Alliance for Just Money.

 

Alliance for Just Money is a US based organisation which promotes bank and monetary reform. I stumbled across it a month or two ago and am delighted to have done so because it’s proposals are pretty similar to those of Positive Money, which I’ve supported for about ten years. I don’t know what took me so long, i.e why I didn’t stumble across AFJM earlier.

Anyway, one of AFJM’s proposals I particularly like (also advocated by Postive Money for a long time and recently given the thumbs up by  Ben Bernanke) is the idea that the amount of new money the central bank should create should be determined by a central bank committee (or some other independent committee of economists) while the ACTUAL WAY that new money is used is a decision which should stay with politicians. I.e. the decision as to whether stimulus money is spent on more education or health or used to cut taxes is clearly a POLITICAL decision.

Unfortunately the latter very simple idea which is about as beautiful in its simplicity as Einstein’s E=MC2 equation is EXTREMELY DIFFICULT to get into the heads of most economists. But as you probably know, a significant proportion of economists are more interested in near incomprehensible, jargon ridden nonsense than in worthwhile original ideas.

As to exactly where AFJM says it supports the latter simple idea, see item No.1 under the heading “Three Critical Reforms” on their “The Just Money Solution” page.