the workings of today’s system of state-backed ‘bankmoney’, illustrating the various forms and issuers of money, and discussing money theory and fallacy past and present. It also looks at related economic challenges such as inflation and deflation, asset inflation and bubble building that lead to market instability and examines the ineffectual monetary policies and primary credit markets that are failing to reach some sort of self-limiting equilibrium.
In order to fix our financial system, we first need to understand its limitations and the flaws in current monetary and regulatory policy and then correct them. The concluding part of this book is dedicated to the latter, advocating a move towards the sovereign monetary prerogatives of issuing the entire stock of official money and benefitting from the gain thereof (seigniorage). The author argues that these functions should be made the sole responsibility of independent and impartial central banks with full control over the stock of money (not the uses of money) on the basis of a legal mandate that would be more detailed than is the case today. This includes a thorough separation of monetary and fiscal powers, and of both from banking and wider financing functions.
This book provides a welcome addition to the banking literature, guiding readers through the inner workings of our monetary and regulatory environments and proposing a new way forward that will better protect our economy from financial instability and crisis.

Zielgruppe

Professional/practitioner

Autoren/Hrsg.

Huber, Joseph

Fachgebiete

• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Finanzsektor & Finanzdienstleistungen Bankwirtschaft
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Volkswirtschaftslehre Allgemein Geldwirtschaft, Währungspolitik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction1.  Money 1.1 Currency, money and capital1.2 Types of money1.3 Creators and issuers of money1.4 Coin currencies1.5 Tally sticks1.6 Banknotes and the ascent of fractional reserve banking1.7 Bankmoney on account1.8 Electronic cash1.9 Money as an informational token1.10 Where does the value of money come from?1.11 A monetarised and financialised economy2. Chartalism2.1 State theory versus market theory of money2.2 Money is a legal instrument by state fiat2.3 The sovereign monetary prerogative and its two historical challenges2.4 The Currency versus Banking controversy2.5 Full chartalism versus state-backed commercial bankmoney3. Money and Banking Today3.1 The two-tier split-circuit structure3.2 Bankmoney. Credit and deposit creation in one act3.3 Interplay between public and interbank circulation3.4 Minimum reserve positions and the unreal multiplier model3.5 The unreal loanable funds model of banking. Savings as deactivated deposits3.6 The golden bank rule and the question of maturity transformation3.7 Restrictions to credit and deposit creation3.8 Creation of bankmoney. The entire picture3.9 Deletion of bankmoney3.10 Quasi-seigniorage of bankmoney creation3.11 Growing competition to primary bank credit from secondary credit offered by financial intermediaries3.12 The rhetoric about endogenous and exogenous money3.13 The false identity of money and credit4. Problems of the bankmoney regime (fractional reserve banking)4.1 The monetary system—the misjudged root cause of financial crises4.2   Incomplete analysis of financial crises4.3   The monetary quantity equation4.4   Channels of bankmoney issuance4.5   Inflation4.6   Asset inflation, bubbles and crises4.7   Over-indebtedness4.8   Financial market failure4.9   Monetary policy failure4.10 Bankmoney is unsafe4.11 The distributional bias of bankmoney and financial-market capitalism4.12 From around 1980 to 2008. The Great Immoderation4.13 The question of lawfulness of bankmoney4.14 The disregarded constitutional dimension of the monetary order5. Bankmoney to Sovereign Money5.1 Basic traits of a sovereign money system5.2 Central banks as the fourth branch of the state5.3 Separation of money creation from banking, and of monetary from fiscal functions5.4 The prohibition of the government from issuing money5.5 The role of the banks in a sovereign money system5.6 Capacity-oriented quantity policy5.7 Channels of issuance and first uses of new money5.8 Is there a necessary sequence in the circulation of money?5.9 Sovereign money debt-free vs interest-bearing5.10 How to account for sovereign money on a central-bank balance sheet5.11 Conversion-day transition5.12 Little to lose, much to gain. Stability, safety, seigniorage5.13 Seigniorage to the benefit of the public purse5.14 Transition through raising fractional reserves to 100% of deposits?5.15 Government-issued money adding to bankmoney?5.16 Sovereign e-cash and money accounts in addition to bank giro accounts5.17 International connectivity of sovereign money

Über Autor(innen)

Professor Joseph Huber is Chair of Economic Sociology Em. at Martin Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. Previously he was Associate Professor at the Free University Berlin and has also held guest and interim professorships at Science Centre Berlin, University of Zurich and Technical University Vienna. Professor Huber is a pioneer of what is now known as ‘green ethical banking’ and is one of the founders of ecological modernisation theory. He has written extensively on monetary policy and reform topics, is a longstanding policy advisor on matters of economic and ecological modernisation and is actively involved in the international movement for monetary reform.