moonman
09-16-2007, 04:32 AM
A couple weeks back I shared a proposal from a learned professor who advocates permitting the IMF to print a new global currency and infuse the global economy with 2-3 hundred billion in money per year. While I believe the notion has merit it is not a solution. It is more of the same.
Our problems are traceable to the collapse of Breton Woods and the transition to floating currencies. While this policy too has merit it has proved the worst in human nature. People will elect the politician most able to provide a 'free lunch.'
The market just isn't the most effective check and balance on free spending politicians. currency is as critical to the economy of a nation as healthy blood is to a human being.
Recogonizing the need for some standard, or check and balance, many honest advocates from Jack Kemp to Paul Craig Roberts and even Robert Reich have advocated a return to the gold standard. Well fact is we abandonned the gold standard because it didn't work very well either.
What we do need is some standard, some check and balance on the financial system, aside from the full faith and credit of nations. My modest proposal is that we reconvene Breton Woods with a goal toward developing a new monetary standard for nations to follow. IN effect that would be an energy standard of some form.
I admit that mine is not the genious mind to come up with the formula, though I will propose some of the ellements. An energy standard by which currency is measured would reward energy efficiency and penalize wastefullness on a cost benefit analysis. We might even do away with money in favor of an energy certificate that could be used just like any ATM card.
One would earn energy credits in the open market just as we now earn money. I'm not proposing doing away with our merit/market system of bargaining in all its forms.
What I am proposing is transitioning from money as we know it to another virtual measure of value and legal tender. The policy implications in terms of basing value on the energy it takes to produce a unit of value will have the force and effect of unleashing our creativity toward developing the most efficient light ecological footprint of power generation in all its forms and uses.
Like I said it is but a modest proposal, simply replacing market based assingment of value to legal tender and standardizing the value money proportionate to the cost of energy used to produce value. Indeed we would replace the old gold standard with a new energy standard.
All ideas, pro and con are welcome. Also perhaps you now appreciate the handle 'moonman' as I do tend to think outside the box.
Our problems are traceable to the collapse of Breton Woods and the transition to floating currencies. While this policy too has merit it has proved the worst in human nature. People will elect the politician most able to provide a 'free lunch.'
The market just isn't the most effective check and balance on free spending politicians. currency is as critical to the economy of a nation as healthy blood is to a human being.
Recogonizing the need for some standard, or check and balance, many honest advocates from Jack Kemp to Paul Craig Roberts and even Robert Reich have advocated a return to the gold standard. Well fact is we abandonned the gold standard because it didn't work very well either.
What we do need is some standard, some check and balance on the financial system, aside from the full faith and credit of nations. My modest proposal is that we reconvene Breton Woods with a goal toward developing a new monetary standard for nations to follow. IN effect that would be an energy standard of some form.
I admit that mine is not the genious mind to come up with the formula, though I will propose some of the ellements. An energy standard by which currency is measured would reward energy efficiency and penalize wastefullness on a cost benefit analysis. We might even do away with money in favor of an energy certificate that could be used just like any ATM card.
One would earn energy credits in the open market just as we now earn money. I'm not proposing doing away with our merit/market system of bargaining in all its forms.
What I am proposing is transitioning from money as we know it to another virtual measure of value and legal tender. The policy implications in terms of basing value on the energy it takes to produce a unit of value will have the force and effect of unleashing our creativity toward developing the most efficient light ecological footprint of power generation in all its forms and uses.
Like I said it is but a modest proposal, simply replacing market based assingment of value to legal tender and standardizing the value money proportionate to the cost of energy used to produce value. Indeed we would replace the old gold standard with a new energy standard.
All ideas, pro and con are welcome. Also perhaps you now appreciate the handle 'moonman' as I do tend to think outside the box.