Pete starts by asking: if we can’t control govenment spending when we have to borrow the money (as we do now) the how can we keep it in check if we give the government the printing press? Everyone knows you can’t trust government! Joe argues that the benefits of a government issue money system, like [...]
Archive for November, 2009
Coffee with Joe 11-16-09 Part 2 (of 2): Not Worth a Continental!
Joe discusses the mythology behind the Continental, the debt-free currency that allowed the colonies to fund the revolutionary war independent of the european banks, as well as the hyperinflation of the Weimar currency in the 1920s. He recommends students read Stephen Zarlenga’s The Lost Science of Money for more detail. In Part 1, Joe distinguishes [...]
Coffee with Joe 11-16-09, Part 1 (of 2) Fiat Money: Debt-Based or Debt-Free?
In today’s Coffee, Part 1, Joe distinguishes between debt-based (what we have now) and debt-free fiat money systems and explains why the debt-free solution is superior to reforms suggested by Austrian economists (like Peter Schiff), such as free banking and commodity (i.e. gold) backing. In Part 2, Joe discusses the mythology behind the Continental, the [...]
Comic Relief: Steinbeck’s Frog Standard
“The whole thing was legitimate. Frogs were cash as far as Doc was concerned, the price was standard and Lee had a double profit. He had his five-frog margin and he also had his grocery mark-up. The whole thing hinged on whether they actually had the frogs.” (from Cannery Row by John Steinbeck, 1945)
Coffee with Joe: 11.5.09, Part 2, Privileges of the Money Power: Seigniorage and Interest
Joe and Pete discuss where paper money gets its value and argue that the benefits of money creation should be shared democratically.
Coffee with Joe: 11.5.09, Part 1: That Ain’t the Half of It
For one thing, because banks will only be able to lend real money, the depositor will become a much more powerful player than he is now. Taxes will be lower, in part because we will pay for things once, not two to three times over, the way we do with the private money creation system we have now.
Coffee with Joe 10.29.09: Of Debt and Taxes
On the eightieth anniversary of the Great Crash in 1929, Joe and Pete discuss the 3rd quarter GDP report (3.5% growth) in light of continued job losses, how our money system needs the national debt to create our base money supply, and how there could be no national debt if we reformed it. They wax [...]
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