By an amazing accident of timing, the Westminster Select Committee on British Affairs has today published a report saying Scotland will have no currency at independence and may have to barter. The Committee consists of Conservative, New Labour and Lib Dem MPs.
The Scottish Sun has run the currency scare on the front page for the last three days. Labour, Lib Dem and Tory leaders all asked nothing else at First Minister’s questions yesterday. The media and Holyrood frenzy could have been sparked as reaction to the TV debate. But what the publication of the Westminster report today shows is that this massive currency scare has all been pre-planned by Tory, Lab and Lib-Dems with heir media allies for some time. This is their big push keep Scotland’s resources.
What is increasingly plain – and I warned before the debate – is that the conduct of the entire “debate” was a part of this co-ordinated plan, pre-determined to allow the media to declare the currency issue is the only one that will decide the referendum. Salmond was grilled on nothing but currency for twelve minutes, and then the chairman picked out members of the public from the IPSOS/Mori selected audience pre-primed with questions about … currency.
Audience members had had to fill out forms for selection indication if they were Yes or No voters. They were then asked again at the door, and many Yes voters who had been invited were excluded. No voters were seated in a selected central area where the questions were taken from. Better Together staff were present briefing their questioners.
This really is a major test of the power of the mainstream media. There is no currency question. A very large majority of the countries in the world became independent in the last seventy years. Countries with far weaker economies than Scotland
support their own currencies. I have personally in travelling had at least 40 different currencies in my pocket. All over the world, what matters is not the unit of denomination, but how the money is distributed and used.
Scotland like Denmark could have its own currency. It could keep the pound either in a formal currency union or not. It could join the euro. As an independent country it will have the choice – and if the English want to burn the choice of formal currency union, that will not sink Scotland by any means.
Currency is not the be all and end all of independence. But what we have is a concerted effort by the Westminster politicians and the entire media to convince people that it is. Will this work? Or will they stand against the raw aggression and hatred now pouring out from the British nationalist camp?
‘our times’ – our current period of high transparency, information sharing, democratic ethos and excessive wealth. These are the terms that immediately come to mind. I am aware of a radical critique of all of these points – nevertheless, they are serviceable ideas for me.
Terms such as ‘capitalist’, ‘communist’, ‘mixed economy’ etc. are too large for this discussion. The idea that ‘greed and megalomania are…’ – well, there is greed and megalomania in most modern societies – again too large for this issue. ‘It’s all one gargantuan scam!’ might be true in the pub on a Friday night, but it also might just be crass simplistic crap. Not analytically interesting however emotionally satisfying for some who’ve done what others haven’t and ” seen through it all”.
On the smaller issue of your dismissal of currency concerns, you are nowhere to be seen. You are gliding aloft on your up-woken thermals.
Leslie
What ‘high transparency’? What ‘democratic ethos’? Don’t you ever read this blog?
OK but to be able to discuss the small picture it is necessary to understand the big picture. David Kortens When Corporations rule the World is a good starting point. Korten was indeed once a World Bank economist
Synopsis
When Corporations Rule the World suggests that the promises of the global economy are based on a number of myths: that growth in GNP is a valid measure of human well-being and progress; that free unregulated markets efficiently allocate a society’s resources; that growth in trade benefits ordinary people; that economic globalisation is inevitable; that global corporations are benevolent institutions that, if freed from governmental interference, will provide a clean environment for all and good jobs for the poor; and that absentee investors create ‘trickle-down’ prosperity.
Korten believes that these myths are finally being unmasked and challenged by an Ecological Revolution that calls us ‘to reclaim our political power and rediscover our spirituality to create societies that nurture our ability and desire to embrace the joyful experience of living to its fullest’. He argues that, instead of concentrating on increasing economic growth and GDP, we should concentrate on ending poverty, improving our quality of life, and achieving a sustainable balance with the Earth.
http://www.greenleaf-publishing.com/content/pdfs/top50_korten.pdf
Bring back the Bradbury Pound, and call it the ‘Burns’ or something. Government printed money, no private Central Bank ‘skimming’, no interest. Money based on the country’s resources, not on thin air.
Read ‘The Creature from Jekyll Island : A Second Look at the Federal Reserve’ (G. Edward Griffin); it gives a very good explanation of how the Federal Reserve came into being (or watch the video of the same name: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu_VqX6J93k
Johnstone
‘up-woken one’ – still in the thermals.
Craig,
In his paper Salmond points out that Scotland runs a deficit but states that this is normal. How is Scotland going to fund itself if it runs a deficit but no longer receives funding from the UK?
The only way is to issue bonds but this would necessitate a separate currency from the UK as tax revenues for bond payments would be from Scotland not the UK. No investor would buy a Scots bond using sterling as the currency, tax revenue, interest rates, legislation and country credit worthiness (of Sterling) is controlled from London. Thus Scotland would have to have a separate currency as it would not be in control of its own credit market. This issue appears to have been overlooked. Any explanation?
Regards.