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This is not at all how I understood the paper. It was to allocate consumer funds directly with the Fed to prevent bank runs from restricting access to cash on h

This is not at all how I understood the paper. It was to allocate consumer funds directly with the Fed to prevent bank runs from restricting access to cash on hand for consumers. They just move spigots to different institutions this way. Nominally, this is what the proposal is all about. I didn't see anything about the Federal Reserve or the Government being able to access that money on a 1:10 basis or any other reserve basis. It does however outline how this would stream line government policies and operations, such as Tax Refunds, Social Security Disbursements, or any other qualifying disbursements. Additionally, the idea that is also present in the paper is expanding low risk (demonstrably historically "safe" loans such as SBA Loans, FHA loans, traditional mortgages etc) through the Fed directly, but explicitly bans things like margin loans, PE bridges and other risky behavior. Which, as anyone who has gotten these kinds of loans, knows the government already does this, just with extra steps. The People's Ledger paper (proposal?) simply outlines removing extra steps and barriers for the citizenry to have a better banking baseline, all told. In essence, it makes the Central Bank, more....bank like. With some privileges, being a whole arm of the Government, its less focused on collecting fees and more interested in streamlining banking for the average citizen. It has nothing in the paper about forgiving mortgages (or student loans, for that matter) The paper is here, for anyone interested in this: https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4780&context=vlr https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a...

sclarisse 4y ago
Specific phrases many people will read as political allocation of capital: “Most objections to allowing significant quantitative growth of central bank balance sheets, in fact, reflect the underlying concerns about the qualitative, compositional aspects of such growth. Ultimately, however, these concerns are rarely substantiated by reference to anything more specific than deeply internalized skepticism toward the government as an economic actor. By contrast, this Article views the proposed change in the Fed’s liabilities as an opportunity to augment both (1) its ability to modulate credit-money supply more effectively, and (2) its potential to facilitate the more efficient allocation of that supply to productive enterprise.” “the NIA would transact directly in private financial markets, proactively channeling public and private financial resources into large-scale, transformative public infrastructure projects. Importantly, however, it would reverse the familiar pattern of “public capital, private management” typical of most modern “public-private partnerships” in favor of the “public management, mixed public-and-private capital” model.” Transformative infrastructure projects!! Are there any of those we’ve embarked on recently where the government’s proven more skilled at identifying investment opportunities than the market? Like, say, California high speed rail? What kind of returns is that investment earning? … oh. It’s true they didn’t get all the way to mortgage forgiveness in the paper, but, well, it doesn’t seem much of a stretch, particularly when Housing Is A Human Right (tm). We could call it infrastructure, in the same sense that “elder care is infrastructure” — I seem to recall recent legislative campaigns about that and other social spending.
- no_wizard 4y ago
  In context, they're talking about removing inefficiencies and increasing transparency by transacting directly through the theoretical Public Ledger system. We already do all of this with extra steps currently. There is nothing new here. A big thing this brings is transparency, because its a lot harder to hide where tax dollars get spent when you also have introspection into how the money gets allocated, rather than just cutting checks, for instance, to maintain / build highways, this would allow for the government to have better oversight with how public highway funds are being spent. Thats one example. Another is more efficient handling of farming subsidies (this is to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars). This is plainly spelled out in the paper when read as a whole. These aren't bad things, and they already exist. There is nothing new here, other than streamlining operations to make them more auditable, transparent, and efficient. It cuts out the "extra steps" part, which more often than not, is where most of the waste is.

sclarisse 4y ago

Specific phrases many people will read as political allocation of capital: “Most objections to allowing significant quantitative growth of central bank balance sheets, in fact, reflect the underlying concerns about the qualitative, compositional aspects of such growth. Ultimately, however, these concerns are rarely substantiated by reference to anything more specific than deeply internalized skepticism toward the government as an economic actor. By contrast, this Article views the proposed change in the Fed’s liabilities as an opportunity to augment both (1) its ability to modulate credit-money supply more effectively, and (2) its potential to facilitate the more efficient allocation of that supply to productive enterprise.” “the NIA would transact directly in private financial markets, proactively channeling public and private financial resources into large-scale, transformative public infrastructure projects. Importantly, however, it would reverse the familiar pattern of “public capital, private management” typical of most modern “public-private partnerships” in favor of the “public management, mixed public-and-private capital” model.” Transformative infrastructure projects!! Are there any of those we’ve embarked on recently where the government’s proven more skilled at identifying investment opportunities than the market? Like, say, California high speed rail? What kind of returns is that investment earning? … oh. It’s true they didn’t get all the way to mortgage forgiveness in the paper, but, well, it doesn’t seem much of a stretch, particularly when Housing Is A Human Right (tm). We could call it infrastructure, in the same sense that “elder care is infrastructure” — I seem to recall recent legislative campaigns about that and other social spending.

no_wizard 4y ago
In context, they're talking about removing inefficiencies and increasing transparency by transacting directly through the theoretical Public Ledger system. We already do all of this with extra steps currently. There is nothing new here. A big thing this brings is transparency, because its a lot harder to hide where tax dollars get spent when you also have introspection into how the money gets allocated, rather than just cutting checks, for instance, to maintain / build highways, this would allow for the government to have better oversight with how public highway funds are being spent. Thats one example. Another is more efficient handling of farming subsidies (this is to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars). This is plainly spelled out in the paper when read as a whole. These aren't bad things, and they already exist. There is nothing new here, other than streamlining operations to make them more auditable, transparent, and efficient. It cuts out the "extra steps" part, which more often than not, is where most of the waste is.