An IMF Proposal to Ban Banks from Creating Money

(This is the fourth of a series of posts about ending the ability of private banks to issue money.)

For the past 18 months ago, IMF economists Michael Kumhof and Jaromir Benes have been circulating a proposal to end the ability of banks to create money.

As Kumhof explains in the Nov 2013 video below, the perception that governments create money is totally false. In the current global economic system, only about 3% of money (mainly coinage) is created by government. The other 97% is created by private banks out of thin air when they generate new loans. See Economic Justice: the Rolling Stone Version

For various reasons, which Kumhof explains in the video, he and Benes believe that unlimited and unregulated private money creation by banks is responsible for the current economic crisis. And that full recovery is only possible if the privilege of creating and controlling the money supply is restored as a government function.

In addition to assuming sovereign control over the money supply, national governments would also require banks to hold 100 percent reserves for the loans they initiate. This effectively terminates the ability of private banks to create money out of thin air. And this, in turn, massively reduces their political power.

Ironically, the proposal isn’t new. Entitled the Chicago Plan, it was first put forward by University of Chicago professors Henry Simons and Irving Fisher during the Great Depression.

The History of Private vs Sovereign Money

During the Q&A at the end, Kumhof briefly discusses previous experiments with government-issued sovereign money, which have mainly occurred in the US. Sovereign money funded the original 13 colonies, the American War of Independence and the Civil War.

In their paper The Chicago Plan Revisited, he and Benes trace the history of sovereign money back to the ancient Greeks and Romans. During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, all currencies were publicly controlled (by kings and the Pope) until 1666, when Charles II transferred control of money creation to private banks with the English Free Coinage Act of 1666.

The slides, which are difficult to see in the video, are available here

For me the high point of the video is Kumhof’s disclaimer that he doesn’t represent the IMF – that he’s only doing research. Yeah right. I sure wish I had an understanding boss who let me run around making radical proposals to strip investment banks of their power and wealth.

It seems more likely that people in high places know the ship of capitalism is going down – that this is a last ditch effort to save it.