Victor Milne said:
> > As I understand it, the Bank of Canada would charge the government
> interest
> > comparable to a private bank. However, since the B of C is an agency of
> the
> > government, all that it earned in interest would go into the general
> > revenues of the government, minus a small administration fee.
What a wonderful idea. No doubt the civil service will shoot it down by
claiming that they are totally inefficient and undeserving of the extra
funds. The only thing I can say is that they haven't had to deal with both
private and public sector. Apparatchiks always have their own myths that
have little to do with the whole of things.
Ed Weick then said:
It's not an idea which appeals to me at all. The preamble of the Bank of
Canada Act says that the role of the Bank "is to regulate credit and
currency in the best interests of the economic life of the nation, to
control and protect the external value of the national monetary unit and to
mitigate by its influence fluctuations in the general level of production,
trade, prices and employment, so far as may be possible within the scope of
monetary action, and generally to promote the economic and financial welfare
of Canada..."
REH Question:
You seem to be saying that the only use for the bank is regulatory. Is that
the case?
EW continues:
To do these things, it is absolutely vital that the Bank
remain at arms length from political influence. Government, like all
borrowers, must be subject to market tests.
REH comment
Down here we tend to equate the feeling of this with Corporate Welfare.
Corporations are strange little mini-governments under the law with citizens
who gain entrance to their world through the purchase of property (stocks)
or through the lending of money (speculation) which gives you a vote at the
election. The marketplace is really such a nebulous thought that it is
difficult to define without resorting to a fantastic mythology about why
people buy products and why they do not. The process of advertising so
distorts the true meanings of most of the products that I tend to avoid most
products that are advertised simply because they seem so potentially
unreliable. Anything of any value that I purchase I do on recommendation
of my network since I don't have money to waste and I can hold anyone
responsible for a careless recommendation including myself. But the whole
idea of buyer beware is such a repugnant thought that when a product begins
to be advertised I immediately consider that it has probably become
unreliable and they are trying to squeeze the last little bit of profit out
of something that is past its usefulness. My point is that it is all
political and that definition is arbitrary. The only thing you can trust is
that which can be held responsible. A responsible market is an oxymoron,
like the balance of nature. I take the same attitude towards the "wild
only" environmentalists. Me, I'm a gardener and grow students and
potentials.
EW concluded:
Making the Bank into the government's money machine would, in my opinion, be
an absolute disaster.
REH: concluded:
Well, it wasn't a disaster when William Boothe started his match factory to
put the Capitalists out of business who were poisoning the people with their
factories. Boothe's clean factories succeeded in hiring the other
factory's workers away to the safer environment. In short he put the
polluters out of business. They then approached Boothe who agreed to sell
them his factory at cost as long as they agreed to do away with the old
practice of poisoning their workers. There were those who insisted that
such practices were beyond religion but to my way of thinking Boothe and
maybe the Quaker Gregg were the few angels in this whole Christianity and
Capitalism fiasco. They thought about and cared about the people and made
their factories work within the context of that care.
Does the Bank of Canada care about the people or the corporations? It does
not follow that the health of the wealthy means that the health of the
common person will improve. Spirituality and Patriotism are supposed to
mitigate the harsh realities of the market place and create a nation where
lives are not wasted but grown. How can you value an Einstein? Is he
worth as much as Ford or Kennicutt Copper? The Creator does not give the
qualities of Einstien or Beethoven to the people of most "worth."
Though both are gifts to be found in all economic classes, the development
of such is not the case. Is a nation the poorer because they put Beethoven
to work in the Silver Mine at Potosi? or Einstein at Auschwitz?
The issue here for me Ed is that I don't believe that your system is for the
development of all the people but for the moneyed class. I certainly could
be selling you short on that but on the one hand you seem to invest the bank
as a kind of Supreme Court of monetary issues but on the other hand the
rules favor the wealthy and corporations as the keepers of the wealth of the
nation. Believe me, you and your family will hate HMOs. If the common
man or woman can choose to put the corporations or private banks in their
place by giving their money to the bank of the Nation and if that would then
hurt the private banks then is it not possible that the private institutions
are simply wasteful and inefficient? Perhaps it is like the New York
Transit. We have both private and public and they shift back and forth
every few years as the system on top becomes hidebound and inefficient.
Both systems follow the same rules and have to be replaced by the other
every few years. That is how they keep each other honest. If we didn't
have the public, the fares would go through the roof, like California's
energy costs, on the other hand, the private are more flexible and force
technological change and keep the Unions honest as well.
REH
