Monthly Archives: July 2014

Gowex Shows Why Lending is the Best Venue for Accounting Control Fraud

Posted on July 7, 2014 by | 2 comments

By William K. Black
(Cross posted on Benzinga.com)

A classic accounting control fraud, Gowex, has collapsed in Spain.  Gowex was a wi-fi firm.  It was able to run its scam for at least four years.  It was a crude scam that involved simply making up contracts and borrowing to grow rapidly.

“The US firm Gotham City Research had described Gowex as a ‘charade’ and said that its revenues were ‘at most’ 10% of those reported.”

As soon as Gotham City Research blew the whistle on Gowex it made it impossible for Gowex to borrow additional funds and avoid collapse.

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Obama Consults a “Wide Variety of Economists” – Just Not Those Who Got it Right

Posted on July 3, 2014 by | 12 comments

By William K. Black

In a PR effort that aptly illustrates his approach to governance, President Obama has revealed that he is meeting with a “wide variety of economists” to try to figure out what economic policies he should follow.  “Obama Seeks Advice From Wide Variety of Economists.”

Obama is already well into the lame duck phase of his presidency, so this is simply a PR exercise.  The message Obama wants to send is the same one he has sounded throughout his presidency.  He is open to economic views from the parts of the political spectrum that range from the hard right to the mild left.

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“Debt-Free Money” and “ZIRP Forever”

Posted on July 3, 2014 by | 31 comments

By Scott Fullwiler

I wrote a while back about how neoclassical economists don’t realize their view that interest on reserves (IOR) stops “printing money” from being inflationary also means that it’s impossible to create inflation by “printing money.”  See here.

I’m not 100% sure on this one (and please feel free to correct me if you know better than I do) because I admittedly haven’t given the literature a thorough read, but from what I can tell, it appears “debt-free money” advocates may not realize they are similarly overlooking the actual operations of the monetary system.  So, apologies in advance if I’ve misinterpreted.

From what I’ve seen, “debt-free money” (DFM) advocates want a world in which the government spends via cash (i.e., paper money).  They are against government issuing bonds or any interest on the debt, since that would suggest the government’s money isn’t “debt free” (again, please correct me if I’m wrong in this description).

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Matteo Renzi Puts the Lie to “There is not alternative” (TINA) to Austerity

Posted on July 3, 2014 by | Comments Off on Matteo Renzi Puts the Lie to “There is not alternative” (TINA) to Austerity

By William K. Black

In a recent column I responded to a conservative scholar’s (Victor David Hanson) claim that U.S. “employment rates for college graduates are dismal” by showing that the employment rate for college graduates seeking employment was 96.8% – and rising.

Employment rates for recent college graduates are far worse than “dismal” in the periphery of Europe because the EU troika (the ECB, the EU Commission, and the IMF) have inflicted austerity on these nations.  This produced a gratuitous second Great Recession in the Eurozone as a whole, but it also caused Great Depression levels of unemployment in Spain, Greece, and Italy.  Those three nations have over 100 million in total population – roughly one-third of the eurozone’s total population.  College graduates in these nations have unemployment rates ten times greater than in the U.S.  (Hanson is a big fan of austerity, so he managed to get everything – the facts and the cause – reversed in his fable.)

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DEBT-FREE MONEY: A NON-SEQUITUR IN SEARCH OF A POLICY

Posted on July 1, 2014 by | 68 comments

By L. Randall Wray

While we are on the topic of monetary cranks, I thought it might be useful to quickly address a cranky idea that often comes up in comments to my blogs and also during Q&A after presentations: so-called “debt-free money”.

The first time I heard it, my immediate reaction was “Say what?”, and the second was puzzlement at the non-sequitur.

I am not sure exactly which of the crank approaches explicitly adopt the notion, but it seems common to a lot of them. I’m not going to address any particular approach but instead will address only the idea that we can have a “money” that is not a “debt”.

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