At 7:09 22-04-1996 -0700, Duncan K Foley wrote:
>1) All forms of modern money are debts of various nation-states. These
>states also have assets (in the case of the U.S., for example, immense
>land and natural resource holdings, as well as a large, if somewhat
>indeterminate power to tax future income) and it is presumably these
>assets that lend "credit" to the State's liabilities, including money.
>
They "lend 'credit'" or "are the collateral"? Moreover, should not
(outside)money be seen as mainly represented of loans by the Central Bank
to the State?
>2) As Paul Cockshott pointed out, the elaboration of various further
>forms, such as credit cards or electronic balances, whatever their
>technical base, are economically no different from other elaborations of
>credit. They all depend on a chain of convertibility back to the monetary
>liabilities of the nation-state.
Yes. However, convertibility gives stability to the unit of account. I am
not sure it has anything to do with money as such. In principle, it is
possible to have monetary systems without convertibility.
riccardo
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Riccardo Bellofiore e-mail: bellofio@cisi.unito.it
Department of Economics Tel: (39) -35- 277505 (direct)
University of Bergamo (39) -35- 277501 (dept.)
Piazza Rosate, 2 (39) -11- 5819619 (home)
I-24129 Bergamo Fax: (39) -35- 249975
Italy
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