So a large scale solution is needed. I still don't see anything but large scale nationalisation to have a chance to work. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
Minister of finance: If banks in Sweden get into trouble and comes to me with demands on the national treasury, then they'd better hand over their shares at the same time. They will not get a single krona from the Swedish treasury if it's not linked to ownership.
Head of the Debt Office: if you get an earthquake in the financial system the state will have to socialise banks or whatever is necessary. So what? It's not about ideology, it's about crisis management.
Both are/were hardcore libertarians/market fundamentalists. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
I strongly believe that a typical Iberian social-democrat (in Iberia called socialist) is, by cultural bias, similar to a Swedish liberal. Or to, put it in another way, your current Swedish government is, by cultural imposition, more left-wing that they would like to be.
More than ever, REAL social democratic mental and cultural bias is the best defense against what is coming.
Portuguese don't ignore Spain (big and only land neighbour), but rarely people refer to Iberia.
The two samples that you know off are not representative at all of the majority in that respect.
And he should know. Before he became a politician he worked as a banker at ABN Amro and SEB. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
We should disintermediate the banks entirely, and let them morph into pure service providers who need therefore put no capital at risk.
ie everyone receives credits issued direct from Central Banks (ie we all bank with the central bank direct) and "Risk-managers-and-administrators-formerly-known-as banks" assess "Guarantee Limits", operate the system, manage defaults etc etc.
Users of the guarantee make a payment for system use, and also a provision against default, into a "Pool".
I see that as an interim measure to ensure the necessary credit for the productive economy.
Central Banks may then in turn be disintermediated so that Treasuries (operating at local level as would the risk managers) issue credits direct, and the Central Bank becomes a monetary authority - as in Hong Kong, which has never had a Central Bank.
To avoid asset bubbles, I would replace secured credit with "Unitisation" of the relevant assets, but that can wait. "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
