Today I got the news about the excellent campaign MoveYourMoney and I hope that it will soon find its equivalence in European and other countries!

Meanwhile I was thinking what could be done “at the top” while we, the people, move our money, and I came up with this:

In addition to GDP, inflation and public debt as a percentage of GDP, there are three more fundamental measures that public statisticians should be interested in.

However, this presupposes that there was a move to more transparency and deeper understanding of what’s going on in the financial economy. It also presupposes that politics and the financial economy are there to serve the real economy.

If that was so, the development and publication of the following figures would help future generations:

• Re a government’s budget:
– the need to raise taxes vs the need for borrowing, i.e. the consideration to increase ‘narrow money’ as we have suggested in our submission to the Treasury Select Committee’s inquiry into the Stern review: Green Credit for Green Purposes
• Re a nation’s money supply:
– the ratio between ‘narrow’ and ‘broad’ money, i.e. the proportion of Cash (issued free of interest by the State) to Credit (issued at interest by banks and central banks)
• Re potential state bankruptcies in international contexts:
– the ratio between internal and external indebtedness, i.e. obligations in local and foreign currencies.

Maybe we could complement MoveYourMoney with MeasureOurMoney?

Filed under: Challenging the Recession, Indicators, Indices, Measures | Tagged: economic measures, monetary measures | Leave a Comment »