Moneyness by FOFOA

[Malcolm]

Martin Armstrong's version of moneyness:

"When capital cannot earn money domestically, it then begins to migrate overseas. Lower interest rates will not stimulate the economy without a perceived opportunity to invest."
http://armstrongeconomics.com/wp-conten ... models.pdf


I'll try to reduce this to some key concepts from this:

1. Confidence: For Martin, everything begins with confidence. Without confidence, capital cannot be moved. Without moving, it can't be deployed. Without being deployed, people cannot take advantage of it and produce goods and/or services others value. Without others having confidence, they won't use your goods/services, etc.

2. Cycles: Confidence rises and falls in cycles. Cycles are universal and fundamental. Though Martin doesn't dwell on it much, we don't so much 'observe' cycles, as participate in them. Life is the sum of countless cycles, from heartbeats and atomic clocks, to business cycles, to cultural rise and fall. Some might use the notion 'virtuous cycles' and 'destructive cycles' to put the reader/listener 'into the cycle'. For Martin, knowing how to assess cycles and notice key 'phase transitions' is all important. (I would love to know what a business cycle phase transition might be, but my mind gains zero traction with the idea. As many who engage in the study of cycles will tell you, by the time you identify a cycle, the advantage of knowing it may be small.)

3. Capital: this seems to be both 'property' and 'skills'. Martin likes to point out Japan's economic power (GDP) despite the Japanese archipelligo holding few natural resources. He concludes Japan's economy proves capital is not 'land', but skilled people willing to cooperate with each other.

4. Interest: capital earns income in a variety of ways. One can lump all of them into the notion 'interest on capital'.

5. Migration: capital moves in search of higher interest. It can move from one jurisdiction to another. It can move within a jurisdiction from one instrument to a second. Hidden in this is Martin's assumption that economic activity is the sum of countless individual atomic events. By atomic, I mean 'independent'. Without independence, there is no place to 'migrate to'. The independence of various players and financial instruments is a nuanced concept. Everyone is 'connected' (see Martins regular admonition to find all the data and assess global capital flows), but cycles cannot be erased (flattened). 'Independence' is always a function of some cyclic component.

Key Terms:
Confidence
capital
movement (transmission, mutation)
deployment
use
production
presentation such as to build confidence in the purchaser/user

Note that money is not mentioned. In Martin's view, trade is based on confidence, not 'units of value'. In other words, credit is natural. Coins, dollars, bonds, etc. are artificial and secondary. People naturally build up 'credit' with their friends and family. The confidence required to share goods, services, homes, land, etc, long predates any notion of monetary value. Given confidence, monetary systems can be used to build larger rings of confidence, but the money so defined is entirely secondary to the overall activity it emerges from.

To conclude this, Martin defines 'moneyness' in terms of confidence. If confidence in some community exists, a unit of account can emerge, and be called 'money'. The artifact chosen to define this unit of account fills a conceptual need emerging from the communal confidence, not from any intrinsic aspect of the object selected (ie, gold can be money, but is not money 'in and of itself'.)

While this may seem exceptionally vague and pointless, it strikes me as offering a way to assess questions ruled 'taboo' by conventional economics. For example, how does Keynes account for black-markets, and bribery? How would a Keynesian answer the questions: 'How much should it cost to bribe a government official? buy a legislator's vote? defend a secretly purchased monopoly?

My guess is the Keynesian would dismiss such questions. If pressed, such costs would be inconsequential, and need no answer. If shown the costs are significant, they would say the assumption of equilibrium is violated, and the question has ceased to be a matter of economics. Instead, it is a question for legal experts.

Malcolm

[Indiana Jones]

Martin relies on millennia of proven historical facts. Fofoa relies on a theory.
Guess that's the difference between Martin/s and fofoa/s moneyness.

[richardjews]

Savers want the loans they fund in a currency that is stable (if not appreciating).