Tag Archives: the Ikon

  Two key aspects or functions of money: 1. As a convenient medium of exchange – can be anything; but that’s not enough, as exchange rates between multiple media of exchange would be variable and result in anarchy 2. As a unit of account – this is primary, as Keynes taught – and explains why…
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  The attributes of gold usually cited as making it useful as money are summed up by the World Gold Council as follows:   “Gold’s scarcity, the fact that it does not corrode or tarnish, its malleability and status across civilisations have made it eminently suitable as a form of money.”   There is more…
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A common criticism of proposals for reform of the international monetary system is that they are not politically possible. Of course, there are other grounds on which they can be and are criticised – especially when they call for a return to stable exchange rates, a howl goes up that this would sacrifice the domestic…
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At the conclusion of a recent star-studded IMF conference, chief economist Olivier Blanchard argued that we may need negative real interest rates for a long time. Here is the passage in full: “Now let me now turn to monetary policy, and touch on three issues: the implications of the liquidity trap, the provision of liquidity,…
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    The supply of money needs to be limited or ‘anchored’ to prevent excessive supply reducing its value. At present money is supposed to be limited by central banks following inflation targeting models. However, this paradigm has lost traction under the strain of the crisis. In effect we have returned to a discretionary monetary policy,…
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When I first proposed that central banks might hold a basket of diversified equities on the assets side of their balance sheets, it was an unheard-of notion. My friends advised me to take it out. “People will think you’re crazy”, they said. Now it turns out that that is exactly what a growing number of…
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What are the differences between a commodity money, credit money and the Ikon – currency of the future ? Using the gold standard as an example of the first, where the price of gold was fixed and money was convertible into it on demand at that price, gold and sure claims on gold were money….
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The most common response I have had to the proposals made in my book for a new banking system and global monetary reform is that they are too radical, too ambitious, and won’t happen. When I ask such critics (who are usually of a friendly disposition) what are they suggesting, they usually reply that slow…
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  Nearly six years after the outbreak of the worst financial crisis in history, prospects for a full economic recovery remain elusive. Unemployment remains at very high levels, and standards of living for many people in developed countries are likely to fall over the first two decades of this century. Meanwhile, emerging markets remain vulnerable…
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Like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Graeber is fascinated by the past. Indeed, Graeber might have started his book (“Debt: the first 5,000 years”) with an echo of the famous opening of The Social Contract: “Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains”. But perhaps he thought that would be presumptuous.   Graeber starts off…
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