Taking on the currency cranks

[Riklet]

i know i'm being a bit lazy but is there a particular part of this thread (or elsewhere?) worth reading to tackle the claims that:

"banks create money out of nothing" ie the isolationist, desert island view which fails to take into account circulation and the real economy behind this 'money creation'?

whilst I can mostly get my head 'round this I still find it hard to actually articulate at all. someone was going on about it the other day and it left me wanting to sharpen my spear

 

[love detective]

the arguments and counter arguments from both sides have been made on this and countless other threads here (this for example and this , this, this, this, this and this and probably loads of others)

best off just reading through them all and going along with whatever you find the most convincing, but remember: there is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits!

 

[Das Uberdog]

Jean Luc and love detective have both read an awful lot into the posts of Jazzz which wasn't necessarily there. i'm certainly not of the opinion that banking reform could allow us to avoid recession, however that doesn't stop us learning about the actual processes which occurred within the banking system before the credit crunch and what defined the specificities of our current situation. so as i can see Jazzz's analysis doesn't discount the need for circulation - as has been claimed numerous times here. that disagreement, to me, looks totally semantic. fractional reserve banking, in fact, is designed precisely to allow circulation in periods where there would otherwise be a natural contraction. it is a far more efficient deployment of money.

as far as i understand the process, in a situation where the reserve minimum is 10% a bank would receive a deposit (say £100) and this money would be immediately accounted for as a liability on the bank's books (payable at short-term either via an interbank or central bank loan). the bank would then place £10 down in reserve, out of circulation, and loan out the remaining £90. having written off the initial deposit as a liability, of which it can essentially be assured an emergency loan through the central bank or other institutions if push came to shove, the bank has then created £90 of circulating money (the depositor still being able to withdraw their deposit from their account and spend it too). this is then multiplied each and every time the loaned money is re-deposited in a bank account.

the 'elastic effect' of the conflict between underlying labour value and value extraction isn't compromised by this aesthetic procedure, but the elastic is allowed to stretch further. recession can't be avoided, but it can be delayed (sometimes long enough for the technological innovation and real wealth creation necessary for real growth to be introduced).

as for the issue of QE, whatever the 'rationale' it is in effect being used to plug up the liabilities of lending banks. of course, the BoE was trying to encourage broader lending: as Marx points out in Capital vol. 1, capitalists experience a crisis in surplus value extraction as a shortage of money. the whole point of capitalism is the evolution from C-M-C to M-C-M1 - where you are dealing in the first place with money, the production of value being artificially seen only as your mediary towards increased profits, stagnated rates of surplus value extraction conceals itself. broader questions of over-accumulation, etc, don't appear so readily apparent.

 

[love detective]

i'm going to ignore most of your post as it adds nothing to the discussion (i mean how many people are going to come onto this thread and give a warmed up wikipedia version of fractional reserve banking as though they've discovered higgs boson), but:-

as for the issue of QE, whatever the 'rationale' it is in effect being used to plug up the liabilities of lending banks

what does this even mean?

i suspect like free spirit before you, you've put a number of words together of which you don't understand what they mean individually let alone together

can you explain in what way the process of QE 'plugs up the liabilities of the lending banks' (and also explain what 'plug up the liabilities' actually means?)

 

[Das Uberdog]

oh fuck off then you miserable twat

 

[love detective]

you not going to explain how QE 'plugs up the liabilities of the lending banks' then?

(or explain what 'plugs up the liabilities' means?)

 

[Pickman's model]

oh fuck off then you miserable twat

incisive analytical skills deserted you then

 

[Das Uberdog]

well i would actually like the first part responded to tbh as that's where the crux of the discussion over the past few pages has come to, but as you have no time for that -

what i mean is that, in effect, all QE has done is improve the balance sheets of the banks. i agree with you that the original intention was to promote lending, but in effect that hasn't happened for multiple reasons - not least that there aren't enough profitable investment opportunities for them to sensibly invest.

 

[love detective]

how has it improved the balance sheet of banks? in what way? what has it done that the bank's couldn't have done through a multitude of other ways that were not QE?

what does 'plug up the liabilities of the lending banks' mean?

 

[Das Uberdog]

incisive analytical skills deserted you then

neither of you have a style which is particularly conducive to receiving a thoughtful response tbh

 

[Pickman's model]

neither of you have a style which is particularly conducive to receiving a thoughtful response tbh

see, you can post without swearing when you try.

 

[Das Uberdog]

how was it improved the balance sheet of banks? in what way?

the BoE, as i understand it, pursues QE through buying up assets (stock, bonds etc) to increase bank reserves, in this case to promote lending. in practice this has just remained excess cash

 

[love detective]

what are bank reserves?

Are you saying the purpose of QE is to increase bank reserves (whatever they are?)

and what does plug up the liabilities of the lending banks mean? this was your original point about it, you're now talking about something completely different

 

[Das Uberdog]

if you have terminology issues then how about you do some defining rather than just pratting about

bank reserves are their reserves, which can either be minimum or in excess of reserve needs. if they're in excess then technically they have more money to invest if they wish, their balance sheets are 'healthier'.

e2a and to your second point, the dispute i was referring to was earlier in the thread where you were arguing over whether or not QE was used to compensate for the liabilities incurred by the banks through their profligatory loaning - this separate from your later spat with littebabyjesus over Keen's findings

 

[love detective]

why should i do the defining, you came onto this thread (having presumably read it all) to tell everyone where they were going wrong and that QE was being used to plug the liabilities of the lending banks. you gave the impression you knew what you were talking about and had a wee hissy fit when i suggested you didn't, so i'm just asking you to explain what you actually said

you still haven't explained what bank reserves are (other than to say they are reserves and they can either be below or above a certain level) - do you mean capital reserves? liquidity reserves? loan loss provision reserves? what do you actually mean and how does QE increase them?

and how does QE plug the liabilities of the lending banks?

e2a - in response to your edit - how can QE 'compensate for the liabilities incurred by the banks through their profligatory loaning' - what on earth does this even mean? what does compensate for their liabilities mean? how does QE do this? explain the mechanics? tell me how QE has an impact on a bank's liabilities?

 

[Das Uberdog]

wow you are one prickly fuck - my original point was that you'd read far too much into the continuity of Jazzz's arguments earlier which is true. you made logical extensions from where his arguments finished and the confusion was supplemented by you seemingly presuming the reality of fractional reserve banking was in contradiction with ideas of labour value ultimately dictating the contraction or expansion of the economy... which it isn't.

then there was a separate strain where you seemed to have another major disagreement with free spirit, concerning the time frame in which QE was administered and how that apparently disproved that the effect of QE was to compensate for the banks liabilities. what i was trying to argue was that this isn't necessarily the case, that despite intention the impact was as littlebabyjesus' links to Keen pointed to later, that ultimately central bank spending does in fact chase loans and not the other way around (as you claimed). so, regardless of the reasoning behind QE the impact was actually more akin to free spirit's claim.

if you don't know what i mean by bank reserves then i can only presume you're being a deliberate dickhead, which from your general conduct on this thread isn't so hard to believe.

 

[Jean-Luc]

Jean Luc and love detective have both read an awful lot into the posts of Jazzz which wasn't necessarily there.
(...)
as far as i understand the process, in a situation where the reserve minimum is 10% a bank would receive a deposit (say £100) and this money would be immediately accounted for as a liability on the bank's books (payable at short-term either via an interbank or central bank loan). the bank would then place £10 down in reserve, out of circulation, and loan out the remaining £90. having written off the initial deposit as a liability, of which it can essentially be assured an emergency loan through the central bank or other institutions if push came to shove, the bank has then created £90 of circulating money (the depositor still being able to withdraw their deposit from their account and spend it too). this is then multiplied each and every time the loaned money is re-deposited in a bank account.

Actually, Jazzz has specifically rejected this "money multiplier" theory in post #295 (which you liked). He wrote:

With fractional-reserve banking the money ends up in thirty places at once, all of them circulating.
This is why I don't like the 'money multiplier' model - it is highly contrived and does nothing to disabuse people of the idea that banks are simply lending out the money they receive as deposits (as well as suggesting that the monetary base determines the money supply).

His view is that, with a 10% cash reserve minumum, when a bank receives a deposit of £100 it can lend out not £90 but £900 (he arrives at £3000 because he's assuming a 3.3% reserve). He objects to the "money multiplier" model precisely because it assumes that the process of the banking system (not a bank on its own) using the initial deposit to make loans totalling £900 depends on the money of the original loan being re-deposited, if in decreasing amounts.

I agree with your other point that banks aren't lending so much today as

there aren't enough profitable investment opportunities for them to sensibly invest.

Not so sure about another of your points, though:

the 'elastic effect' of the conflict between underlying labour value and value extraction isn't compromised by this aesthetic procedure, but the elastic is allowed to stretch further. recession can't be avoided, but it can be delayed (sometimes long enough for the technological innovation and real wealth creation necessary for real growth to be introduced).

Banks lending money in a boom, ie when there are enough profitable investments for them to sensibly invest in, is not stretching anything. It's responding to the market. Nor is it postponing a recession (that's conceding too much to reformists). Recession are caused by events in the real economy (overproduction in relation to a market) which no amount of banking activity can avoid. As Marx put it:

Ignorant and confused bank laws, such as those of 1844-5, may intensify the monetary crisis. But no bank legislation can abolish crises themselves (Capital, Volume 3, chapter 30).

 

[Das Uberdog]

Actually, Jazzz has specifically rejected this "money multiplier" theory in post #295 (which you liked). He wrote:

gotta run out, but quickly on this - i don't ascribe to the 'multiplier model' - i don't honestly know enough about it to say i do. the multiplying effect i referred to was only meant to refer to the money which, having been lent out, finds it's way back into a bank account repeating the original process

 

[love detective]

and the confusion was supplemented by you seemingly presuming the reality of fractional reserve banking was in contradiction with ideas of labour value ultimately dictating the contraction or expansion of the economy... which it isn't.

can you show me the post/posts in which i supposedly did what you say above?

I've consistently argued here that fractional reserve banking is nothing more than money circulating around the system, something that is essential for a 'functioning' capitalist system. how you have got from this that somehow I think circulation is in contradiction with a system of capitalist production i have no idea

then there was a separate strain where you seemed to have another major disagreement with free spirit, concerning the time frame in which QE was administered

there was no argument about the time frame in which QE was administered. I laid out the time frame in which it was administered (mid 2009 to 2012) as part of my evidence against FS's assertion that the reason for QE being administered was to provide banks with emergency liquidity during the time when the money markets froze up (which happened in 2007 to early 2009). Since then FS has, unsurprisingly, not replied, as his claim now looks somewhat foolish now that the timescales have been laid out, as something which was done in 2009-2012 could in no way be as a reaction to the immediate help that bank's needed in 2007-2008 which was the time that the wholesale lending markets completely froze. I also laid out the various state schemes that, in contrast to QE, were a response to the liquidity crisis and provided over £400bn of liquidity assistance to banks in 2008.

and how that apparently disproved that the effect of QE was to compensate for the banks liabilities.

you keep saying this and i keep asking for an explanation of what it means but you never do so - so once again - what does 'compensate for the banks liabilities' actually mean? tell me how QE has an impact on a bank's liabilities? what are the mechanics of the process that means that QE has an impact on banks liabilities? can you tell me?

what i was trying to argue was that this isn't necessarily the case, that despite intention the impact was as littlebabyjesus' links to Keen pointed to later, that ultimately central bank spending does in fact chase loans and not the other way around (as you claimed).

sorry but you're all over the place here - LBJ's point about Keen was that the central bank 'always' increases the money supply in response to an increase in lending activity in the economy - QE tried to increase the money supply in response to a decrease in lending activity in the economy. So how you can use the former which is in total contradiction with the later, to prove that this is what QE was about is simply absurd

so, regardless of the reasoning behind QE the impact was actually more akin to free spirit's claim.

the discussions were not about the impact (which we both actually agreed on if you'd bothered to actually read the thread) but about the reasoning. FS claim and my counter claim and subsequent discussion/argument was 100% about the reasoning behind QE, at no time did we disagree about the impact of QE. I said it many times during that discussion that I agreed with him as to what the impact of it was.

if you don't know what i mean by bank reserves then i can only presume you're being a deliberate dickhead, which from your general conduct on this thread isn't so hard to believe.

I suspect you don't know what you mean by 'bank reserves' the only time i see this phrase is used is by people who tend to not have much of a clue what they are talking about

 

[ayatollah]

Meanwhile the real "Currency cranks" out there in the right wing ideology world have completely different fish to fry. They take the simple observational reality of fractional Reserve Banking's ability to increase the money supply, potentially (at a 10% cash reserve) increasing every £100 of deposits to £900 of loans, (they don't concern themselves about the very "real" but ultimately very "deep" level economic issues around value, prices, and money) and then build an empire of reactionary ideas, such as:

Its the Jews ultimately behind banking in general and the apparent "creative magic" of fractional reserve bankings's ability to "create " money, and through this "money alchemy" , they secretly control the world.

100% Reserve banking is both possible and desirable - and offers a route out of parasitic "financier" (read "Jew") dominated capitalism.. to a capitalism dominated by the "independent producer".

A return to the Gold Standard offers a route forward based on "real value" rather than the chymera of false values produced by the parasitic empire of Finance Capital, and will therefore avoid future speculative finance-led economic "bubbles.

Now all of these concepts are utter bullshit.. but they have real traction for the small manufacturer and right wing influenced citizens generally - faced with the incomprehensible power and chaos of modern world capitalism. Of course these concepts and illusory "solutions" all in the end tend to fall within the general orbit of fascist "economic " theory - but not exclusively. They are very widespread in various forms, in popularity - and all serve , ultimately, to let "capitalism" as a system off the hook - as a counterpose to socialist proposals for the actual abolition of capitalism.

This thread and the other one have been totally bogged down on barren arguments about definitions, and disputes as to whether fractional reserve banking actually does have a key (but OK, OK, I concede, a dialectically interdependent role as a component of a much bigger system) role in creating money, whilst never actually confronting ANY of the key ideas of the real "Currency Cranks". A sad metaphor for the "Left's" ability to get very angry with itself in arguing about abstruse minutia, whilst the ideologically potent weaponry of the Far Right sails on, completely unmolested !

Das Uberdog's frustration with the form and content of this barren "debate" is quite understandable.

 

[love detective]

the ideologically potent weaponry of the Far Right sails on, completely unmolested

more of your 'the fascists are coming/the fascists are not coming' gymnastics

 

[Blagsta]

But this thread has confronted the ideas of the money cranks.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

a worker working in waitrose is still required to sell their labour as a commodity in the market in order to survive - there is no essential change in the wage-labour relationship they have with the individual capital of their own company nor capital in general within society - their labour power is turned into a commodity and sold to capital to allow them to then purchase the commodified means of subsistence - none of this changes whether you work for waitrose or tesco

I don't dispute that except for one bit: 'their labour power is turned into a commodity and sold to capital'. What is capital? What does the changing of companies into worker-owned entities do to capital? Who owns what is a crucial question in all of this. Changing companies from shareholder owned to worker-owned changes the nature of 'capital' in very important ways, all the more so, clearly, if such a situation becomes the norm rather than the exception.

also, you dismiss differences in working conditions between Waitrose and Tesco as somehow irrelevant. They are not irrelevant. They are central.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you. But you appear to be denying any possibility of a differentiation between different forms of capitalism, as if German social market were the same as US free market. This is patent nonsense.

Who owns what? That is the crucial question. How do you change that pattern of ownership? You have ridiculed and dismissed what I have said, but you haven't confronted it. Rather, you've fallen back on a lazy dismissal of what I have to say. Engage with it properly, ffs.


Tell me what you want, and tell me how we get from here to there. If you cannot do that, then have the fucking decency to treat those who have the guts to attempt such a thing with some respect.

 

[free spirit]

Since then FS has, unsurprisingly, not replied, as his claim now looks somewhat foolish now that the timescales have been laid out, as something which was done in 2009-2012 could in no way be as a reaction to the immediate help that bank's needed in 2007-2008

fyi I've not replied because you're such an annoying twat to debate with that I've got better things to do with my time.

Please don't take my silence as in any way suggesting that you've done anything other than batter me into submission with your relentless bullshit.

I see you've ignored my post pointing out that the post you keep responding to was regarding a Hypothetical situation in response to a daft post you made, not directly describing what happened with Northern Rock. It's pretty pointless arguing with you when you continually pull shit like this to misrepresent my position.

actually fuck it, I can't let you get away with misrepresenting my position again...

1. The money markets started to freeze up in September 2007 with 2008 being the real crunch time. This period from late 2007 to 2009 was the real crunch point in terms of little or no liquidity being available in the open markets for banks. While from 2010 onwards the money markets have not went back to how they were pre 2007, they have certainly thawed a great deal. Anyway, the point is that in late 2007/early 2008 they froze completely, this is the time that if any bank was going to need assistance in liquidity, it was going to be then.

So at this stage we have serious liquidity problems for banks, and we both agree that they needed some kind of assistance to get by. You claim that QE was this assistance. The first batch of QE didn't get transacted until March 2009, and by September 2009, a full two years after the money markets had froze, the amount of QE was only £175bn.

QE obviously wasn't used to solve the immediate problem in 2007, and I never claimed it was. Frankly I find it bizarre that you'd attempt to make out that this was what I'd meant.

This in no way proves that a major part of it's rationale when it was implemented was to take up the strain from the other policies they had previously been using to pump cash into the banks.

Let's just review this timeline in it's true context.

January 2009 - Special Liquidity Scheme closes after loaning a total of around £180 billion

March 2009 - Quantitative Easing first round of asset purchases starts with a £200 billion, with a further £170 billion following over the next 3 1/2 years.

During the next 3 1/2 years around £170 billion of SLS loans are repaid, with the balance now standing at around £10 billion.

Over the same period approximately £370 billion of cash is poured into the banks via QE, only around £100 billion of which made it back out in the form of increased business lending.

Point made?


http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarterlybulletin/qb120105.pdf

ps

The aim of the Facility was to improve liquidity in credit markets.

http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/markets/Pages/apf/default.aspx

 

[free spirit]

if you have terminology issues then how about you do some defining rather than just pratting about

bank reserves are their reserves, which can either be minimum or in excess of reserve needs. if they're in excess then technically they have more money to invest if they wish, their balance sheets are 'healthier'.

e2a and to your second point, the dispute i was referring to was earlier in the thread where you were arguing over whether or not QE was used to compensate for the liabilities incurred by the banks through their profligatory loaning - this separate from your later spat with littebabyjesus over Keen's findings

to help you out, when arguing this point with LD, you need to specify that you mean cash reserves.

He won't allow you to use any other term that anyone else reading the thread would understand perfectly, all terms must be referenced clearly, otherwise he'll spend several posts arguing the toss with you and making out you must have meant something you obviously didn't.

I think he works on the general principle that everyone else must be wrong, then finds ways of misinterpreting their posts so that they fit with this general principle.

 

[love detective]

fyi I've not replied because you're such an annoying twat to debate with that I've got better things to do with my time.

If you find it annoying that when you post crap, people point this out, then this is a problem that rests with you, not me

Please don't take my silence as in any way suggesting that you've done anything other than batter me into submission with your relentless bullshit.

if you find it annoying that when you continue to post crap, people continue to point this out, then yes, the best way for it to stop is if you stop posting crap.

I see you've ignored my post pointing out that the post you keep responding to was regarding a Hypothetical situation in response to a daft post you made, not directly describing what happened with Northern Rock. It's pretty pointless arguing with you when you continually pull shit like this to misrepresent my position.

Ah, so when you told me what happened with Northern Rock, when you put forward your (incorrect) order of events in relation to Northern Rock, saying things like:-

the public get spooked and start trying to pull their money out as happened with Northern Rock, and at this point the government has to step in

This was just you describing a Hypothetical situation was it?

And all the other discussions that was had around Northern Rock, you weren't really talking about Northern Rock, just some hypothetical situation? Utter bullshit and deceitful backtracking more like. And anyway, given that the discussion was about bank runs and all that, surely the discussion would be more illuminated by reference to an actual bank run that happened recently (i.e. Northern Rock), rather than some made up hypothetical one? But no, because a made up hypotehtical one allows you to put forward any old bullshit without it being empirically disproven. Well again, if y

actually fuck it, I can't let you get away with misrepresenting my position again...

I respond to what you type here, if you've given anyone a different position to what you actually have, the fault lies with you not me

QE obviously wasn't used to solve the immediate problem in 2007, and I never claimed it was. Frankly I find it bizarre that you'd attempt to make out that this was what I'd meant.

1. You claim QE was in response to the liquidity crisis

2. The worst period of the liquidity crisis ran from late 2007 to early 2009

3. Liquidity issues are immediate for banks, you can't wait a couple of years before dealing with them (otherwise you end like Northern Rock, Lehmans etc.), liquidity crisis are all about when the next 1 week/1 month/3 month funding loans come due for repayment.

4. Therefore the only way you can give any credibility to your claim that QE was in response to the liquidity crisis (rather than the economic or fiscal crisis) is to show that QE was instigated when the liquidity crisis was actually happening. You can't.

5. It's like saying that the purpose of sending the fire brigade round to someone's house a few days after a fire has burnt it to the ground was to put out the fire (when in fact it is actually to do an assessment of what happened)

This in no way proves that a major part of it's rationale when it was implemented was to take up the strain from the other policies they had previously been using to pump cash into the banks.

I'm afraid it does.

The other policies did not need their 'strain taken up'. The other policies, which unlike QE, were designed to be a response to the liquidity crisis continued to operate until the worst parts of the liquidity crisis had receded. The liquidity schemes didn't run down/run off because they 'ran out' or anything like that (and therefore needed boosting from other schemes), they ran down because bank's started to voluntarily repay the state liquidity help (which was both expensive and stigmatic) by replacing it with the now accessible again liquidity from the money markets

Let's just review this timeline in it's true context.

January 2009 - Special Liquidity Scheme closes after loaning a total of around £180 billion

The Special Liquidity Scheme closed in January 2012. This is stated in the first paragraph of the bank of england report I linked to in the post that I mentioned it. Here it is again for you.

The Bank of England introduced the Special Liquidity Scheme (SLS) in April 2008 to improve the liquidity position of the UK banking system. It did so by helping banks finance assets that had got stuck on their balance sheets following the closure of some asset-backed securities markets from 2007 onwards. The Scheme was, from the outset, intended as a temporary measure, to give banks time to strengthen their balance sheets and diversify their funding sources. The last of the SLS transactions expired in January 2012, at which point the SLS terminated. During the period in which the SLS was in operation, the Bank undertook a fundamental review of its framework for sterling market operations and developed a new set of facilities to provide ongoing liquidity insurance to the banking system.

The drawdown window closed in January 2009 after having been extended for another 6 months from its original date to allow further liquidity drawdowns for those who needed it. It was extended because the liquidity crisis was still ongoing. The fact that this drawdown window wasn't extended beyond January 2009 was because by that time, the liquidity crisis as it was, was pretty much over, and it wasn't required anymore.

The other important point about that paragraph is the last sentence, which points out that even though the SLS closed in 2012, a whole new raft of facilities & schemes were set up to provide 'ongoing liquidity insurance' to the banking system.

March 2009 - Quantitative Easing first round of asset purchases starts with a £200 billion

The First round in March 2009 was actually £75bn, and by September 2009 £175bn had been done.

Over the same period approximately £370 billion of cash is poured into the banks via QE, only around £100 billion of which made it back out in the form of increased business lending.

Point made?

Absolutely no point made whatsoever

ps

http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/markets/Pages/apf/default.aspx

Ah, so when i put forward something that the state/central bank said in favour of my position, i got the whole 'oh you believe in the tooth fairy' routine, but when you find something that you think backs up your story (which it actually doesn't as QE was one part of the APF scheme, not all of it) from the state/central bank it gets rolled out as gospel. nice.

I'll expand on this last point a bit as you seem to have confused yourself with it. APF in general was a wider umbrella which QE was transacted under and you are confusing what is being said about the Non-QE part of APF with the QE part. The bit you quoted in terms of providing liquidity did not actually refer to QE, but to other APF schemes.

If you look at this one page summary from the bank of england, each column shows a type of scheme they currently have on the go. The last two columns are the two different types of Asset Purchase Schemes with QE being the one in the final column. The purpose of each scheme is also shown on the first row (with quite a few showing their purpose as liquidity). For 'APF - Corporate Bonds' the purpose is given as improving liquidity. This is what your previous quote refers to. For 'APF-Gilts' (which is QE) the purpose is given as monetary policy implementation. To date something like £0.3bn of 'APF-Corporate Bonds' has been transacted (whose purpose is liquidity), compared to around £375bn for 'APF-gilts' (whose purpose is not for liquidity)

So to take this back to your quote - if we put that quote in its context by showing more of the paragraph it came from

The aim of the Facility was to improve liquidity in credit markets. The Chancellor also announced that the APF provided an additional tool that the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) could use for monetary policy purposes. When the APF is used for monetary policy purposes, purchases of assets are financed by the creation of central bank reserves.

The first sentence of that paragraph was what you quoted and tied incorrectly to QE. It's actually the following two sentences that relates to QE (note the words also & additional are used, to signify a difference to the previous sentence) which also states what the purpose of doing it was (which in this case, isn't liquidity). It also makes it clear that when the APF is used for monetary policy purposes (as opposed to liquidity purposes) the purchase of assets are financed by the creation of central bank reserves - which i'm sure we'll both agree describes what is happening under QE

So you can go back to saying that this is just all tooth fairy stuff now that your quote doesn't actually apply to what you thought it applied to.

I suspect you'll now retreat again to silence claiming you've been battered into submission by 'relentless bullshit'. Truth is, you don't know what you're talking about and I do. If that pisses you off then that's not my problem.

 

[love detective]

I don't dispute that except for one bit: 'their labour power is turned into a commodity and sold to capital'. What is capital? What does the changing of companies into worker-owned entities do to capital?

In this case it does nothing. Waitrose competes in a capitalist system and thus takes on, and internalises, all the negative aspects of that system. It's not because it wants to do this (most companies, co-ops or otherwise don't intentionally want to be 'bad') it's because they have to do it if they are to remain in the market. The ownership composition of an individual company has no real impact on it's qualitative position as a capitalist company operating in a capitalist market and thus subject to every single imperative & tendency of that market and the other companies operating within it.

All the problems of capitalist social relations are unsurprisingly problems at the level of society, at the macro leve, at the social level. These govern social reproduction and our society. The problem is one at the level of society so therefore the solution is not to be found, and cannot be found, at the level of individual companies tinkering with their ownership structure

if such a situation becomes the norm rather than the exception.

Yes I agree with this, if everything was different then everything would be different. but if we were ever at the stage where this started to come the norm rather than the exception, this would come about by a significant change in the balance of class forces that would allow these kind of things to happen. It's not going to happen as a result of utopian dreaming.

also, you dismiss differences in working conditions between Waitrose and Tesco as somehow irrelevant. They are not irrelevant. They are central.

I don't dismiss working conditions. I dismiss the idea that co-ops are somehow not under the same kind of market imperatives & pressures to make changes that are detrimental to workers interests. They are. Why for example have cleaners at John Lewis been taking all kinds of actions recently to protect their working conditions against attack from that company?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you. But you appear to be denying any possibility of a differentiation between different forms of capitalism, as if German social market were the same as US free market. This is patent nonsense.

I'm saying they are part and parcel of the same thing - the UK is an example of the tendency for the former to turn into the later

Who owns what? That is the crucial question. How do you change that pattern of ownership? You have ridiculed and dismissed what I have said, but you haven't confronted it. Rather, you've fallen back on a lazy dismissal of what I have to say. Engage with it properly, ffs.

I've confronted everything you have said - that you don't like what I say doesn't make it ridicule.

Tell me what you want, and tell me how we get from here to there. If you cannot do that, then have the fucking decency to treat those who have the guts to attempt such a thing with some respect.

So you typing a few words on a internet discussion board is having the guts to attempt such a thing with some respect? If not you then who are you talking about? Are you saying that we should all be bowing down before the board of John Lewis/Waitrose and congratulating their 'guts' to move society forward to a new era?

 

[love detective]

to help you out, when arguing this point with LD, you need to specify that you mean cash reserves.

He won't allow you to use any other term that anyone else reading the thread would understand perfectly, all terms must be referenced clearly, otherwise he'll spend several posts arguing the toss with you and making out you must have meant something you obviously didn't.

I think he works on the general principle that everyone else must be wrong, then finds ways of misinterpreting their posts so that they fit with this general principle.

If I came onto an energy thread and started throwing around a load of terms that I clearly didn't have much handle on what they were and put forward confident but ridiculous assertions, not backed up by any credible evidence, that didn't make sense to anyone who knew what they were talking about - then you would rightly point this out and put me in my place.

That you get all but hurt when your own lack of knowledge & understanding is pointed out in an area you don't have much of a handle on says more about you than it does about my failings. If it makes you feel better though to displaces your failings in this area onto me, then feel free to do it though. The main thing for me is that even if you don't realise that you are talking shit, I do.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Are you saying that we should all be bowing down before the board of John Lewis/Waitrose and congratulating their 'guts' to move society forward to a new era?

Where the fuck did you get that from in my posts? No, I'm not. If you would respond to what I actually said, you would see that I'm not setting jl up as any kind of ideal model. I merely pointed out that the nature of the business does make a tangible difference to working conditions.

 

[love detective]

you talked about how I should 'have the fucking decency to treat those who have the guts to attempt such a thing with some respect'

who were you referring to then? who are these people who have the guts to attempt whatever it is you're talking about?

oh, and by the way, nice dodging of the substantive parts of my post (once again)

If conditions at John Lewis/Waitrose are as good as you suggest and this is down to the nature of the business (and better than Tesco apparently as a result), why are we seeing strike action from cleaners working at John Lewis over working conditions?