I know weve hopefully got past the currency issue, but there is one point to be made that I havent yet heard. What is the value of keeping a strong currency like the pound? The answer: it supposedly serves us well, but this can only really be considered to be the case under the conditions of a gross over-financialisation of the economy. This is not the economic model which will promote the economic growth and regeneration of small towns and, indeed, peripheral nations such as Scotland (as Boris RIGHTLY points out, a pound spent in Croydon is worth more than a pound spent in Strathclyde). This is why local currencies such as the Brixton Pound have served their communities well - geography is not the only issue; these local currencies work well because they go against the grain of financialisation. Not only that, the institutions associated with the big currencies around the world are being increasingly exposed as playing broken strings: quantitative easing may have prevented a worldwide depression, but it hasnt returned the economy to anything like true economic health. Instead of nurturing a fetish for a strong global currency like the pound (a fetish which only encourages a misunderstanding of the relationships between currency, financialisation and economic health), a small country like Scotland would do well to innovate with currency in order to address the problem of over-financialisation.
Posted on: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 08:37:54 +0000