Banks in Li(E)bor probe consider group settlement

Reuters reports that:

A group of banks being investigated in an interest-rate rigging scandal are [sic] looking to pursue a group settlement with regulators rather than face a Barclays-style backlash by going it alone, people familiar with the banks' thinking said.

LOL. Caught in the biggest fraud in history, what the banks are saying is:

Hey you regulator guys, here's $40 billion, now shut the fuck up.

An offer the regulators can surely not refuse, since they've been complicit in the scam from the outset, and because a serious probe of Li(E)bor could expose the conspiracy among the initiates of high finance that allows privately owned corporations to print money ad lib, thereby sequestering for themselves the value of the savings of the middle class.

In which case there could be trouble. Like this.

Which prompts me to draw attention to a revolutionary banking scheme that would see an end to:

The creation of money by private companies run by executives rewarded according to the scale of financial swindling they can get away with.

Money laundering -- as undertaken on a multi-billion-dollar scale by HSBC under CEO Lord Green, now Britain's Minister of State for Trade and Investment in both the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Yes that's his official title. No wonder the Brits are in a terminal decline: mind-bending bureaucratic verbiage rules even at the highest political level.).

Virtually all forms of financial fraud, counterfeiting, tax evasion, the vending of illegal drugs,the trading in slaves, the payment of illegal political campaign contributions, payments to out of office pols like Tony Blair for services rendered, and the financing of terrorism. All would all be immediately detectable, and the culprits immediately identifiable.

What's the plan? It is the use of pure cardinal numbers, issued by a government agency. Briefly, here is how it works:

A Numero, pronounced with emphasis on the second syllable, is a unit of currency designated by a unique whole number. If you "own" the Number 1, you have a unit of currency. To own the Number 1, you must have an account with the monetary authority or a bank acting as the agent of the monetary authority, which registers your ownership of the Number 1.

Additional units of currency are created by the use of additional cardinal, or counting, numbers up to a published total based on a country's existing stock of money (or in economist speak, M2), which for the United States is currently around $10 trillion. Thus, the ownership of every single number, i.e., each distinct Numero, would be recorded, the information held in a geographically distributed, nuclear-attack hardened, and highly redundant electronic archive.

I explained in my original account of the Numero, the simple procedures for converting an existing currency to the Numero, and some of the implications of adoption of this form of money.

Comment about the Numero in a discussion on Steve Keen's blogsite, expressed enthusiasm for the ideas. Also, as one might have expected, the idea was grossly misrepresented by a person who is either confused or a dupe or a shill of the banking industry.

Here, therefore, to make a few things unequivocally clear, I will add a couple of comments on my original proposal.

The Numero can be used globally, in which case the unique number designating each unit of currency would have the prefix G, for G(lobal)Numero.

Against the GNumero, is the fact that its issuance would depend on an international body of some kind, which smacks of the project for global governance that many oppose. Moreover, it creates the adjustment problems that result from the use of gold or any other form of money that cannot be debased at the whim of political operators.

The adjustment problem is at the root of the Eurozone financial crisis. The PIIGS have priced themselves out of the common market with Germany, Netherlands, Finland, etc. The only way they can get back into the game is either to revert to their original crap currencies and debase like hell, or cut their Euro-denominated prices and incomes sharply. Instead, they hope to force the Germans to spend their brains out creating the demand that creates the jobs to employ the army of unemployed people in Greece, Spain, etc.  -- obviously a plan that will go nowhere.

In fact, the adjustment problem is not as hard to solve as most people think. As I explained here, all that's needed is a periodic adjustment of wages on a national or regional basis, according to the unemployment rate. By undertaking such wage adjustments on an across-the-board basis, the unfairness argument against taking wage cuts, should such be necessary, loses all force.

But folks hate this idea. It forces one to confront the the fact that, through the World Trade Organization, the West agreed to free trade with the Rest, including about four billion people prepared to work for pennies an hour. Instead of accepting this fact and preparing to make the necessary radical adjustments, most people in the West, it seems, would rather their government keep debasing the currency, borrowing insane amounts that can never be repaid, and as necessary, waging wars for oil.

But for those who want national currencies that can be endlessly debased, then the Numero can be implemented nationally. In that case the unique number designating each unit of currency would have a prefix UK, DE, or whatever, to indicate the nation of issue. In fact, the Numero might be implemented on a regional or even a city basis, which could make a lot of sense. Why, after all, if the Euro is not equally suitable to the Greeks and Germans, is the Pound Sterling equally suitable to Londoners and Hebridean Islanders?

The creation of national or regional Numeros would make necessary the exchange of currencies. But as all Numero transactions would be electronic, currency conversion would be an instantaneous and almost cost-free process, the rates of exchange being determined by markets with or without intervention by central banks, as at present.