Reforming the Monetary System in Greece (2) – The Tethered Money proposal by Shann Turnbull

Earlier this week we featured an article by Chris Cook originally published by Pieria.co.uk. Today we feature a response to that article by Shann Turnbull.

 

Dear Michel et al

 

Like Proudhon, Gesell, Fisher and Keynes I do not favour a currency that carries out the role as a store of value today or tomorrow for two reasons:

 

1. It generates inequality if money is allowed to earn interest or otherwise increase in value over time.

 

2. It create a bias to invest in money rather than in productive activities that can increase prosperity without growth.

 

3. It creates financialisation of the economic system by increasing real liabilities backed fiat “make believe” assets

 

It is why we need negative interest self-financing/self-liquidating “terminating” money like any real consumer goods.

 

Last year I presented to the International Finance & Banking Society Conference (IFABS) in Lisbon my paper “Might supplementary tethered currencies reduce financial system risks?” as posted at; http://ssrn.com/abstract=2417826. This paper proposed “3T” money that was Tethered, Tagged and Terminating.

 

Because of the urgency of finding a solution for Greece I have proposed only a 2T parallel currency to the 3rd Annual International conference on Politics & International Affairs being held in Athen from June 15 to 18 by the Athen Institute for Education and Research.  They notified me last Thursday February 19th  that my paper has been accepted.  Submission of papers to the conference close tomorrow Monday February 23.

 

The abstract of my Athens paper follows:

 

Currency options for distressed economies

 

The research question is to investigate how supplementary digital tagged and terminating currencies can provide a superior fallback position to Bitcoin in a financial crisis and/or provide a basis for rehabilitating distressed economies. All bitcoins are tagged to avoid their duplication. The digital tagging of currencies would eliminate the black economy to facilitate budget surpluses. Self-financing terminating currencies described as “stamp scrip” were privately introduced in European and US communities during the Great Depression. Negative interest rate money has the support of Fisher (1933), Keynes (1936), Suhr (1989), Buiter (2009) and Menner (2011). Cost-carrying money was re-introduced into Germany in 2003 tethered to the Euro. This illustrates the acceptance of this type of money without a crisis. Cell phones with a “swipe card” feature would allow all notes and coins to be withdrawn from circulation. A number of countries are following the lead of Sweden in this regard. All official or supplementary currencies could then be tagged with the tax file number of all individuals or entities using money. The tax office could issue statements of total revenues and expenses to all uses of official or supplementary currencies. This could reveal the extent of money laundering, multinational profit shifting, fraud, bribes or the payment to terrorists. Tagged money would facilitate and expedite on a continuous basis both private and public auditing and the preparation of private and national accounts. The cost effectiveness of tagged money would allow governments to provide free cell phones to all welfare recipients to receive their funding and participate in the economy. Cell phones would continuously collect the negative interest rate money and any other government imposts or taxes. Governments would not need to increase their debts or taxes to fund welfare payments with self-liquidating money as proposed by the US Bankhead-Petttengill Bill of February 1933.

 

Regards to all

 

Shann

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