THE Global Justice Movement Website

THE Global Justice Movement Website
This is the "Global Justice Movement" (dot org) we refer to in the title of this blog.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Some Thoughts on Money, Part IX: The Banking School and Banking and Finance

Objections to the real bills doctrine, and the reason the real bills doctrine is regarded by the vast majority of today's economists as "discredited," are based on an absolute faith in the dogma that it is impossible to finance capital formation without first cutting consumption and saving. That being the case, even monetary economists and free market advocates reject the real bills doctrine.

Ironically, however, the real bills doctrine provides the foundation for the quantity theory of money — as well as the practice of the science of finance in a free market. Economists from across the spectrum twist what should be relatively simply theories wildly out of shape in order to make their theories work while rejecting the basic premise on which the theories rest. They argue that unreality is real in order to get around the logic of the real bills doctrine, all the while ignoring the fact that the real bills doctrine is proved every time capital formation is financed through leveraged purchases.

Instead of accepting the logic and the fact of corporate finance, people insist that something else is really going on, that there is fraud or theft involved somehow and somewhere, that an incomprehensible trick is being played somehow by accountants and lawyers, so on, so forth. All of this proves, of course, either that the corporation is inherently evil or a mystic creation by the Almighty instead of a mere human tool.

These analyses are based on the belief that it is absolutely impossible to form capital unless savings already exist. If it appears that capital formation has taken place without first saving, the socialists assume that somebody is being robbed or cheated (usually by the theft of surplus value), while the capitalists assume that some deity like Entrepreneurship has somehow managed to perform a miracle that ordinary mortals cannot grasp.

A third possibility, one embodied in the Just Third Way, is that the individuals or groups that put together capital projects are neither thieves nor gods, but ordinary people exercising their natural freedom of association and their natural capacity to make promises. A plan is put together and financing needs determined.

This plan (presumably tested for both financial and engineering — physical or "practicable" — feasibility as far as is possible without having a working model) is taken to a bank of issue. The loan officer (or equivalent) at the bank of issue examines the plan, and (if he or she decides it might be feasible) turns it over to experts that a bank ordinarily retains to carry out its due diligence before making a loan. If the experts pass on the proposal, the loan officer examines what is offered as collateral, that is, as security for the loan.

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