This year’s series of Reith Lectures, ‘How we get what we value’, are given by former Bank of England Governor Mark Carney and commence on 2/12
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I dreaded the day when Mark Carney retired from being The Gov - he always struck me as being about as good as we could get.Originally posted by Belgrove View Post -
surely the next one only has to authorise oveprinting of banknotes with 3 extra 0s probably close to the next electionComment
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I agree. He seemed completely straight in what he was saying. Reith lectures should be interesting.Originally posted by Serial_Apologist View PostIt isn't given us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world.Comment
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Today's was -- even if MC does indulge in a few too many econo-mystical obfuscations such as ''the debt incurred during the financial crash was socialised" -- why won't he come out and admit that the debt was borne by the most disadvantaged in society ? The next one, in which he prognosticates societal outcomes post-Covid, will be interesting...Originally posted by french frank View PostComment
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Wasn't Mark Carney appointed by George 'Austerity' Osborne?Originally posted by Serial_Apologist View Post
JRComment
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Carney's main thesis, the theme running through all these talks, appears to conflate two different meanings - value, as in price; and value, as in answering to need - but without offering anything within the going theory and practice of economics as ways to merge them for practicable ends. He stresses the rhetorical: yet again, he is saying, the 2008 banking crash, now compounded by the coronavirus pandemic, demonstrates government failure of choice, as opposed to weaknesses intrinsic to capitalist dynamics and consequent modes of operation. In this time of global fragmentation and ever-increasing inequality, there has to be greater emphasis on meeting present and future need; how this is to be brought about is never spelt out - just that it must be. Next week looks at the issue of climate change, and it had better come up with some ideas beyond quantitatively easing in more and more money into a system that is overflowing with more and more money than can be paid for in the first place, and in the wrong hands, because there is nothing intrinsic to money, a means of exchange, other than the destabilisation of its value through values operating at the helm of competition and market supremacy that ensure the fluctuations which keep it going in a self-perpetuating and greed engendering cycle of wastefulness! The first question in the today's concluding Q&A session, from some private funds operation rep, was instructive, raising the hoary matter that governments printing or borrowing money to shore up the failing edifice surely amount to offering a "free lunch". Yep, we are where we are, and all that; the material forces (as opposed to good old human weakness) at work in stimulating needs no one knew they had until (a) inborn short-term planned product obsolescence, and (b) nobblement by advertising, were not factored in as inevitable constituents of the overarching problem - a systemic problem.
Anyway, either one of two things: (a) we will get at least some of the answers to the questions urgently beckoning next week, and I will have been shown to have been unwarrantably cynical and misled by outworn ideology; or (b) I was over-hopeful in the first place that Mr Carney might have at least some of the answers!Comment
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<< I was over-hopeful in the first place that Mr Carney might have at least some of the answer>>
Ditto - I kept thinking...'yeah, yeah, got that, but....what next??'Comment
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