Money needs to go where you need it to go. Private banks only lend a small fraction of what they could lend into industry because of the risk. With private banks creating 97% of all new broad money into the economy in the form of debt the kind of change you want wont happen. Private banks prefer to speculate in derivatives and property or use it to rig LIBOR rates, so doing the same old thing like QE doesn't work. banks dont give a damn about social policy that government wants to follow they go where the profit is, which most definitely are not social projects where the people want it to go. Private banks control the money so believe me when i say they will not give that control up without regulation and another form of money reform its just not in their interest. We need a sovereign money creation economy, where the introduction of money is done centrally where government and the people want it to go, not where the banks want it to go.

Most economists don't include money creation in their models of the economy , which is completely crazy, because if you don't count money in the economic models you cant see what effects it has. 

The best way to really understand how a sovereign money system would operate is to seek sites about how this can be done. 

www.positivemoney.org has a lot of very good ideas if you can go through the literature. 

Its also very interesting to see that most people talk in banking circles about fractional reserve banking, but that doesn't happen , it doesn't exist. 

Here is a link to the Bank of England quarterly report that proves that a) 97% of all money is created by private banks and b) fractional reserve banking is a much vaunted but not a truthful explanation of banking in the modern economy.

http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Pages/quarterlybulletin/m05.aspx

Banks (private) do not work the way you think they do. They do not lend savers money into the economy, they create the debt electronically and add interest. There are not enough savers in the world to cover the debt that is lent by banks(not even a tiny fraction of that debt) How many grannies savings accounts would you need to cover lending to just the U.K.'s mortgages? never mind the $634 Trillion debt the U.S. carries, its laughable really that we fell for it. 

This massive amount of debt IS 97% CREATED BY BANKS.  So sovereign money is the solution.

Americans With No Abilities Act (ANAA)- hahaha...President Barack Obama and the Democratic Senate are considering sweeping legislation that will provide new benefits for many more Americans. The Americans With No Abilities Act (ANAA) is being hailed as a major legislative goal by advocates of the millions of Americans who lack any real skills or ambition. "Roughly 50 percent of Americans do not possess the competence and drive necessary to carve out a meaningful role for themselves in society," said California Sen. Barbara Boxer. "We can no longer stand by and allow People of Inability (POI) to be ridiculed and passed over. With this legislation, employers will no longer be able to grant special favors to a small group of workers, simply because they have some idea of what they are doing." In a Capitol Hill press conference, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pointed to the success of the U.S. Postal Service, which has a long-standing policy of providing opportunity without regard to performance. At the state government level, the Department of Motor Vehicles also has an excellent record of hiring Persons with No Ability (63 percent).Under the Americans With No Abilities Act, more than 25 million mid-level positions will be created, with important-sounding titles but little real responsibility, thus providing an illusory sense of purpose and performance.Mandatory non-performance-based raises and promotions will be given to guarantee upward mobility for even the most unremarkable employees. The legislation provides substantial tax breaks to corporations that promote a significant number of Persons of Inability (POI) into middle-management positions, and give a tax credit to small and medium-sized businesses that agree to hire one clueless worker for every two talented hires. Finally, the Americans With No Abilities Act contains tough new measures to make it more difficult to discriminate against the non-abled, banning, for example, discriminatory interview questions such as, "Do you have any skills or experience that relate to this job?""As a non-abled person, I can't be expected to keep up with people who have something going for them," said Mary Lou Gertz, who lost her position as a lug-nut twister at the GM plant in Flint, Mich., due to her inability to remember righty tightly, lefty loosely. "This new law should be real good for people like me. I'll finally have job security." With the passage of this bill, Gertz and millions of other untalented citizens will finally see a light at the end of the tunnel. Said Sen. Dick Durbin, II: "As a senator with no abilities, I believe the same privileges that elected officials enjoy ought to be extended to every American with no abilities. It is our duty as lawmakers to provide each and every American citizen, regardless of his or her inadequacy, with some sort of space to take up in this great nation and a good salary for doing so."  This message was approved by Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Diane Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and of course, Barack Obama.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has approved a $17.1bn (£10.1bn) bailout for Ukraine to help the country's beleaguered economy. The loan comes amid heightened military and political tension between Ukraine and neighbouring Russia.

The loan is dependent on strict economic reforms, including raising taxes and energy prices.

The money will be released over two years, with the first instalment of $3.2bn available immediately.

The head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, said the IMF would check regularly to ensure the Ukrainian government followed through on its commitments.

In March Ukraine put up gas prices by 50% in an effort to secure the bailout.

The government has also agreed to freeze the minimum wage.

The bailout had to be approved by the IMF's 24-member board, which includes a Russian representative.

The IMF loan will also unlock further funds worth $15bn from other donors, including the World Bank, EU, Canada and Japan.

Russian recession

In December last year, Ukraine agreed a $15bn bailout from Russia, but this was cancelled after protests forced out pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych....

The IMF bailout will also make available $1bn in loan guarantees from the US, which was recently approved by Congress.

"Today's final approval for the $17bn IMF programme marks a crucial milestone for Ukraine," said US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew in a statement.

He added that the bailout will "enable Ukraine to build on the progress already achieved to overcome deep-seated economic challenges and help the country return to a path of economic stability and growth".
Earlier on Wednesday, an international conference in London ended with a commitment to help Ukraine recover tens of billions of dollars worth of assets which were allegedly stolen by the ousted President Yanukovych and his allies.

The IMF warned that Russia was "experiencing recession" because of damage caused by the Ukraine crisis.

The EU is all about implementing social welfare. Cradle to grave protection of all the people. Workers' rights, consumers' rights, children's rights; free health, free education, free pensions, free child benefit, free unemployment benefit, free housing benefit. Nobody must suffer in their stultifying world totally regardless of their contribution to society. The only way to implement it is through taxation and then more taxation, and regulation on top of regulation. Big business can comply with it all which is just how the EU likes it. Big protected corporations to take on the world. By bringing the maverick entrepreneurs into line and stifling them with red tape they can eliminate all those terrible small businesses that want to lay off staff when things turn down and who hide a bit from the taxman so they can reinvest in their businesses and have a little enjoyment from the fruits of their labour.

It's a Utopian dream that is turning into a dystopian nightmare for the millions of unemployed throughout Europe. It's been tried before and it doesn't work. Remember the Illyushin and the Zil. If the EU wants to survive it will have to choose which parts of this socialist wet dream it can afford (say free health & education) and then stand back and let people take risks in all aspects of their lives. Some will crash and burn but others will soar. That's life....The Euro is mostly about creating pressure for more political integration within the EU in its march for an ever greater union. "It [the Euro] is a decisive step towards ever closer political and institutional union in Europe. Above all, it is political." — Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, Italian Finance Minister, The Daily Telegraph, 1st January 1999. "The single currency is the greatest abandonment of sovereignty since the foundation of the European Community. It is a decision of an essentially political nature. We need this United Europe. We must never forget that the euro is an instrument for this project." — Felipe Gonzales, former Prime Minister of Spain....The EU is a prostitute, a true femme fatale... that has trapped many nations that now have denied their sovereignty to a eurocracy unelected and without the mandate of the people. People want a participative democracy and not one with the manufactured consent of mass media. And certainly not a "democracy" which works as a "department" of a big Bank.

European Commission, José Manuel Barroso is a dictator, history which you don't control will judge you and your ilk harshly!

The Euro must go, followed by the EU itself before it turns into the Fourth Reich (or EUSSR if you prefer).

European banks will be expected to prove they can survive a 7% drop in GDP under new tougher stress tests unveiled by the regulator.   It says banks should also be able to withstand a 14% fall in house prices and up to a 19% drop in share prices under a worst-case scenario.  The tests are designed to try and prevent further taxpayer bailouts.  Five months before the European Central Bank becomes the euro currency zone's official bank watchdog, the pressure is ratcheting up on the 124 largest banks to ferret out the worst of the non-performing loans and assets weighing down their balance sheets.   A 7% fall in GDP might look less likely today - but Greece is still emerging from a recession four times more severe than that.   Identifying financial holes on bank balance sheets in is one thing. But plugging them is quite another now that the responsibility is being shifted from governments to bank shareholders and bondholders.  The signs are that sometime soon, lenders in Germany and France may have to join the likes of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Greek lenders in finding more capital - principally by asking their investors to cough up for new shares.   The main worry remains what the regulators will do with banks that are seen to fail their tests but can't raise the cash.  By any measure, Europe's collective financial backstop is billions short of the size needed to cope with a new wave of bank meltdowns. "It will provide a common framework for the next stops to be taken by supervisors and banks," said European Banking Authority (EBA) chair Andrea Enria.  The tests are much tougher than the EBA's 2011 stress tests when it projected a worst-case scenario of just a 0.5% fall in GDP.   At the time, the tests were widely criticised for being too soft, particularly after 18 of the EU's 27 countries at that time had weaker growth than the "adverse" case they were tested for.  "The key is that the scenario is at least as deep and dark as the great recession, the financial crisis of 2008/2009," said Mark Zandi, Philadelphia-based chief economist at Moody's Analytics.   Banks that fall short of capital under the EBA's worst-case imagined scenarios will have to produce a plan to boost their reserves by raising fresh funds from investors, selling assets or hanging on to profits instead of paying dividends.  European banks have already made several reforms, including raising billions of capital ahead of the latest tests.  "What we're looking for is relevance of the scenarios, do they address what we believe is the risk on the ground?" said Neil Williamson, head of EMEA credit research at Aberdeen Asset Management.

We are shackled to the wreckage of a slowly sinking vessel.

The EU is beyond reform. It is designed to be beyond reform. If Romania, Britain and others left the EU and joined EFTA - Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein - it would greatly enhance EFTA's presence in the world and provide an important competitor to the EU encouraging their officials to lighten bureaucracy and to think hard about their own organisation, with its powerful unelected officials, which would be good for both them and us.

One member of EFTA, Norway, is a country that we hold in high esteem and also from where we source much of our energy. London is possibly the most important commercial centre in the world and if, as a founder member, England were to return to EFTA, it would transform this free trade area completely and give us more influence in spreading the values of free democracy than we presently have in the EU. Among other things, it would be able to ethically challenge the City and the Swiss banks about their money laundering on behalf of the oligarchs of the 'Democratic Dictatorships’ that lie to the east of Europe and in Bruxelles.

It is in everyone's interest that the advocates of leaving the EU are not considered to be barmy or isolationist and that the voting public are made aware of the positive aspects of leaving the EU and joining EFTA. The voters would then appreciate that if we left the EU, we would not be launching out into a lonely and unknown future, but into one that would enable our countries to cease being ‘thorn in the flesh’ for the EU and recreate a new, positive and valid role for itself in the modern world, within EFTA...I say : I would rather be slightly poorer with freedom than be slightly better off living under EU tyranny.

Nobody can say what would have happened without the EU and the EZ. Better or worse? It is a guessing game. As far as France is concerned our difficulties stem from our home grown socialist stupidity over the last 30 years. 35 hour week, 60 year old retirement, plethora of government employees, 15,000 pages of abstruse labour law. None of this was inspired by Bruxelles but by Hollande and his fellow travellers. Without the EZ Hollande would be devaluing, spending, wasting and destroying the country more than he is. Instead he has been forced to fire his government and bring in Vals who is of the modern left. Mm by mm we are making some sensible reforms, finally.

No a lot of people don't like it, many would like to believe that they can tax the companies and the wealth creators forever, that the banks will lend and lend. And the Euro is made a scapegoat as the imposer of economic reality. But the Latins of Europe are facing up to reality and modernising their economies. Thatcher did it in Britain, don't forget the ten years of strife and the year long strike, the euro is doing it for us.

The world doesn't revolve around the UK but our joining the EU has been a disaster for us & the other members. Our joining gave some comfort to the other members that the EU was a legitimate democratic organisation & not a Franco/German hegemony.
When we leave, the reality will quickly be grasped by those continental countries & they will start the process of dismantling it. Hopefully this will happen before German expansionism once again draws Europe into a war ,this time with Russia....

 

I - like the author - love the culture of Europe. The food and wine, the national differentials. The very things the EU tries to standardise and reduce to the lowest common denominator are the things I celebrate and enjoy. But in no way do I feel European. I struggle to feel "British" at the moment because my country, my United Kingdom, is under attack from within and without to break it up and make it into a group of bland, anodyne European regions. I am left with defending my Englishness. Replicate that across 400 million European citizens and is it any wonder that nationalism (in whichever form fits the country mind-set) is rising? The stigma attached to "National Socialism" will not stop nationalism rising to the top in the Euro elections. The EU is rotten to the core, sucks the life-blood out of the constituent Nation States and should be consigned to the scrap heap of history.

Just face it - the EU is an abortion, a giant mistake and it only gets worse.The whole idea is crap - these idiots argue that to enjoy a bottle of chianti and a bowl of spag sauce and visit the Parthenon, you need a vast, unelected, incompetent and unaccountable bureaucracy that ruins everything it touches. You don't - enjoying foreign cultures and visiting foreign countries has F A to do with European integration, it never did. There are plenty of things that are possible without the EU and the euro. Yes, a free trade Europe is an excellent idea, but the EU has never been about free trade and never will, so let's forget about this red herring and get the hell out of this stupid, pointless mess.

The EU recovery is a lie to protect the banking system and this so called nascent recovery is based on OMT it is based on a transfer union and it is based on joint and several liability bonds which do not exist. In short the whole thing is hocus pocus.

Germany did not sign up to a transfer union nor will they ever. In reality, the recovery can be knocked sideways with a feather. Along comes Putin and the biggest Black Swan event for decades. How long do you really think the hocus pocus Euro is going to last before it is found out? Again!! I'd give it six months max. The EU is a destroyer of economies, countries, populations, cultures even language. The EU story is the road to serfdom.

The EU is a prostitute, a true femme fatale... that has trapped many nations that now have denied their sovereignty to a eurocracy unelected and without the mandate of the people. People want a participative democracy and not one with the manufactured consent of mass media. And certainly not a "democracy" which works as a "department" of a big Bank.

My relatives and friends in Greece, in the last five years have had continuous pay cuts (around 45-50%) and after the huge increases in taxation (and one "offs"), deposable income is not possible even if both parents work in a family of two children. And those families who try and survive on one income or none, rely on the extended family and the church just to pay for essential "living". The ongoing joke in Greece (due to the massive increases in land tax) from Parents to Children is now "behave or I will hand over the property title to the family home to you"...