Posts by robertbwalker55@mastodon.nz
(DIR) Post #APkOB9zi4jBsHFxLNY by robertbwalker55@mastodon.nz
2022-11-19T02:12:39Z
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@strypey I remember reading a while back wry commentary from Britain commenting upon the squeezing out of studies in music on the basis that it didn’t contribute economically. To which the writer said: really? Music since the 1960s with the advent of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones has been a massive earner for Britain. Content is just as important as the means of delivery.
(DIR) Post #APkWqbahAyWxNAWsds by robertbwalker55@mastodon.nz
2022-11-19T03:49:59Z
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@strypey I am applying what might be thought of as the law of the oblique. Focus on what you are good at and everything else falls into place. Boeing is the best example. When it was run by its founder it made aircraft. Money didn’t come into it but it made vast sums (and changed the world if not for the better). It began to fail when it fell into the hands of accountants whose objective was to make money. I am an accountant (of sorts). I have no love for managerialism.
(DIR) Post #APkX3M1cMPTCrRCXHk by robertbwalker55@mastodon.nz
2022-11-19T03:52:18Z
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@strypey I ran out of numbers. It so happens that I was part of a team that proved the output theory of government didn’t work back in 1996. Accountants make great servants but poor masters.
(DIR) Post #APkaCVK3SiESAHsbHk by robertbwalker55@mastodon.nz
2022-11-19T04:27:32Z
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@strypey I got the idea from a Financial Times article. Successful ventures almost invariably arise from a creative impulse. Making money is a by-product. Here is an example: Aotearoa should make the nurturing of Teo Reo a priority. Not because you can sell it. But it will repay in economic terms many times over. Precisely how idk but it will.
(DIR) Post #APlgRORg6gJS3xt87M by robertbwalker55@mastodon.nz
2022-11-19T17:12:10Z
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@strypey that was the problem - TY. I never used Twitter so I am new to character limitation.
(DIR) Post #APliJfgUKScZ7VGFYu by robertbwalker55@mastodon.nz
2022-11-19T17:33:11Z
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@strypey interesting. Something like that happened to me.
(DIR) Post #APmwWFNt143XphPXc0 by robertbwalker55@mastodon.nz
2022-11-20T07:47:05Z
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@strypey Nietzsche reckoned the aphoristic style was how philosophy should be written. The Tao Te Ching is known as the work of 5,000 characters and it says everything that ever needed to be said. As for me, I am not in Nietzsche’s league and am given to prolixity 😢
(DIR) Post #APoDrAPma2C0seopvs by robertbwalker55@mastodon.nz
2022-11-20T22:36:03Z
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@strypey I spend my life writing long winded prose no one reads. What my non-readers cannot say later is that I didn’t tell them 😊.
(DIR) Post #APoEBGEsdTp6jfIivY by robertbwalker55@mastodon.nz
2022-11-20T22:39:41Z
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@strypey here is my favourite Nietzsche aphorism: if you fight with monsters take care not to become a monster. If you gaze into the abyss long enough, the abyss gazes into you.It exercises a spell on me as a snake does on a mouse.
(DIR) Post #APqnNilMGDYwJMv05I by robertbwalker55@mastodon.nz
2022-11-22T04:23:31Z
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@strypey I don’t buy meat much except for my dogs. I like chili so I have substituted beans for meat. I prefer it. When I use mince I always have a nagging thought as to what I am really eating.
(DIR) Post #AQ3jvZ6So78pR99UOG by robertbwalker55@mastodon.nz
2022-11-28T10:16:02Z
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@strypey there is a madness in crypto. Monetary assets are assets only because, ultimately, they deliver a stream of income. Crypto currencies don’t do that. All part of the unreality that has become reality. It all worries me but I’m old and I won’t see the consequences.
(DIR) Post #AQ4ZnXxmMDpzCVaUlM by robertbwalker55@mastodon.nz
2022-11-28T19:57:02Z
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@strypey it is even more narrow than that in causation. If the government borrows from the existing stock of money that means a person in the private sector won’t be able to. The problem is when the government creates an overdraft equivalent at all the banks by pumping up the liabilities on its balance sheet.
(DIR) Post #AQ4kx9X98j4zpEuhUG by robertbwalker55@mastodon.nz
2022-11-28T22:02:15Z
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@strypey correct up to a point. There are three ways to cover a deficit: tax, borrowing from existing moneys, create create. Whether tax is upon the wealthy or across the spectrum is a policy matter. I am no fan of progressive tax as it is income based and no one knows what that is. I prefer financial transaction tax. In the Keynesian world you wouldn’t tax but rather soak up unused money to match supply and demand. The worst thing to do is create credit.
(DIR) Post #AQ74DDyQgc4nfsyJfc by robertbwalker55@mastodon.nz
2022-11-30T00:47:29Z
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@strypey the government can certainly do it and they did. They called it the Large Scale Assets Purchases Programme. The title itself is sleight of hand. It encompasses the camouflage of government borrowing in the usual way but it was really just a roundabout way to create credit in order to fund COVID mitigation measures.
(DIR) Post #AQ74tGmAeqIwWoHq0O by robertbwalker55@mastodon.nz
2022-11-30T00:55:06Z
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@strypey I am an accountant (or at least I was - but that is another story). I am suspicious of taxing events it is difficult to see. Income tax is crazy. It gives rise to a vast deadweight on the economy. For a financial transactions tax you need 3 people: a computer person to insert the metaphorical needle into the monetary bloodstream, an accountant to account for it and a person to watch the other two. FTT is automatically progressive that’s why Jim Anderson liked it.
(DIR) Post #AQ7wdXJanF8wiMrlMu by robertbwalker55@mastodon.nz
2022-11-30T10:57:19Z
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@strypey I agree. It was made to look like common or garden debt issuance but it was a facade. Whatever it is it caused house price inflation and then inflation in commodities measured for the CPI. Though some of price increases in goods is caused by bottlenecks in supply chains.
(DIR) Post #AQ8zt64wJqFRte5GGe by robertbwalker55@mastodon.nz
2022-11-30T23:08:27Z
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@strypey you can see it in the RBNZ balance sheet. At Feb 2020 govt bonds held as assets were $5 bn and liabilities to banks $16bn. By Nov 2020 bonds held were $54bn and liabilities to banks $53bn. What it means is that Treasury issued $50bn of bonds to banks. RBNZ bought them back the effect of which is to create cash balances at the banks which would not otherwise exist. RBNZ put their balance sheet on a spreadsheet called balance-sheet-at-work.
(DIR) Post #AQ90H6YUCO1gKBLruK by robertbwalker55@mastodon.nz
2022-11-30T23:12:48Z
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@strypey I set out the accounting in a model which demonstrates how quantitative easing happens and its effects . It is difficult to summarise. I could send the spreadsheet somewhere.
(DIR) Post #AQ915BtmbczxNOCDgW by robertbwalker55@mastodon.nz
2022-11-30T23:21:50Z
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@strypey the other point to note is that increase in house prices can reflect true economic activity. Money supply = price of X + price of Y. If MS stays constant and Y increases by $1 then MS = (X-1) + (Y+1). Conversely if MS is artificially increased it will be added to X or Y or both. If Y is asset values (property, shares) then it doesn’t show in the inflation measure because they aren’t counted. We used to have house prices included and they should be.