my gut feeling is that this has to be worldwide, and who's going to design such an overhaul of international banking?

i suspect it'll be a last resort after trying and failing everything else, and if we're there, why not give chris cook's LLP thing more of a chance too?

seems about as radical a rethink as any in the history of 'property rights', aka 'who gets what and how long they keep it'..

The overhaul will not come from the debtors, so the necessary Bretton Woods II must originate from the creditors.

If nationalisation is the solution, then, frankly, we are not asking the right question.

As a transitional measure, there is no reason whatever why Banks should not engage with the State within a partnership framework - no legislation is needed for such a consensual solution.

The State puts in the necessary Capital, and shares in agreed proportions in the gross revenues (before management costs etc) with those using the Capital - ie the people who are the management costs.

Canadian and Australian "Income Trusts" operated in exactly such a "pre-distributive" way on Corporate revenues, but the tax-man eventually put a stop to them.

Such a partnership model transcends the "Principal/ Agency" problem which is that the management's interests always diverge from the owners' interests, whether ownership is "Public"= "owned by the State" or "Private" = "owned by a Corporation".

It essentially creates a new form of continuous

Open Capital

of indefinite duration - ie for as long as you use it, you share the revenues or production it enables - which transcends the discontinuity between the absolutes of conventional:

(a) Equity - "Permanent" Capital of infinite duration; and

(b) Debt - temporary capital of finite duration.

As you will see if you look at the site, I use the Mobius strip as a metaphor for the continuity of such "Open" Capital - as compared to the "two sided" and therefore discontinuous conventional "Closed" forms of financial capital and property.

All good stuff: I don't do "abstract", of course.... ;-)

Back to the Real World.

I'm off to Teheran for ten days on Friday, to make a presentation at a major conference re "PetroTrusts" ie the "Unitisation" and thence monetisation of energy generally, starting with carbon-based energy.

I'll also be seeing ministers, parliamentarians, virtually the entire financial services industry (I'm told) and even the clerics in the holy city of Qom to discuss the Islamic aspects of financing systems.

I will be posting my paper and presentation on my web-site from Sunday 12th October for anyone interested. In the meantime I am posting as a Diary the "outline" article which is appearing shortly in the Iranian press - don't worry, it's not the Farsi version...!