Letter: Invented money and helping each other
By Letters to the editor
Does anyone without an economist’s education understand how vast sums of money are “created” when Western, highly-developed economies are in crisis?
In 2008/09, trillions of dollars seemed to be conjured out of nothing, to rescue banks, corporations, and finance capitalists in the USA. Then, Wall St. nearly ruined our world economy, but no single person nor board of any institution implicated in the fraudulent paper assets and false values of stock market numbers, was ever punished by President Obama. He saved the system with debt money.
Now a very different president is saving the economy again, this time in a global pandemic crisis, with more money for people without jobs or incomes due to the effect of COVID 19. First world nations generally are doing similar things.
I do not comprehend it. But I read people who know better than I — I trust Charles Eisenstein for example — that this debt-generated money will have meaning for the future of our economies.
The impact is not negligible. This is a debt that is owed, though I am not sure who holds the role of creditor. Repaying debt is never without harsh effect on someone. Future generations seem to be burdened by what we do now.
If money appears by fiat, when a government determines the need is urgent, then why has it not appeared before, when poverty and inequality needed solutions?
I am mystified. How we could ever go back to what was “normal” after this is beyond my understanding. But I certainly do understand this: the positive feelings people are having now by their experience of helping one another, in the way people felt positive about their struggle in the last world war, are feelings we want to keep.
So. Keep solving our material problems with invented money. Keep feelings of helpfulness alive by giving us lives with purpose. Seems a simple plan, yes?
Charles Jeanes
Nelson
