ie "Investment" is BY DEFINITION through a Limited Company. It's how we distinguish "Public" from "Private".
Balderdash.
It need not be so: why should not non-toxic investment in railways be part of a "National Equity" - giving (say) the reasonable (as opposed to "locust") index-linked return on investment that pension funds are clamouring for - rather than this investment being hidden within the grossly misleading, surreal and plain bonkers "National Debt".
A government can sell revenues, without selling ownership and control, and may do so either through a "Unit Trust" wrapper (eg the Canadian Income Trust approach) or the "Capital Partnership" I advocate, where units consisting of proportional "equity shares" in revenues are sold to investors.
The only costs that need to be defrayed from revenues are in fact operating costs and maintenance/ depreciation.
Granted that railways don't necessarily cover these costs either, but there is no reason why those who benefit from: (a) bringing employees to work in a timely fashion (the French approach, I understand, re the Metro); or (b) the increased rental value of a location near a station; should not contribute to such operating losses. "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
Because taxes are bad. "It's the statue, man, The Statue."
(a) credit/debt (where there is an obligation to repay/perform) - I think of this as enabling value exchanges/ "dynamic" Value (Value in motion = "Money" IMHO) and I describe it as "deficit-based" finance; and
(b) investment (where there is no obligation to "repay") - which I think of as "static" value (ie "Capital") and I describe this as "asset-based" finance.
The reason for any confusion is that both secured and unsecured credit are conflated and the vast bulk of so-called "investment" currently comes about from money issued by banks as secured loans: ie deficit-based, but asset-backed.
Now this secured bank credit COULD (using asset-based techniques such as trusts or partnerships) be replaced by "investment", but because it is created as loans within a deficit-based monetary system it is actually debt.
The vast bulk of our "Money as Debt" supply actually isn't circulating: it is static, being tied up in fixed assets such as property.
I agree with Jerome that credit creation is necessary but not that banks are any longer necessary as credit intermediaries.
A Guarantee Society/Clearing Union achieves the same result, but with the added benefit that it will also permit value to be created and kept locally without leakage to Wall Street and the City.
"Banks" in this disintermediated model are service providers who manage the bilateral creation of "trade" credit (and any necessary default fund) and no longer put capital at risk as intermediaries. "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
