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To suddenly be of use again, to find a movement that values truth and intelligence, is like finally coming home for a great many people who have been so frustrated with the anti-intellectual feeling of the last several decades. Academia has also been on the front lines of the attack from the US government, with students at Columbia University told by the US State Dept that discussing Wikileaks on Facebook or Twitter would hurt their chances of a job in the future. Joe McCarthy could not have said it better.

den vigtige forskel på teori og praksis: "at det ikke kan være teoriens første opgave at omsætte sig selv i gerning. Teori er et forsøg på at orientere sig. Den må, mener Negt, holde afstand til praksis, hvis den vil redde sin kritiske funktion, for slet ikke at tale om sin sandhedsværdi" (99).

A de-growth model would therefore necessitate a fundamental restructuring of the global financial system. This is not likely to happen any time soon. But this has as much to do with political barriers and vested-interests as economic ideology.

A few things. First I’m pretty sure nothing should be 0% risk weighted. Second, yes, risk weightings are going to continue to be a big part of the real problem. Third Basel III fails to address the issue of the hegemony of the ratings agency cartel. On another note, I remain fairly convinced that there isn’t any way to completely remove the chance that banks blow up. Banks are completely unlike any other corporate structure – they are inherently levered and can therefore be wiped out by a nasty run on the bank, even if perfectly solvent. So what’s the answer? The minute we admit that TBTF exists, we have to charge for the privilege of being TBTF rather than try to regulate it out. Insurance premiums payable to a pre-funded disaster recovery fund, that are heavily geared to (true) leverage and spiral exponentially above 30x leverage sounds like a good start. Throw in additional premia based on the % of revenues from trading, the type of funding that props up the balance sheet and the liquidity of underlying assets, and Bob’s your uncle, we might have the beginnings of something that works.

Pluralistisk ignorance

Pluralistisk ignorance

Der hvor den pluralistiske ignorance, siger forfatterne ikke helt med rette, er manipuleret på baggrund af for lidt information

A lot of it was spent on bailing out US banks and that money is still there, as well as money funnelled into well connected corporations within the US. Already in the UK inflation is going out of control because of QE in this country, why should the US expect to be any different? What will happen when the US’s banks begin lending those trillions they are sitting on?

prefer ron paul /austrian economics view of life, but if you take on fiat debts worth trillions… you can’t solve the problem by cutting spending and having people suffer for this, this is not right, this type of debt should be canceled first (at least most of it)

No one seems to have pointed out that the original example given is actually wrong. (I've stumbled on this looking for something else, but had to comment.) The second balance sheet should still show $1000 as both the total assets and liabilities. The "deposit creation multiplier" idea referred to is the theoretical maximum aggregate balance sheet of the banking sector, if there is more than one bank and they all lend to each other and only each other. Its double counting, but that's allowed in the calculation of M4 money supply, but isn't allowed on any particular bank balance sheet (which is why the example is so wrong).

promisory notes

promisory notes

Enkeltsagen dominerer fuldstændig.

For hvad forestiller de sig selv – at en enkelt mand skulle kunne forandre USA? Den totale tro på individet og absolutte underkendelse af grundlæggende strukturelle forhindringer, spænder fuldstændigt ben for amerikanerne i deres stræben efter forandring.

Det kan virke noget selvmodsigende på den ene side at erkende, at enkeltsagen måske er der, hvor der faktisk kan opnås forandring, og på den anden side give den skylden for, at forandringer ikke bliver til noget. Men jeg tror, det afspejler den fatale og fastlåste politiske situation som USA demokratisk befinder sig i.

The neat causality of rational choice ontology, always at odds with quantum physics, was further jumbled by the environmental crisis, exposed by Rachel Carson’s 1962 book “The Silent Spring,” which revealed that the causal effects of human actions were much more complex, and so less predicable, than previously thought.