End of Banking

• The End of Banking. Jurg Muller.

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Review

Sepp Hasslberger:

" has much good information. It makes the current situation of the banks and other institutions in the world of finance more transparent for normal people to understand and the proposal for a handling of the crisis of finance does make sense.

The book addresses banking and not banks, because banking (the creation of private or “inside” money) is not only done by banks but by all kinds of other financial institutions as well. The “products” of banking become as good as money, or so it is thought, but when things go bad, the people pay as governments are afraid of what will happen if some of the larger institutions fold.

The proposal for handling is to require, for each financial institution (banks but also other financial companies) the presence of assets to balance the debt that can be incurred. Such assets are to be valued taking into account the worst imaginable state. It is proposed that banking may not create money, but that it may only loan out what is actually physically available.

The proposal includes a liquidity fee (first proposed by Gesell almost a century ago) to be charged on money, as a way to

1) keep money circulating and 2) have a way to directly intervene to diminish amount of money in circulation should this be necessary

There is also the proposal that money to be put into the economy be put into circulation directly through the peoplel.

The weakness of the book is that the “handling” section is smaller and perhaps less well argued than the “what’s the situation” section. Also, the book suffers from the lack of a roadway for implementation. The author has specifically excluded implementation from being discussed in the book.

So overall my view of the book is positive." (email, November 2014)