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Princes of the Yen | Documentary Film
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All the comments and stories posted to Hacker News that reference this video.> People outside the US loved it.Correction: foreign central banks guided by IMF subsidiaries loved it dearly, people - not that much, perhaps the opposite [1]
CBDCs could upturn existing assumptions about the role of currencies, e.g. from June of this year, https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/bank-of-england-tells-...> Tom Mutton, a director at the Bank of England, said during a conference on Monday that programming could become a key feature of any future central bank digital currency ... what happens if one of the participants in a transaction puts a restriction on [future use of the money]? ... Sir Jon Cunliffe, a deputy Governor at the Bank, said digital currencies could be programmed for commercial or social purposes ... “You could think of giving your children pocket money, but programming the money so that it couldn’t be used for sweets. There is a whole range of things that money could do, programmable money, which we cannot do with the current technology.”
At an IMF meeting in Oct 2020, Swiss BIS director Carstens commented on CBDCs, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVmKN4DSu3g&t=1451s
> With cash, we don't know who is using the 100 dollar bill today ... a key difference with CBDC is that the central bank will have absolute control on the rules and regulations that determine the expression of that central bank liability .. also we will have the technology to enforce that ... if an advanced economy issues a CBDC, and someone in a 3rd country wants to use it, it will require the consent of the central bank of the residence of that person, therefore the degree of control will be far bigger.
Well-intentioned initiatives like Linux Foundation's global vaccine passport (https://www.goodhealthpass.org/), EU digital health certificate and Apple+Android digital driver's license can all be drafted into the service of CBDC initiatives which require digital identity for digital currency wallets, unifying online and offline policy for programmable "permissions" like carbon/food quotas or other social credits. If western citizens acclimate to "showing papers" for routine daily movement, then real-time currency policy can be applied for admission and activity control. This could replace fungible currency with "colored credits", with policy attached to both the origin of money and a whitelist of possible destinations, goods or services. As a current example, PayPal has amended their ToS to include merchant content regulation as a condition of payment processing.
That's just scratching the surface. Some proposals would eliminate the ability of retail banks to issue loans/money, restricting this function to central banks. Retail banks could then be repurposed as fintech data custodians and risk management, similar to Chinese social credit. Some of these ideas are discussed in the "FedAccounts" paper and related testimony to Congress, https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a....
> Congress should authorize the FederalReserve to give everyone-individuals, businesses, and institutions-the option to maintain accounts at the central bank. We call these accounts FedAccounts. Unlike the CBDC approaches currently under discussion, which would use complicated and inefficient distributed ledger technology and be walled off from the existing system of money and payments, FedAccounts would be seamlessly interoperable with the mainstream payment system, relying on technologies that the Federal Reserve has used for decades.
What are the options for those who prefer physical currency? In the US, pre-1965 ("junk") silver coins can be used to conduct local commerce based on the value of silver content, rather than face value. In theory, regional digital currencies could be created that are backed by precious metals or other physical, non-fiat assets. Texas has a state-administered bullion depository. CBDCs will require enabling legislation in each country, so there will be political debate in the next year or two, including the fates of decentralized cryptocurrencies and corporate digital currencies (e.g. Facebook, Amazon).
For historical background on central bank policy, see the 2014 documentary "Princes of the Yen", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5Ac7ap_MAY & https://moviesteve.com/review-princes-of-the-yen-2014/ or the upcoming 2021 documentary "The Trust Game", https://vimeo.com/ondemand/trustgame/626995630?autoplay=1
⬐ no_timeThis is so gut wrenchingly dystopian I gave up reading half way in. If this is the world we are heading towards, i'm rooting for climate change.⬐ walterbellSome HN readers have more options than others (airline pilots, truck drivers, ship port workers) to remove their creative energy from building dystopian systems. It's all about timing and acting while we still have relative degrees of freedom. https://www.finextra.com/pressarticle/89541/bank-of-england-...Overtly dystopian plans are an initial shock, but they enable early response. One reason for public pronouncements is the need for enabling legislation, i.e. consent of the governed and taxed. There are a few ways to say no, individually and collectively, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28861636
⬐ no_timethanks for this unusually positive/hopeful take. Instead of crashing the party again with some negativity I'm gonna leave it at this :^)
Claiming that the BOJ is inactive is either an indicator that you're an insider and I have no idea what I'm talking about (as an outsider am bamboozled by the magic trick/strong jawbones of the BOJ), or that you have no idea what you're talking about (with no disrespect).I don't mean to sound combative but this is such an extreme statement (in my view) that I'm eager to find which scenario is true. The BOJ is so active that we talk about the progression of the US in terms of "japanification" -- as in the US is going somewhere (in monetary policy) japan has already been. ZIRP, extended forever-QE, messing with whatever rates they needed to, buying JGBs, buying stocks. BOJ is not an inactive central banking institution. This doesn't even take into account the borderline conspiracy theories floating around on the way the BOJ exerts control(summed up by Princes of the Yen[0]).
Could you explain a little more about why you think the BOJ's actions in the last like... 3 decades have somehow not "entered" the economy (which I don't think is synonymous with not affecting the economy)?
> China's ascension to number 1 world economyMy gripe with this is that people seem to take this as a fact that hasn't even occurred with almost 100% certainty that it will happen.
A lot can go wrong in 20 years. So far, all economies that challenged US in the past mysteriously gets IMF'd, pulling the rug out of a credit bubble that they help create by twisting the arms of the central banks that are supposed to be free from this kind of interference:
This documentary about Japanese central bank is eye opening to just how much grip the US hegemony has, one which I fail to see China being able to emulate anytime soon because of the hostage situation that US allies are finding themselves in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5Ac7ap_MAY
The theory that states Sadam was whacked because he started to accept euro instead of the petrodollar standard makes an awful lot of sense.
⬐ snomadWell, one, China is already number 1 in PPP.Two, they are already setting up parallel institutions just to prevent being IMFd that (see AIIB).
Third, they already have numerous renminbi trading deals with several countries where goods are exchanged without ever being converted into dollars.
⬐ cryptonectorJapan did not get IMF'ed, as you put it. They simply did not liquidate, liquidate, liquidate. Instead they just extended-and-pretended. Surprise! It didn't work.IMFing is real, but also only really applicable to smaller economies. All it really is is a bailout of bad-creditors disguised as credit to bad-debtors, leaving the latter in worse shape in the end and without having helped them with immediate problems at all. This only works when the amounts in question can be ponied up by taxpayers in the IMF member countries without causing too much political trouble. When the amounts involved are large enough (e.g., in the case of Japan in '89) this just doesn't even get proposed, not least because there was very little external bad-credit to bailout! We saw some of this game played intra-Eurozone, but in the European case the taxpayer was going to have to bailout the banks no matter what, whereas in the Japan case the problems were entirely domestic.
The idea that Bush went after Hussein because Hussein's reserve currency preferences is utter hogwash. Iraq's economy back then simply wasn't remotely big enough to move that needle and lacked the potential to for decades longer. Moreover, if Iraq preferred the euro then, why not now, and where's the damage to the dollar?? The answer is that it does not matter what choice of reserve currency Iraq, Iran, or Saudi Arabia (say) prefer -- it would have made zero difference in 2003, as it almost certainly didn't. Bush had no shortage of reasons to go after Hussein -- no need to reach for conspiracy theories about that!
Richard Murphy has written a book called The Joy of Tax, where one of the central arguments is that the generally accepted view of tax playing the role of funding government expenditure is incorrect, or at the very least, undesirable.Instead we ought to view tax as being a tool which acts as a force of contraction in the economy, taking money out of circulation that has been put there as a result of government spending.
Both of these (fiscal) mechanisms - spending and taxing - ideally act as a mechanism to democratise the economy. 'Ideally' in the sense that the mechanisms for choosing and applying such policies are democratic, rather than authoritarian, subject to capture, etc. 'Democratise' in the sense that without this intervention, the 'market' has free reign - with ensuing consequences that influence over it is not in the hands of the many.
Libertarians (especially of the free-market ilk) may see this as a positive, however, I think it is plainly obvious that a market is never free, and has a tendency to concentrate wealth (and thus power). In my opinion, decisions over our collective efforts and available resources ought not to be in the hands of the few, but rather, in the many - via truly democratic mechanisms and institutions.
Some interesting, related vids that discuss boom/bust, QE and the like:
Japan had a credit driven bubble. I strongly recommend watching this by Werner:
⬐ m_muellerWell.. so had the US less than 10 years ago?
Fair enough.I think the comment was implying that their policies, not being entirely democratically accountable - the effectiveness of these instruments themselves being arguable - are very likely going to be swayed by private interests.
I know there exists a revolving door b/w FDR and major Wall Street banks, but I'm not sure about other countries. I'd not be surprised if this were the case everywhere.
Edit:
'Princes of Yen' is a documentary that I found did a good job of illustrating the dangers of having such high powered unaccountable cabals (without all the BS that is typical in this genre).
"Princes of Yen" ( 円の支配者) has a more cynical view of things. I'd definitely recommend it, if you're the "conspiracy theorist" sort.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5Ac7ap_MAY
Some of Richard Werner's and Karel van Wolferen's lectures might be interesting too.
Our society is inclined to attribute success to some intrinsic nature (race, culture, language..). Japan's successful ? It must be Zen. China not ? Must be Confucianism, shame-based culture. Now China is ? Ah it must be Confucianism, collectivism. India is not successful ? It must be Hindooism. They have Sanskrit ? Ah it must be the Aryans. The Native Americans died out ? Ah it must be their immune system. The play is clear.
Japan's success is likely due to the way MacArthur normalized its war-economy, and because of how it was guided in the post-war years. Ditto with Korea/China/Thailand/ and now Vietnam/India (and other SE countries). I haven't seen a tick of anything "native" at the heart of it, even though nationalism dictates that the citizens be deluded into believing these things.
Princes of Yen: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p5Ac7ap_MAYRise then neoliberal fall.
⬐ madadsIt really was a great way to run their economy.⬐ branchlessYes, and the neoliberal way is dire, except for the rentiers.
For a very interesting commentary of the immense power of central banks, I'd recommend the documentary "Princes of the Yen", a film adaptation of Richard Werner's[1] book of the same name.