Einar Magnús

Protests raging here on Iceland now. I think they are upset about that the same people who fucked everything up are still in power. I am personally not sure to what extent you can blame the politicians and how much of the blame belongs to the businessmen (I’m not even sure these groups are that separate). The bankers’ Viking expeditions onto Europe seem to be one of the big causes, the politicians’ guilt coming mainly from allowing this. The Icelandic bank boys just wanted to play the financial game and looked at the big boys in America for guidance. Like being a socially inept little kid and looking to the ADHD bully for behaviour cues.

Disregarding the fables and stories of how this happened, where should the world go from here? Does anyone actually have a viable option? Obviously we need to take this chance to ground the economy in something of more actual value than the US exports of war and intellectual property laws, but what?

My friend told me of an idea he had about connecting the currency value to the trade balance. Basically your money supply should be tied to your country’s production and holdings and the exchange rate towards other currencies governed by their relative supplies and your trade balance. The exact rules are left as an exercise for the reader.
The general idea though, is that if you export more than you import, being a net producer, your currency gains value which raises the price of your products. If you are a net consumer, importing more than you export, your currency falls and importing becomes more expensive. This would, in this (simplistic?) theory at least, act as a stabilising feedback mechanism on world production and trade.

Another idea is introducing a resource based economy, easily mistaken(?) for communism, but the likeliness of that happening seems small.

Gold standard? Has many problems.

Greenbacks? Money without inherent debt. Seems like a good idea to me, although probably also subject to abuse since they are based on nothing but some kind of judicial psycho-magic.