Sovereign Money (eBook)

Professor Joseph Huber is Chair of Economic Sociology Em. at Martin Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. Previously he was Associate Professor at the Free University Berlin and has also held guest and interim professorships at Science Centre Berlin, University of Zurich and Technical University Vienna. Professor Huber is a pioneer of what is now known as ‘green ethical banking’ and is one of the founders of ecological modernisation theory. He has written extensively on monetary policy and reform topics, is a longstanding policy advisor on matters of economic and ecological modernisation and is actively involved in the international movement for monetary reform.

Introduction1.  Money 1.1 Currency, money and capital1.2 Types of money1.3 Creators and issuers of money1.4 Coin currencies1.5 Tally sticks1.6 Banknotes and the ascent of fractional reserve banking1.7 Bankmoney on account1.8 Electronic cash1.9 Money as an informational token1.10 Where does the value of money come from?1.11 A monetarised and financialised economy2.Chartalism2.1 State theory versus market theory of money2.2 Money is a legal instrument by state fiat2.3 The sovereign monetary prerogative and its two historical challenges2.4 The Currency versus Banking controversy2.5 Full chartalism versus state-backed commercial bankmoney3.Money and Banking Today3.1 The two-tier split-circuit structure3.2 Bankmoney. Credit and deposit creation in one act3.3 Interplay between public and interbank circulation3.4 Minimum reserve positions and the unreal multiplier model3.5 The unreal loanable funds model of banking. Savings as deactivated deposits3.6 The golden bank rule and the question of maturity transformation3.7 Restrictions to credit and deposit creation3.8 Creation of bankmoney. The entire picture3.9 Deletion of bankmoney3.10 Quasi-seigniorage of bankmoney creation3.11Growing competition to primary bank credit from secondary credit offered by financial intermediaries3.12The rhetoric about endogenous and exogenous money3.13 The false identity of money and credit4.Problems of the bankmoney regime (fractional reserve banking)4.1 The monetary system—the misjudged root cause of financial crises4.2  Incomplete analysis of financial crises4.3  The monetary quantity equation4.4  Channels of bankmoney issuance4.5  Inflation4.6  Asset inflation, bubbles and crises4.7  Over-indebtedness4.8  Financial market failure4.9  Monetary policy failure4.10Bankmoney is unsafe4.11The distributional bias of bankmoney and financial-market capitalism4.12From around 1980 to 2008. The Great Immoderation4.13 The question of lawfulness of bankmoney4.14The disregarded constitutional dimension of the monetary order5.Bankmoney to Sovereign Money5.1Basic traits of a sovereign money system5.2Central banks as the fourth branch of the state5.3Separation of money creation from banking, and of monetary from fiscal functions5.4The prohibition of the government from issuing money5.5The role of the banks in a sovereign money system5.6Capacity-oriented quantity policy5.7Channels of issuance and first uses of new money5.8 Is there a necessary sequence in the circulation of money?5.9 Sovereign money debt-free vs interest-bearing5.10How to account for sovereign money on a central-bank balance sheet5.11Conversion-day transition5.12Little to lose, much to gain. Stability, safety, seigniorage5.13Seigniorage to the benefit of the public purse5.14Transition through raising fractional reserves to 100% of deposits?5.15Government-issued money adding to bankmoney?5.16Sovereign e-cash and money accounts in addition to bank giro accounts5.17International connectivity of sovereign money