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Jul. 8th, 2015|10:47 pm |
Well the point is in whose interests are they controlling the money supply? The general interest, or the interest of the financial class (namely the ones at the top of the hierarchy of debt relationships)? I would posit the latter - in fact I am sure of it.
I had a long chat about this with a mate of mine doing PPE at Oxford (he's a very mature student). His stance was that aside from being lenders of last resort (would that we could all have such a service;), they are there merely to keep inflation under control - that was their mandate. Low inflation is, of course, preferable for the lending class as it keeps the value of the money high. However central banks are also responsible for inflationary pressure (of bubble proportions) in certain sectors - most importantly, the housing sector; thus allowing the lending class to.. well clean up at our expense - keep us in debt for most of our working time on the planet and receive interest payments + principal for lending money created ex-nihilo. They simply couldn't do this without central bank largesse... and there is nothing we, the electorate, can do about it.
Re Bank of England independence, the Monetary Policy Committee makes most of the decisions regarding BofE operations (as far as I can discern). It has 9 voting members (all bar one from the international banking class - major US banks, World Bank, IMF etc - at least when I last checked). Five are appointed by the Bank, and four by the Treasury: so the govt has a presence, but.. well do the maths;).
The whole movement to central bank independence has been in motion for a while now - I can lend you a book 'The Political Economy of Monetary Institutions' if you like/I can find it, which outlines how it has proceeded at differing rates in different countries, but the direction has incontrovertibly been away from the public domain. So much so that it barely gets a flicker of attention even amongst the err so-called educated and informed. This group are, in my experience, happy to concede this area as the domain of the expert technocrat, who has no political motive. It is a huge mistake, in my view, and why I bang on about it so much. |
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