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My fab daughter Alex has just won a Leverhulme Prize. Her forensic analyses of illicit markets, freeports and special economic zones are on the cutting edge of a criminology coming of age to produce the most revealing insights into the global economy. northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/news-…
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Steve Hall retweeted
This.
Too big a question to throw at me on X, Simon. Just four things. I. So-called 'free-market' economies enrich oligarchs, impoverish 'losers' and keep crashing. 2. Central command-production economies just don't work. 3. Mixed economies have a better track record, let's keep an open mind on how China and BRICS deal with this and where they're heading. 4. We can't do anything - even after a revolution and especially where we're import-dependent - unless nations agree to collectively crush global money-market power.
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Steve Hall retweeted
An important lesson in history...
Certainly more complex - today most of the money supply is issued as private bank credit - on average about 90% stock and over 60% flow - rather than direct government spending, but the banks must be licensed (chartered) by the state to issue its currency. Taxes certainly help to control the 'demand side' of inflation - a contentious notion itself - but not the supply side.
There's some truth in the claim that dealing with China can dampen down imported inflation, but the major supply-side problem is energy. The analysis above falls down because it regards dependency on the bond market as the only way nations can 'fund' themselves. This is technically untrue but at the moment politically and financially locked in.
Despite this current artificial 'reality', a mainstay of which is the US$'s role as the overvalued reserve currency, China plays a clever game with its huge domestic bond market - innovation targeting, de-risking, value-chain manipulation etc. - which forces private investors to focus more on productive investment, with a core focus on cheap, clean energy while we mess around with stupid AI systems. Equally, it manipulates the global bond market by reducing reliance on US bonds and neutralising disciplinary power by moving to custodian accounts (like Euroclear). It also shifted to production-oriented incentivising bonds from foreign entities operating both abroad and in China, backed by state guarantees - Panda Bonds, Dim Sum Bonds, Sovereign Green Bonds.
However, the big picture is that since all currency is issued directly or indirectly by governments, bonds have been technically unnecessary since 1971 when fiat issue replaced the gold exchange standard. This was seen as a huge 'crowding out' threat by the global creditor class - even though it doesn't have to be - who took advantage of electronic transfer systems to roll out the secondary bond market globally, manipulating yields and prices to 'discipline' governments' fiscal powers.
This 'money-market power' - the bond market backed up by the FX market - from which China/BRICS are gradually escaping relies on governments' and central banks' willingness to favour private capital by giving it safe interest-bearing savings accounts, which, essentially, is all bonds are. 'Funding' and 'public debt', strictly and technically speaking, don't exist, they're purely ideological concepts. An international agreement to issue non-tradable bonds and deploy capital controls alongside an international clearing currency would crush money-market power and force big capital into safer productive investment - i.e. less focus on AI etc. and more on infrastructure, energy, utilities and public services. An outcome similar to China's but making all the incentivising game-playing optional rather than necessary.
However, here we hit the brick wall at the end of our current cul-de-sac - we simply lack the politicians and central bankers with the courage to do that. Big private capital is still their beneficient but punitive God in the Sky - this has been the core belief since the first war bonds were issued in C12 Venice.
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Steve Hall retweeted
Too big a question to throw at me on X, Simon. Just four things. I. So-called 'free-market' economies enrich oligarchs, impoverish 'losers' and keep crashing. 2. Central command-production economies just don't work. 3. Mixed economies have a better track record, let's keep an open mind on how China and BRICS deal with this and where they're heading. 4. We can't do anything - even after a revolution and especially where we're import-dependent - unless nations agree to collectively crush global money-market power.
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Steve Hall retweeted
Depuis 71, les États pourraient créer leur monnaie sans les marchés. Ils ne le font pas car les créanciers privés imposent leurs règles. Solution : un accord international pour contourner les marchés et forcer le capital à investir dans l'économie réelle et non la spéculation.
Certainly more complex - today most of the money supply is issued as private bank credit - on average about 90% stock and over 60% flow - rather than direct government spending, but the banks must be licensed (chartered) by the state to issue its currency. Taxes certainly help to control the 'demand side' of inflation - a contentious notion itself - but not the supply side.
There's some truth in the claim that dealing with China can dampen down imported inflation, but the major supply-side problem is energy. The analysis above falls down because it regards dependency on the bond market as the only way nations can 'fund' themselves. This is technically untrue but at the moment politically and financially locked in.
Despite this current artificial 'reality', a mainstay of which is the US$'s role as the overvalued reserve currency, China plays a clever game with its huge domestic bond market - innovation targeting, de-risking, value-chain manipulation etc. - which forces private investors to focus more on productive investment, with a core focus on cheap, clean energy while we mess around with stupid AI systems. Equally, it manipulates the global bond market by reducing reliance on US bonds and neutralising disciplinary power by moving to custodian accounts (like Euroclear). It also shifted to production-oriented incentivising bonds from foreign entities operating both abroad and in China, backed by state guarantees - Panda Bonds, Dim Sum Bonds, Sovereign Green Bonds.
However, the big picture is that since all currency is issued directly or indirectly by governments, bonds have been technically unnecessary since 1971 when fiat issue replaced the gold exchange standard. This was seen as a huge 'crowding out' threat by the global creditor class - even though it doesn't have to be - who took advantage of electronic transfer systems to roll out the secondary bond market globally, manipulating yields and prices to 'discipline' governments' fiscal powers.
This 'money-market power' - the bond market backed up by the FX market - from which China/BRICS are gradually escaping relies on governments' and central banks' willingness to favour private capital by giving it safe interest-bearing savings accounts, which, essentially, is all bonds are. 'Funding' and 'public debt', strictly and technically speaking, don't exist, they're purely ideological concepts. An international agreement to issue non-tradable bonds and deploy capital controls alongside an international clearing currency would crush money-market power and force big capital into safer productive investment - i.e. less focus on AI etc. and more on infrastructure, energy, utilities and public services. An outcome similar to China's but making all the incentivising game-playing optional rather than necessary.
However, here we hit the brick wall at the end of our current cul-de-sac - we simply lack the politicians and central bankers with the courage to do that. Big private capital is still their beneficient but punitive God in the Sky - this has been the core belief since the first war bonds were issued in C12 Venice.
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Steve Hall retweeted
Certainly more complex - today most of the money supply is issued as private bank credit - on average about 90% stock and over 60% flow - rather than direct government spending, but the banks must be licensed (chartered) by the state to issue its currency. Taxes certainly help to control the 'demand side' of inflation - a contentious notion itself - but not the supply side.
There's some truth in the claim that dealing with China can dampen down imported inflation, but the major supply-side problem is energy. The analysis above falls down because it regards dependency on the bond market as the only way nations can 'fund' themselves. This is technically untrue but at the moment politically and financially locked in.
Despite this current artificial 'reality', a mainstay of which is the US$'s role as the overvalued reserve currency, China plays a clever game with its huge domestic bond market - innovation targeting, de-risking, value-chain manipulation etc. - which forces private investors to focus more on productive investment, with a core focus on cheap, clean energy while we mess around with stupid AI systems. Equally, it manipulates the global bond market by reducing reliance on US bonds and neutralising disciplinary power by moving to custodian accounts (like Euroclear). It also shifted to production-oriented incentivising bonds from foreign entities operating both abroad and in China, backed by state guarantees - Panda Bonds, Dim Sum Bonds, Sovereign Green Bonds.
However, the big picture is that since all currency is issued directly or indirectly by governments, bonds have been technically unnecessary since 1971 when fiat issue replaced the gold exchange standard. This was seen as a huge 'crowding out' threat by the global creditor class - even though it doesn't have to be - who took advantage of electronic transfer systems to roll out the secondary bond market globally, manipulating yields and prices to 'discipline' governments' fiscal powers.
This 'money-market power' - the bond market backed up by the FX market - from which China/BRICS are gradually escaping relies on governments' and central banks' willingness to favour private capital by giving it safe interest-bearing savings accounts, which, essentially, is all bonds are. 'Funding' and 'public debt', strictly and technically speaking, don't exist, they're purely ideological concepts. An international agreement to issue non-tradable bonds and deploy capital controls alongside an international clearing currency would crush money-market power and force big capital into safer productive investment - i.e. less focus on AI etc. and more on infrastructure, energy, utilities and public services. An outcome similar to China's but making all the incentivising game-playing optional rather than necessary.
However, here we hit the brick wall at the end of our current cul-de-sac - we simply lack the politicians and central bankers with the courage to do that. Big private capital is still their beneficient but punitive God in the Sky - this has been the core belief since the first war bonds were issued in C12 Venice.
There's some truth in the claim that dealing with China can dampen down imported inflation, but the major supply-side problem is energy. The analysis above falls down because it regards dependency on the bond market as the only way nations can 'fund' themselves. This is technically untrue but at the moment politically and financially locked in.
Despite this current artificial 'reality', a mainstay of which is the US$'s role as the overvalued reserve currency, China plays a clever game with its huge domestic bond market - innovation targeting, de-risking, value-chain manipulation etc. - which forces private investors to focus more on productive investment, with a core focus on cheap, clean energy while we mess around with stupid AI systems. Equally, it manipulates the global bond market by reducing reliance on US bonds and neutralising disciplinary power by moving to custodian accounts (like Euroclear). It also shifted to production-oriented incentivising bonds from foreign entities operating both abroad and in China, backed by state guarantees - Panda Bonds, Dim Sum Bonds, Sovereign Green Bonds.
However, the big picture is that since all currency is issued directly or indirectly by governments, bonds have been technically unnecessary since 1971 when fiat issue replaced the gold exchange standard. This was seen as a huge 'crowding out' threat by the global creditor class - even though it doesn't have to be - who took advantage of electronic transfer systems to roll out the secondary bond market globally, manipulating yields and prices to 'discipline' governments' fiscal powers.
This 'money-market power' - the bond market backed up by the FX market - from which China/BRICS are gradually escaping relies on governments' and central banks' willingness to favour private capital by giving it safe interest-bearing savings accounts, which, essentially, is all bonds are. 'Funding' and 'public debt', strictly and technically speaking, don't exist, they're purely ideological concepts. An international agreement to issue non-tradable bonds and deploy capital controls alongside an international clearing currency would crush money-market power and force big capital into safer productive investment - i.e. less focus on AI etc. and more on infrastructure, energy, utilities and public services. An outcome similar to China's but making all the incentivising game-playing optional rather than necessary.
However, here we hit the brick wall at the end of our current cul-de-sac - we simply lack the politicians and central bankers with the courage to do that. Big private capital is still their beneficient but punitive God in the Sky - this has been the core belief since the first war bonds were issued in C12 Venice.
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Steve Hall retweeted
I'm always respectful to scholars. Cultists are not scholars and deserve no respect whatsoever. They are dangerous and harmful.
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Steve Hall retweeted
Prof. Hall puts it too nicely.
Adam Smith taught lectures in natural theology and his 'invisible hand' originates in providence but still the "market devotees" are incapable to realize that they are all-in in a religious belief system turning them into orthodoxy and fanatics.
Adam Smith taught lectures in natural theology and his 'invisible hand' originates in providence but still the "market devotees" are incapable to realize that they are all-in in a religious belief system turning them into orthodoxy and fanatics.
'Free-market' economists are subjects of a belief system that indoctrinates them to deny the political power of capitalism's ruling class. They believe that their model market economy is rooted in a 'nature' that cannot be politically questioned or managed. A genuine cult.
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Steve Hall retweeted
THIS 👇
'Free-market' economists are subjects of a belief system that indoctrinates them to deny the political power of capitalism's ruling class. They believe that their model market economy is rooted in a 'nature' that cannot be politically questioned or managed. A genuine cult.
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Steve Hall retweeted
You've got everything wrong - you need to relearn your economic history. The market should 'select' society's winners and losers... like Thiel and Trump? What 'merit' is there in a financialised marketplace run by moneylenders? There is no social balance in markets, your first claim contradicts that - they create oligarchs. Markets are entirely amoral and violence-prone - they needed strict governance from the beginning. x.com/TyKeynes/statu…
The Silk Road is often presented as proof that markets spontaneously create order. The history is messier.
Trade across Eurasia depended on states providing the conditions that made exchange possible. The Han Dynasty secured key corridors in Central Asia. Persian empires ravan infrastructure. The Tang Dynasty protected merchants and trading cities. Later, the Mongol Empire created perhaps the largest zone of political stability in premodern history, reducing the risks of moving goods thousands of miles across continents.
Merchants did not simply follow price signals through an institutional vacuum. They relied on armies suppressing banditry, courts enforcing contracts, governments minting trusted currencies, and diplomatic agreements protecting foreign traders. When those political structures collapsed, trade frequently collapsed with them.
The famous flowering of Silk Road commerce under the Mongols was not a triumph of decentralization. It was a consequence of centralized imperial power imposing security from China to Eastern Europe. Historians sometimes call this the Pax Mongolica. Caravan routes became safer precisely because a single political authority controlled much of Eurasia.
Even the financial innovations celebrated by free market advocates emerged within legal, religious, and political institutions. Letters of credit depended on recognized commercial law. Merchant networks depended on shared cultural norms and state-backed property rights. Markets did not create these foundations. They operated within them.
The lesson of the Silk Road is not that governments are unnecessary. It is that markets and states have always been intertwined. Long-distance trade flourished when political institutions created stability, infrastructure, and trust. When those institutions weakened, the caravans often stopped moving.
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Steve Hall retweeted
Fascism: UK facilitates energy company price gouging with government databases.
🚨Labour’s Bill Would Let Energy Firms Dig Into Your Tax Records and House Value So They Can Charge You Extra to Subsidise Others
Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh introduced the Energy Independence Bill last week that would hand energy companies access to eight government ur HMRC tax and income records, child benefit, property value and pensions.
This is a major expansion beyond the limited fuel-poverty data they already get. Official assessments openly plan “progressivity”: discounts for some households paid for by extra levies on those judged better off.
Nothing happens until the bill passes and ministers create a scheme through further legislation.
Her department calls it targeting support. The unmistakable purpose is giving private firms the power to inspect your private finances and raise your bill to subsidise everyone else.
This is not support. It is a deliberate decision to treat your private tax records and property value as legitimate tools for deciding who gets charged more, then hand that power to private energy companies.
Once the machinery exists, Labour will expand it. The only real question is how far they intend to go.
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Steve Hall retweeted
"L'extrême droite, on n'a jamais essayé"
Eux si. Et voilà ce qu'il s'est passé.
L'Argentine de Milei, c'est :
- Plus de 50% de la population sous le seuil de pauvreté. 70% des retraités.
- La chute de 15% de l'industrie en une seule année.
- Une crise humanitaire gravissime, et pend les aides alimentaires.
- L'effondrement de la consommation.
La Hongrie de Orban, c'est :
- 80% des médias détenus et manipulés par le pouvoir.
- Le président et son clan qui s'approprient 1/3 de l'économie nationale pour ses intérêts personnels.
Les Etats-Unis de Trump, c'est :
- 2000 milliards de dette supplémentaire.
- 50 universités fermées, la recherche fondamentale à l'arrêt.
Le Brésil de Bolsonaro, c'est :
- Une baisse du salaire minimum.
- En 4 ans, l'équivalent de la surface du Danemark déforesté en Amazonie.
- 33 millions de personnes en insécurité alimentaire.
- Une tentative de coup d'État.
- La plus haute dette fédérale de l'histoire du pays, atteignant près de 5 870 milliards de réais.
L'Italie de Meloni, c'est :
- Des attaques inédites contre le droit à l'avortement.
- 150 000 jeunes qui fuient le pays tous les ans pour une vie meilleure.
- Une croissance économique parmi les plus faibles de l'UE
- Une dette toujours à 140 % du PIB.
- Le refus d'inscrire à l'état civil des enfants de couples homosexuels.
Ces gens ne sont bons qu'à faire souffrir les pauvres gens. C'est pour cela qu'ils se font chasser du pouvoir un à un.
Ne faisons pas l'erreur de les essayer : les conséquences seraient terribles. L'année prochaine, un autre monde est possible : votez Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
Eux si. Et voilà ce qu'il s'est passé.
L'Argentine de Milei, c'est :
- Plus de 50% de la population sous le seuil de pauvreté. 70% des retraités.
- La chute de 15% de l'industrie en une seule année.
- Une crise humanitaire gravissime, et pend les aides alimentaires.
- L'effondrement de la consommation.
La Hongrie de Orban, c'est :
- 80% des médias détenus et manipulés par le pouvoir.
- Le président et son clan qui s'approprient 1/3 de l'économie nationale pour ses intérêts personnels.
Les Etats-Unis de Trump, c'est :
- 2000 milliards de dette supplémentaire.
- 50 universités fermées, la recherche fondamentale à l'arrêt.
Le Brésil de Bolsonaro, c'est :
- Une baisse du salaire minimum.
- En 4 ans, l'équivalent de la surface du Danemark déforesté en Amazonie.
- 33 millions de personnes en insécurité alimentaire.
- Une tentative de coup d'État.
- La plus haute dette fédérale de l'histoire du pays, atteignant près de 5 870 milliards de réais.
L'Italie de Meloni, c'est :
- Des attaques inédites contre le droit à l'avortement.
- 150 000 jeunes qui fuient le pays tous les ans pour une vie meilleure.
- Une croissance économique parmi les plus faibles de l'UE
- Une dette toujours à 140 % du PIB.
- Le refus d'inscrire à l'état civil des enfants de couples homosexuels.
Ces gens ne sont bons qu'à faire souffrir les pauvres gens. C'est pour cela qu'ils se font chasser du pouvoir un à un.
Ne faisons pas l'erreur de les essayer : les conséquences seraient terribles. L'année prochaine, un autre monde est possible : votez Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
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Steve Hall retweeted
Resist, resist, resist these warmongering sociopaths!👇
“We are woefully unprepared and Russia sees this.”
Former Conservative MP @Tobias_Ellwood calls for mandatory national service in order to make Britain more ‘resiliant’.
@HenryRiley1
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Steve Hall retweeted
"Business as a System of Power is a seminal 1943 economic and political work by Robert A. Brady that examines how organized business and trade associations concentrate economic and political influence to threaten democratic institutions"
ia801605.us.archive.org/30/items/in.er…
ia801605.us.archive.org/30/items/in.er…
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Steve Hall retweeted
The idea is to reduce the power of the currency-issuing and potentially democratic state to expand the scope of big-capital private moneylenders so fucking moronic disciples like you can spend their lives paying rents and debts. Idiot.
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'Free-market' economists are subjects of a belief system that indoctrinates them to deny the political power of capitalism's ruling class. They believe that their model market economy is rooted in a 'nature' that cannot be politically questioned or managed. A genuine cult.
@IsabellaMWeber has a book on anti-fascist economics, but it's hard to see how her calls to make economics subservient to the political process is any different from the fascism she opposes.
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Steve Hall retweeted
There's a book called Enchantments of Mammom that makes the case that capitalism has all the features of a religion (diety, theology, sacraments, eschatology, priests and prophets etc). Funny how its entire process is geared towards extracting the soul and spirituality from everything rather than adding to it.
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Yes. And?......
Part of the problem with “economic populism” discourse is it simultaneously means broadly accepted ideas on the left like raising taxes on the wealthy & corporations, regulating social media companies & AI companies, and increased government intervention in the healthcare market. (All of this mainstream lib economists agree with)
And then there is this intellectual vanguard that also call their project economic populism but they are focused on eliminating the influence of economists, resurrecting tariffs, and treating tons of normal private market activity as presumptively suspect/worthy of govt intervention.
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Steve Hall retweeted
I went through a brief period of fanaticism myself in my twenties. I read Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, and Ludwig von Mises and went to Libertarian Party meetings. I believed that a pure capitalism would lead to a world without want or war. A perfect meritocracy.
But reality kept knocking. The local bank, Key Bank, hired a bunch of handsome guys and gorgeous girls to befriend the lonely and scared freshmen who were just coming to college. Their goal was to get them to take out high interest credit cards. They said, "everyone's doing it", "You only have to make the minimum payment". I said "NO, NO, and AGAIN NO!" But many were tricked into taking out these cards and using them. Within a couple of months, I heard girls crying in the dorm that their parents were furious at them, they had no way of paying their debt. Guys were so embarrassed and depressed. They were calling the girls who pushed these cards "whores". President Reagan had deregulated the banks allowing them to package and sell their loans and freeing them from usury laws. I don't know what Key Bank did with the credit card debt that it lured naive teens to take out under the guise of being cool and fitting in, but they most likely packaged and sold this debt to a retirement fund.
Bankers in the real world were nothing like the bankers in Rand's fiction, and the more they were liberated from government regulation, the worse they got.
But reality kept knocking. The local bank, Key Bank, hired a bunch of handsome guys and gorgeous girls to befriend the lonely and scared freshmen who were just coming to college. Their goal was to get them to take out high interest credit cards. They said, "everyone's doing it", "You only have to make the minimum payment". I said "NO, NO, and AGAIN NO!" But many were tricked into taking out these cards and using them. Within a couple of months, I heard girls crying in the dorm that their parents were furious at them, they had no way of paying their debt. Guys were so embarrassed and depressed. They were calling the girls who pushed these cards "whores". President Reagan had deregulated the banks allowing them to package and sell their loans and freeing them from usury laws. I don't know what Key Bank did with the credit card debt that it lured naive teens to take out under the guise of being cool and fitting in, but they most likely packaged and sold this debt to a retirement fund.
Bankers in the real world were nothing like the bankers in Rand's fiction, and the more they were liberated from government regulation, the worse they got.
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