next generation political economy
“As to basic maths skills I have not unlearnt them in my gap year. I can still see words, let alone deeds do not add up to stay within the budget. Combining faith in eternal growth with even more faith in new technologies still just leaves you with a lot of faith. If faith is all we got we might as well believe in the Good Life for All and make that happen? (fake/amended Greta@gmpost- pic@researchgate.net)
degrowth.info 2-2022 The manifesto of Degrowth journal – A discourse looking for coherence
Degrowth has become a thriving academic field, with several hundreds of peer-reviewed publications and a growing community of thinkers and doers. The field is complex, being not only transdisciplinary, but also bridging science and activism. The topic it studies is not an esoteric concern: the socio-ecological crisis and public frustration with our current economic system has catapulted degrowth to previously unseen heights of engagement. Just after the Covid-19 pandemic shaking the very foundation of how we think our relation to nature and others, there has never been a better time to research degrowth.
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maroonmacro.substack.com 8-2-2022 Monetary Mechanics#41 The Origins and Evolution of the Modern Monetary System – Part 6: “Liability Management” – Bank Holding Companies (BHCs) by Maroon Macro
Recall that there are a few fundamental innovations that have radically transformed our monetary and banking system in the post-WWII era:
-1- Liability Management (a.k.a. “wholesale finance”) – the expansion of banking strategy that transformed banks from passive acceptors of deposits to aggressive operators in the money market. This includes federal funds borrowing/lending, repo, commercial paper, money market funds, eurocurrency/eurodollar banking, and much more.
-2- Securitization (a.k.a. “market-based finance”) – the disintermediation of traditional commercial bank lending in favor of bonds and the pooling of illiquid, untradable loans to form liquid, tradable securities. This includes the proliferation of mortgage-backed securities, high-yield bonds, increased IG corporate bond issuance vs. loans, and other asset-backed securitizations. This also coincided with the advent of the pension system, which indirectly funneled America’s future retirement savings into the financial market.
-3- OTC Derivatives and Value-at-Risk (VaR) – combined with Basel risk-weightings, these innovations introduced increasingly esoteric and mathematical definitions of “money-ness,” resulting in the redefinition of money as “bank balance sheet capacity.” This also cemented the shift of bank business models towards fee-generating, off-balance sheet banking activity as opposed to maturity transformation based on net interest margin or balance sheet expanding arbitrage.
In the first issue of this installment, I covered “asset management” (the traditional model of banking, in the form of deposit-taking and lending), which we can build upon to begin to understand exactly how and why our modern financial system is so different from the textbook description of deposits, reserve requirements, and money multiplication. In the second issue of this installment, I covered the first part of “liability management” and the re-emergence of wholesale finance, focusing on the development of the domestic federal funds market. In the third issue of this installment, I covered the second part of “liability management” and the re-emergence of wholesale finance, focusing on the development of the international Eurocurrency/Eurodollar banking system. In the fourth issue of this installment, I continued covering the development of the international Eurocurrency/Eurodollar banking system, focusing on the entrance of US banks into the Eurocurrency/Eurodollar borrowing and lending market. In the fifth issue of this installment, I covered the third part of “liability management” and the re-emergence of wholesale finance, focusing on the development of large negotiable certificates of deposit (CDs).
If you have not had a chance to read Issue #8, Issue #11, Issue #16, Issue #28, and Issue #33 of Monetary Mechanics yet, I suggest you do before continuing below, as it contains important information, but here is a brief review for you if you need it: …”… read more at source: maroonmacro
pcgamer.com 31-1-22 Former Valve economist calls Facebook’s metaverse ‘a Steam-like digital economy’ with Zuckerberg as its ‘techno-lord’. Yanis Varoufakis also discussed “pay-to-earn” and the blockchain’s long-term consequences. By Ted Litchfield crypto-metaverse-web-Yanis Varoufakis
…”… I enjoyed Varoufakis’ refreshing perspective on NFTs and cryptocurrency. He combines an expert’s knowledge of their origin and the potential use of blockchain technology with an understandable and bracing contempt for their current function as speculative assets and vectors for fraud and exploitation. I particularly enjoyed his statement later in the interview that “…the idea that people must now play like robots to earn a living so as to be human in their spare time is, indeed, the apotheosis of misanthropy,” an absolutely blistering critique of the “pay-to-earn” concept currently being pushed by gaming companies like Square Enix and Ubisoft. … The entire interview is well-worth reading. Varoufakis’ discussion of his time with Valve and comments on games in particular give way to thought-provoking ruminations on the nature of our economy and exploitation. Either way, we appreciate another expert joining the chorus that the metaverse is bullshit. …”…
the-crypto-syllabus.com/ 1-2022 Yanis Varoufakis on Crypto & the Left, and Techno-Feudalism – “Within our present oligarchic, exploitative, irrational, and inhuman world system, the rise of crypto applications will only make our society more oligarchic, more exploitative, more irrational, and more inhuman.” –
Rare is the person who could expertly comment – in a single interview! – on the rise of NFTs and their origins in the virtual worlds of gaming, the logic of the emerging regime of techno-feudalism, and the folly of El Salvador’s Bitcoin-heavy negotiating tactics with the IMF. Luckily, we have found this person in Yanis Varoufakis, the prominent economist, politician, and public intellectual, who is also former Greek finance minister. Yanis was kind enough to grant us an extensive interview, which provides a panoramic (and, at times, rather critical) view of what is going at the intersection of money, macroeconomics, and the digital. – by Evgeny Morozov
KW: CBDCs Bitcoin El Salvador Techno-Feudalism NFTs games
aeon.co 2-2022 A softer economics – Financial markets are entangled and uncertain. When will economists let go of physics envy to embrace the quantum revolution? by David Orrell
In her book Mother of Invention: How Good Ideas Get Ignored in an Economy Built for Men (2021), the writer Katrine Marçal argues that many useful innovations have failed to catch on because they are deemed ‘too feminine’ by marketers. A classic example is the wheeled suitcase. The wheel was invented in ancient Mesopotamia, however the possibility of attaching it to a case went against the whole idea of men showing off their strength by lugging heavy objects around, which is why wheeled suitcases weren’t a thing until 1972. As Marçal wrote in The Guardian: ‘Gender answers the riddle of why it took 5,000 years for us to put wheels on suitcases.’ Quantum is the scientific equivalent of suitcase wheels. The reason this useful innovation hasn’t caught on, or been rolled out, more generally in areas such as economics isn’t because it’s impractical or too hard – it’s because it’s too feminine. Or rather, too Female, in a sense to be defined below. Now, that assertion will seem ridiculous to many readers for a number of reasons…”…
more GG here >feminist economics >David Orrell