Ben Squirrell says:
August 29 2015 at 3:22 pm
You are right Richard. I think there is clearly jealously from mainstream economists when it comes to considering your Corbynomics work. Unlike you they cannot see beyound their neoliberal noses. Some of them have spent their entire working lives studying economics and some do it as a full-time job. Unfortunately, they see you as a provincial high street chartered accountant. They should know better. Accountancy deals with money and you’ve been an accountant for years. Therefore, you understand economics because that involves money.Reply
Richard Murphy says:
August 29 2015 at 3:46 pm
We have a Chancellor who has not worked in the real economyWe have an economics profession who has never been near it
And I have been
And apparently I don’t know about it
All very odd, isn’t it?
Snigger.
And more than that, look at what he’s actually claiming. I’ve done the books for a few luvvie artistes therefore I know more about monetary economics than the Governor of the Bank of England.
Dunning Kruger isn’t enough to explain this, is it?
I wonder what Murphy sees when he looks in the mirror.
I think Ben’s pisstake went way over Murphy’s head.
It’s like Dunning Kruger, Poe’s Law, Asperger’s and the infallible self-belief of a dictator, all rolled up in to one.
His whole experience in the public sector is as a school governor.
Yet he wants to pronounce on how government works – the dynamics, the culture etc.
His pronouncements through the week about ‘shovel ready’ projects that still need funding were embarrassing.
You’re all a big bunch of meanies.
“You’re all a big bunch of meanies.”
Come on, admit you are holding it in, R Sclench!
Oh, ok, gonna let it all out, now….
“It’s like Dunning Kruger, Poe’s Law, Asperger’s and the infallible self-belief of a dictator, all rolled up in to one.”
Well said, but I think of him as the Florence Foster Jenkins of economics. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Foster_Jenkins
It’s more likely anosognosia than just Dunning Kruger: DK states that people will recognise their own incompetence after being exposed to training or competent experts.
Anosognosia is a syndrome whereby the sufferer has a clinical inability to develop or demonstrate awareness of an disability. There is no long term treatment, but apparently squirting ice cold water into the left ear (I joke not) provides temporary relief
Theophrstus – thanks, but I couldn’t get past “the ravages of syphilis…”
“Ben Squirrell” gets in a nice dig at Moonbat at the same time. Well played, sir.
Theophrastus, there’s a film coming out about her – Meryl Streep as Florence, and Hugh Grant is in it. They were shooting in Liverpool a few weeks ago. The waterfront buildings (Liver Building, Cunard Building etc.) are a good substitute for Chicago apparently.
Rich woman, surrounded by yes men, dreams of becoming an opera star. She’s hopeless, but nobody can tell her.
Who will star in the Richard Murphy story? Colin Firth maybe???
Adrian, yes, I’d heard word of the film, but I didn’t know it was being shot in Liverpool.
Another comparison with Murphy might, of course, be the inimitable William McGonagall, who arguably is to poetry what Murphy is to economics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_McGonagall
This thread is all ad hominem bullshit.
As for the Governor of the Bank of England, he stands behind his BoE’s Money Creation in the Modern Economy bulletin that at long last established the fact of money being created by the banks as part of Economic Orthodoxy. If Murphy has latched onto this and taken the obvious step of saying that, if banks create money out of nothing then the State (that word! quick hide under the bed!) can do as easily, more properly and much more cheaply, then Carney takes some responsibility
.(Why exactly did the BoE release the Money Creation bulletin if not to destroy the myth ,which was treated previously as orthodoxy that banks lend proper savings on to proper businesses?)
Lots of respected figures were going on about Quantitative Easing for the People before Corbyn and Murphy: Anatole Kaletsky ,Robert Skidelsky , Steve Keen and the other 18 FT signatories including Frances Coppola, whom nobody should cross swords with on the Net.
PS I didn’t have much time for Murphy’s tax ideas (and saw TW’s point about the incidence of Corporation Tax) and Murphy is clueless or far from “courageous”, about Land Value Tax about which TW is far more expert with his Adam Smith background.
What TW should be doing is justifying an unreformed money creation system but insisting on a from here-on LVT to stop increased money creation pumping the land value/property price inflation that imperils the global economic system.
But he cannot do that because it will cruelly confuse the regular , childish simpletons who throw mud, and worse, on here.
I have no idea why the typefaces have varied in size.Apologies.
Morning, Reedy,
“This thread is all ad hominem bullshit.”
Very possibly- perhaps because:
A) his ideas are so easily demolished, it’s nice to have a gentle pop at the man himself as a kind of palate cleanser every now and again
Or
B) he’s so rude to everyone, there’s no particular incentive to spare the rod when the opportunity to take the mickey arises.
Do unto others and all that…
“Frances Coppola, whom nobody should cross swords with on the Net”
DBC, this advice comes a little to late … FC has been banned by Murphy.
You need to add her to your list of non-persons.
John Square:
I’d never heard of anosognosia before. The wiki article is fascinating. Murph could have some variant of it.
John Square – it may work for some.
If the disability is cold urticaria however relief is not temporary – death is permanent.
Syphilis would explain a lot.
DCB… Let me guess… you read the first paragraph of that BoE bulletin, declared victory, and put it down??
I saw somewhere an article by an historian which suggested that Lenin failed to produce a coherent economic policy because after the October revolution all he had to advise him were accountants and bookkeepers. History may not repeat itself, but it certainly rhymes.
Theophrastus: “I think of him as the Florence Foster Jenkins of economics”
Perfect.
People’s QE has been done already: see the interesting movie Mister 880 for an example.
BICR. ‘I wonder what Murphy sees when he looks in the mirror.’
Probably the same thing as most accountants: a sly, sneaky bugger, one step ahead of HMRC.
I call Poe’s Law on that comment and Murph is too thick to see it.
If indeed it is real, I am not sure that I want to engage a world where such sycophantic brown nosing is genuine. Come in guys; which one of you spoofed your IP address, got a new email and submitted it? Kudos.
Mr 880 is on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZmW98KZDlM
OT but peripheral:
Does anyone remember him ever posting he’d been on holiday? Great Yarmouth for the day, or something? Does he ever come out of that garage, apart from in his Tax Crusader role? I can sort of remember some paean to the Norfolk autobahn network & the Courageous State’s part in its construction, but I didn’t get the impression the stretch impressed him was actually outside the parish boundary.
His hospital appointments, I suppose. Or does he see that as an opportunity to harangue the waiting room on tax havens?
Can’t be much of a life for that kid of his.
“Does anyone remember him ever posting he’d been on holiday”
Didn’t he post a paean of praise to the enlightened State funding of the Welsh Highland Railway line a while back, presumably because he’d just been on holiday there? (Strangely around the time I was there too, so I might have been sat next to him and not realised I was in the presence of a genius who has single-handedly invented a new type of economics).
Why? If you think it is so important, donut yourself.
“Do it”, although the alternative is probably apposite.
” call Poe’s Law on that comment and Murph is too thick to see it.
If indeed it is real, I am not sure that I want to engage a world where such sycophantic brown nosing is genuine. Come in guys; which one of you spoofed your IP address, got a new email and submitted it? Kudos.”
Don’t need to go to those lengths if you have an appropriate squirrel costume. Which I believe many round these parts have.
I suspect he has half an inkling when he is egged on and mickey-taken.
Chris in Hastings says:
August 30 2015 at 9:49 am
I for one am glad you have dispensed with that silly pompous Frances Coppola.
She has definitely libelled you – you should consult your lawyer.
She is just another dreadful neoliberal interested in preserving bankers and other neoliberals. Making money and keeping the poor as virtual slaves is all they are interested in.
I dream for the day when this island is rid of them.
Richard Murphy says:
August 30 2015 at 10:31 am
That is the first and last comment of this type I will post
I do it to show the sentiment exists
But I am also moving very much more strongly to a ‘we don’t do personal line’ now
And I definitely do not do legal
” Danth’s Law (also known as Parker’s Law)
States: “If you have to insist that you’ve won an internet argument, you’ve probably lost badly.” Named after a user on the role-playing gamers’ forum RPG.net.
Danth’s Law was most famously declared in “The Lenski Affair”, between microbiologist Richard Lenski and the editor of Conservapedia.com, Andrew Schlafly, who cast doubt upon Prof Lenski’s elegant experimental demonstration of evolution.
After what is widely held to be one of the greatest and most comprehensive put-downs in scientific argument from Prof Lenski, Mr Schlafly declared himself the winner.”
Hadn’t heard of this one- suspect it will become common currency under a new name shortly (Coppola’s Law, p’haps)
“Why exactly did the BoE release the Money Creation bulletin if not to destroy the myth ,which was treated previously as orthodoxy that banks lend proper savings on to proper businesses?”
Banks don’t lend proper savings to proper businesses – that sort of thinking went out of fashion among the cognoscenti over a century ago.
Banks exchange illiquid money for liquid money, using depositors savings combined with the economies of scale as a basis for that liquidity.
When a borrower goes to the bank, he gives the bank a signed piece of paper saying “I promise to repay the bearer on an agreed schedule the sum of…” which constitutes “money”. The bank doesn’t create this money, the customer does, by signing it. The bank then simply exchanges one type of money (repayment contracts) for another (cash/credit). The only difference between them is when they promise to pay.
—
The spread of this idea that governments and institutions can magically just create money out of thin air, at no cost, is doing immense damage. “Money” is a simply a promise to pay later. Anyone can make promises. They have value only to the extent that the promise is credible, and enforceable.
Making promises has a cost; by making them you can’t just spin a pile of gold out of straw by magic. You still have to pay for every penny of it.
God, he sounds more like Roderick Spode with each passing day. I’ll just bet he marches around his house in black shorts.
“The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you’re someone. You hear them shouting “Heil, Spode!” and you imagine it is the Voice of the People.”
Ritchie to a “t”.
Corbyn as well.
“he sounds more like Roderick Spode with each passing day”
I’ve posted the link umpteen times before but it still bears another viewing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYWRu8uT8z8
One wonders if RM has a Eulalie skeleton to be exposed?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5O9Nkyrv1M
Perhaps ad hominem against Murphy is a trifle unfair, but the inability to stand mockery and laughter has always been the Achilles’ Heel (or perhaps the Achilles’ Knee in this case) of fascists and other genera of totalitarian shitbag.
One look at any photo of Richard Murphy confirms that he would be far more likely to wear Eulalie products than design them.
His photo always reminds of Peter Glaze of Crackerjack (Crackerjack!!) fame. Maybe Tim can be his Lesley Crowther and keep him in check with the help of the audience.
At Jack C,
The Mighty Frances Coppola appears to have been brought down by indulging in ad hominem abuse in calling R Murphy a snake oil salesman ( a deliberate conman) and printing a picture of a snake oil advert. A sad decline from her usual practice of objectively expert arguments based on a superior knowledge of the banking system.It is hard to see why she should “happily play in that” (Tim Worstall) “gutter” when she shares with Murphy the knowledge that ” governments can print money (as you obviously agree)” [These things in inverted commas ,though rarely used on here, are called quotations and are routinely used by arts graduates to back assertions.]Let this be a lesson to mud pie and potty slingers on here to pay some attention to the significance of words which are not loosely attached to arguments as decoration or colouring but comprise meaning which has legal standing.
DBC: Let this be a lesson to mud pie and potty slingers on here to pay some attention to the significance of words which are not loosely attached to arguments as decoration or colouring but comprise meaning which has legal standing.
You’re a little spark of goodness in a naughty world. Good of you to give of yourself.
DBC Reed –
Are you auditioning for the part of Aunt Agatha?
DBC Reed.
You might need to read not just the blog but all the twitter traffic. The author of the article was Paddy Carter, not FC. He said the title meant to indicate that a belief in PQE was equal to believing in snake oil.
RM then demanded an apology on the basis that such a title meant FC had libelled him. He now seems to take the view he doesn’t do personal or legal.
Leave it out Reed.
As has been pointed out to assorted socialist stooges on this blog, your support for mass murder and brutal oppression leaves you little room for posturing about what moral fellows you are. Ad hominem? Against some vile egoman who thinks mass thievery and dictatorship are cool? Boo fucking Hoo.
I don’t think that Murph is a joke. I think he–like Corbyn(e)– is a moronic, dangerous, evil, deceitful little demagogue and running dog –to employ a scummy socialist phrase– of ruin, wickedness and death.
The hell with him and you.
DBC Reed
It would help if you actually bothered to read the post in question. Here it is – I do hope you WILL read it:
http://www.coppolacomment.com/2015/08/monetary-snake-oil.html
You will note that this is a guest post by Paddy Carter, who is better known in these circles as Luis Enrique.
So, I did not write the post and I did not choose the title. Unfortunately RM decided that I did and refused to back down even when both Paddy and I told him the source.
I will admit to choosing the picture. But this was simply to illustrate the title.
You may ask why I did not change the title. My view was that the post was about Corbyn’s PQE, not about Richard Murphy. It is perfectly reasonable to describe a politician’s pet scheme as “snake oil” if he is standing for office, is it not?
Neither Paddy nor I described RM as a “snake oil salesman”. That was merely RM’s interpretation and has no substance. As no aspersions have been cast at RM, no libel has been committed.
You may also ask why I posted this. I did so because I thought Paddy’s argument, which was essentially that the Bank of England would neutralise the monetary expansion effects of PQE in order to meet its inflation target, was important and (so far) neglected.
I read that BoE publication that lefties are currently shouting proves them right. Now I’m no genius or have any training in finance other than an accountancy 101 module and it did take me some time to get my head around. Now I could have completely missunderstood, but what it did seem to try very hard to make clear is that there are serious restrictions on how much the bank can ‘magic up’ including how much actual cash they have.
Frances
I wouldn’t try to hard to engage Murphy in any sort of debate. He is in his won mind right about everything (probably having invented most of what is being debated anyway). Anyone spoiling this picture with those troublesome things such as facts is dismissed as pedantic or a neoliberal.
He’s like the fat kid at school who would claim he was great at chess despite never having played the game. Come the day you finally play against him and calmly take all his pieces for fun leaving him with just his king and in a hopelessly lost position he will knock the board over and run off crying. Next day he will come back in to school and claim he won.
‘own’ not ‘won’
@Frances Coppola
You have departed from your own high standards in associating yourself with this ad hominem attack , especially as Murphy had every reason to think you were a friend or, at least, supporter in the matter of the State creating money instead of raising it by taxation.
It is also not on to associate yourself with personal abuse just because Corbyn is a politician so has it coming in your view: Corbyn is very careful to eschew personal abuse and to concentrate on ideas impersonally in his political arguments, so you look bad by comparison I’m afraid, as though you’re kicking a sitting duck or punching a pacifist. So bad you are being bracketed with Smearing Tim Worstall, who is capable of debating ideas impersonally but deliberately chooses not to.
If Carter’s point is so significant, why not apply your mind to it with a reasoned commentary instead of relaying it ad hominem warts and all?
Apropos Carter’s point, I would have thought that the State creating money instead of the banks is neutral inflationwise and because it increases general demand, rather than the banks pumping it into assets like shares and house prices, more likely to increase production in a virtuous circle.
Murphy claims to be a tax expert; he is not.
Murphy claims to be an ecomomist; he shows himself daily not be be so.
He is therefore a snake oil salesman. He is free to be as offended by this description as he wishes, to brand it ‘libel’ if he wishes, to ‘do personal’ or not as wishes, to ‘do legal’ or or not as he wishes, or simply to delete my comments (from his blog only). It changes nothing, he is a snake oil salesman.
Frances
I certainly wouldn’t waste a lovely stroll through Bloomsbury by indulging his delusions. But then, you’re very nice; it’s seems to be a fault.
DBC Reed
What ad hominem?
Do you actually understand it’s meaning?
“Ironman
Murphy claims to be a tax expert; he is not.”
+1
Should we not be coming to the conclusion that DBC Reed is an advanced troll? I’m finding it increasingly difficult to take his comments seriously.
I see a Yefim Yevdokimov has slipped through the Tax Research troll filter.
It’s quite a history lesson looking up all these names.
Philip,
DBCR adds to the gaiety of the nation with his half – remembered editorials from the Morning Star and his bizarrely confused comments on subjects he has not researched, such as his interventions on this thread. He is no troll, just a very confused person.
“Apropos Carter’s point, I would have thought that the State creating money instead of the banks is neutral inflationwise and because it increases general demand, rather than the banks pumping it into assets like shares and house prices, more likely to increase production in a virtuous circle.”
1. Money is simply a promise to pay at a later date. Anyone can do it. But everyone has eventually to offer something of genuine value in payment for it. In what sense are you proposing that the State will repay this money? Where will it get it from?
2. Is it not the case that Murphy/Corbyn proposes raising taxes to avoid the inflationary consequences, and therefore this is, in effect, simply a proposal to pay for the spending with higher taxes, and all the PQE stuff just a sleight of hand to disguise what they’re doing?
3. Pumping money into asset prices encourages manufacturers to produce more of those assets to sell. Raising house prices should lead builders to build more houses – or it would, if the government wasn’t deliberately blocking them. So wouldn’t it make more sense to drop the planning permission rationing if you want to stimulate the economy?
@NIV
I appreciate your efforts to engage with the issues rather than indulge in libellous ad hominem abuse but:
1) Money cannot be entirely defined as a promise to pay at a later date.Do you pay for a paper with an IOU ?(DO not counter with: a cheque is an IOU and therefore money; you can cash a cheque at a bank and you would not be happy to receive a bank cheque or iou in return).
2).NO Corbyn/Murphy propose that the State creation of money will obviate the need for some taxation.
3) How does pumping money into assets like shares increase their number? How does pumping money into the limited amount of building land increase the number of houses? Bubbles in house prices are global as is their effect on aggregate demand for other goods and services.You cannot tell me that the Financial- Crisis-producing crash in the American property market was due to rationing of planning permissions.
@DBC Reed
“1) Money cannot be entirely defined as a promise to pay at a later date.” On every B of E note it says “I promise to pay the Bearer . . .” Most cash is after all in the form of notes, and they clearly should be defined as a promise
“2).NO Corbyn/Murphy propose that the State creation of money will obviate the need for some taxation” Which means they intend to create money with no procedure for recall. Isn’t this inflationary?
“You cannot tell me that the Financial- Crisis-producing crash in the American property market was due to rationing of planning permissions.” The rationing created the housing Bubble, the crash was that Bubble unwinding.
@Stephen:
i)The promise to pay the bearer is ridiculous and has been since you could demand a pound’s weight (lb) of silver for your pound. If you were to ask as the bearer for five pounds in value for your fiver at a bank they would give you the note back. How is this honouring a pledge to pay at a later date?
ii) Not all increases in the money supply are inflationary or else the money supply could never expand. We would back in the USA at the time of the Cross of Gold speech : if you manufactured five million objects and there was only money in the economy for one million, you would go out of business.As Henry Ford discovered, If you pay your workers five times the average a lot of them will buy your cars.
There was no rationing of new housing in the US, Spain and Ireland.
i) yes but that promise is all there is. What is money apart from that promise? You have not offered any other definition.
ii) I quite appreciate this point, though there is a risk of inflationary pressure if there is no B of E type recall mechanism. And Ford also discovered the benefits of labor retention and increased skills base, as his workers didn’t drift off.
“There was no rationing of new housing in the US, Spain and Ireland.” Sorry, I thought your argument was that limited building land increased the cost of the asset without increasing the number of houses. ” How does pumping money into the limited amount of building land increase the number of houses?”