Dennis R Redmond wrote:
>
> On Sun, 8 Feb 1998, William Kirk wrote:
>
> > When we see the way the gangster of late, the late R. Maxwell, and how he had a clear run to accumulate hundreds of millions, leaving
>>millions of people without pensions, it makes you wonder. He is not the
>>only one. The department in the UK that deals with serious crime or
>>gangsterism does
> > not do al all well, and it is not through lack of effort. Trailing
> > electronic money is a nightmare; to regulate it in a way that
>> prevents gangsterism hinders 'free trade'. If money systems were made
>>smaller, and were based on the exchange of goods, then I tend to think
>>the problem would be reduced. Any comments on the fragmentation issue?
>
> Actually, it's not that hard to track all that money; computers do that
> constantly, and the superrich know exactly how much they're worth and
> where they're investing, otherwise they don't stay superrich for very
> long. The real problem isn't chasing electrons, it's Chase Manhattan
> Bank and its ilk -- all that liquidity ultimately ends up in some form
>of interest-bearing or dividend-paying instrument (cash by itself, even
> in electronic form, just sits around and gets devalued by inflation).
> So you have to go after the bond markets, the foreign exchange markets,
> and the foreign direct investment markets -- which means taxing the
>hell > out of the giant multinationals, taxing Wall Street punters via a
>tax on speculation (a "Tobin tax", so named after the Keynesian
>economist who suggested it in the Seventies), and taxing large-scale
>capital via a Swiss-style wealth tax.
>
> -- Dennis
I agree that the superrich will know where their money is, the problem is
do the government authorities know? And do the rich, less rich and
moderately rich know where their money is?
If I apply my simple model of a money system it appears to me that there
are times for doing things in the life of the system. Keynes had it
exactly right at the time, that time is now past, new ways have to be
found to deal with present day problems, many of them at a tangent to the
accepted institutional practices. With technological advance, all of the
institutions you mention, banks, exchange markets, investment markets,
stock markets, futures, all this is lag from a bygone age. It is baggage
that can now be dispensed with, and it is a vastly overrated expense.
Besides, it is far to complicated for most of us to understand, we like
it if we have a money to spare and a profit is made, and is really only
another grand horse race, a more elaborate form of the hippodrome.
Punters and kleptoparasites have to go too.
W. K.