Bernard Maris dévoile le secret de la création dargent par les banques Simon Thorpe 2014-04-13 | Bernard Maris, l'un des économistes les plus connus en France, chroniquer sur France Inter, et membre du conseil général de la Banque de France, a tout dévoilé dans un documentaire récent sur "La Dette" produit par Nicolas Ubelmann et Sophie Mitriani. Lorsque l'on lui pose la question "D'où vient l'argent que prêtent les banques?", sa réponse est stupéfiante:Elles le fabriquent elles-mêmes avec l'autorisation de la banque centrale. Par exemple.... vous achetez un immeuble qui vaut ... €500 000. Et bien, la banque va fabriquer 500 000 euros, à partir de rien. Vous direz elle ne fabrique pas €500 000 de billets. Si - elle fabrique €500 000 de billets, qu'elle peut vous donner. Sauf que c'est une écriture, parce que vous n'allez pas chercher, pour payer votre immeuble, £500 000 en billets - vous le payez par chèque. Mais c'est la même chose. Si vous vouliez le payer en billets, elle vous donnerez £500 mille en billets qu'elle irait demander à la Banque Centrale, parce qu'elle dit - voilà, j'ai une créance sur Monsieur, qui vaut 500 mille euros, qu'est ce que vous donnez en échange? Et la banque centrale dit - je vous donne 500 mille euros en billets. Sauf que, comme ces billets ne sont jamais demandés, ça circule sous forme d'écriture. Mais il faut bien comprendre ça. Quand on a compris ça, on a tout compris à la monnaie. C'est que la banque fabrique à partir de rien de l'argent. C'est le métier du banquier. La banque crée ex nihilo de l'argent. Ca c'est quelque chose qui est très difficile à comprendre".
What can AI learn from the brain? Past, present and future Simon Thorpe 2025-04-27 | I gave this invited talk at the 2025 Neurally Inspired Computing Elements meeting in Heidelberg, Germany, on the 26th March 2025. The original link to the video can be found at this link https://flagship.kip.uni-heidelberg.de/video/meeting_263_video_9648.mp4The complete set of slides can be downloaded here https://flagship.kip.uni-heidelberg.de/jss/HBPm?eMAt=263&sMi=7148_zyLWgwmRg&downloadTalk=9648I was pleased to demonstrate my Terabrain simulation software running with 68 billion neurons and trillions of connections on my Mac in real time. The simulation was running in the background on my Mac throughout the talk, even though the Mac was not even plugged in! The bottom line is that this sort of extremely sparse spiking neural network with unary synaptic connections is remarkably power-efficient. Indeed, this approach could be the secret of the brain's remarkable 20 W power budget.
Visite Guidée du Pierrotin Simon Thorpe 2025-03-10 | Une visite guidée de notre appartement "Le Pierrotin" situé au 4 Quai Saint Pierre à Toulouse
Guided Tour of Le Pierrotin Simon Thorpe 2025-03-10 | A short tour of our apartment, "Le Pierrotin", located at 4 Quai St Pierre, Toulouse. The apartment is up for sale with an initial price of €650,000. However, the asking price will drop by €1000 a day, starting on the 1st March 2025 until we find a buyer.
Quick thought #6 Simon Thorpe 2024-12-01 | I propose that we should scrap all inheritance taxes, and replace them with a simple annual tax on net wealth of, say, 1%. Some very interesting data from the UK's Office for National Statistics shows that mean individual wealth in the UK was £305,000 in 2022. There are huge variations according to where people live - people in the south-east can be three times more wealthy than in many other parts of the country. However, the biggest factor is age. People in their 20s and 30s have very little net wealth, but wealth peaks in people in their early 60s. Paying 1% a year would be far less painful than only paying when you die and it would mean that people who live longer would end up paying more than people who die in their early sixties. Seems reasonable to me!
Quick thought #5 Simon Thorpe 2024-12-01 | I describe a simple way to find the $1.3 trillion a year needed to tackle climate change in developing countries. It uses an idea I have been pushing since 2012 - taxing global financial transactions. According to the Bank for International Settlements, transactions in 2022 for just 24 countries totalled $18.1 quadrillion. Taxing those transactions at just 0.006% would provide the money we need. But the numbers are almost certainly massively underestimated because BIS figures fail to mention hugely significant players like the Options Clearing Corporation which will almost certainly handle over 12 billion transactions in 2024. Nobody knows how much those transactions are worth, but they could be an average of $1 million each. Quite why no one is taking this simple idea seriously is incomprehensible to me.
Quick thought #4 - eradicating debt by minting trillion dollar platinum coins Simon Thorpe 2024-11-17 | This is a very amusing idea. With US Government Debt close to $36 trillion (double that of 2015), and tax payers forking out for interest payments of $1.16 trillion a year, a way to reduce debt would be very welcome. Back in 2013, it was argued that the US Treasury can legally mint platinum coins with a face value of $1 trillion. They could be used to cancel out the debt to the Federal Reserve. Since Donald Trump would like to break the independence of the Fed, this could happen.
Quick thought #3 - Could Trump and Musk push for a Global Universal Basic Income? Simon Thorpe 2024-11-17 | I suggest that Elon Musk, who is a big supporter of UBI, could convince Trump that a Global UBI would be a great way to curb illegal immigration. Paying $30-$100 a month to people in "shithole" countries would make them much less likely to want to enter the US.
Quick thought #2 - Trump election aftermath Simon Thorpe 2024-11-17 | This is an new version of the post I made shortly after the Trump's re-election where I point out that Trump clearly won the election fair and square. This makes it very difficult to argue that the election was stolen in 2020. Those responsible for spreading that story should (a) admit they were wrong, and (b) apologise to everyone.
Simon Thorpes Quick thought #1 Simon Thorpe 2024-11-17 | This is the first of what I hope will be a long series of Quick Thought Videos - presentations lasting a couple of minutes at most, with just one slide where I talk about just one idea. I very much hope that people will leave comments, and promise to try and reply.
Trump Aftermath Simon Thorpe 2024-11-07 | I argue that one positive result of Trump's re-election is that it demonstrates that the US electoral system clearly works fine. It is vital that the Republican Politicians and Media outlets like Fox News who have been pushing the stolen election myth admit that they were wrong and apologise to the American people for all the disruption and turmoil they caused. Maybe a petition signed by the millions of disappointed Americans who are accepting that Trump really did win could make them own up?I put a more extended argument on my blog that you can find here simonthorpesideas.blogspot.com/2024/11/the-aftermath-of-trumps-re-election.html
The Brain and AI : Two reasons why spikes are important for understanding biological intelligence Simon Thorpe 2023-04-01 | I gave this invited talk in Marseille on the 31st of March 2023. My thanks to Arnaud Rey and the Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive for the invitation. This is the abstract that I originally sent for the talk."The latest generation of deep learning-trained AI systems can rival humans on many challenging tasks, including image categorisation, speech processing and text prediction. But it can be argued that such systems are not truly “intelligent” because of the way they learn, requiring millions of cycles of brute force learning with labelled data. I will argue that such systems lack one feature of biological learning that may be critical for true intelligence. Humans are incredibly good at spotting repeating patterns. For example, when presented with a stream of novel images at up to 120 frames a second, an image repeated between 2 and 5 times can subsequently be picked out of a set of four images - where the other 3 have all been seen just once. Similarly, impressive performance levels have been seen with auditory snippets presented at rates of 20 per second - again, a few repeats are enough to make the sound easy to pick out. This suggests that this ability to detect repeating patterns could be a general feature of the brain. Parallel modelling work has shown that a modified Spike-Time Dependent Plasticity Rule using binary synapses can allow neurons to learn to detect repeating patterns, again with only a few repeats. We suggest that this sort of unsupervised learning could be a key to biological intelligence and could provide a radical alternative to the supervised deep learning techniques that currently dominate the field."However, the talk also includes quite a lot of material about spike-based processing and how the use of spikes might explain why the human brain is so much more power efficient than the hardware currently used for deep neural networks. Indeed, the overview of the talk provides the following summary. Comparing the Brain with Artificial systems- High level vision has effectively been solved- Large Language Models (e.g. GPT-4) are getting closer to AGITwo major problems -The Energetic Cost - Simulating the entire human brain would require 20 MW - The brain only uses 20 W- Learning is very slow -Humans can detect repeating patterns very efficiently - in 2-5 repetitions Spike-based computing is a solution to both challenges - Simulating billions of neurons on a MacBook Air - Learning rules that use binary connections and weight swapping - Potential application - a system that can learn text-based language
AI, Technological Unemployment & UBI Simon Thorpe 2022-10-12 | This is an extended version of a presentation that I gave on the 4th October 2022 as part of a 10 part teaching program on the Economic Singularity - see economicsingularity.eduweave.comThere are three parts. In Part 1, I discuss why humans will not be able to compete with AI, why many paid jobs are going to disappear, and why this could be a disaster unless we act quickly. I argue this position on the basis of my own work into biological vision, which demonstrates that our biological hardware is simply too slow and limited to compete with advancing computer technology. In Part 2, I propose that introducing a Universal Basic Income is probably the best way to cope with the technological unemployment resulting from advances in AI, robotics and automation. I discuss 4 different ways of financing a UBI : (1) Central Bank Money Creation, (2) A radical reform of the tax and benefit system with an Unconditional Basic Income coupled with a flat rate income tax, (3) a 0.1% financial transactions tax, and (4) an annual 1% tax on all assets. The first two could be used at the national or regional level, whereas the last two could be used to provide a $100 a month Basic Income for everyone on the planet. In Part 3, I describe another very radical proposal, the introduction of IOU-based transaction system (IOUNet) that could allow the economy to function without the need for conventional money. In the end, I am personally convinced that there is a way forward that would allow all humans to live rewarding lives, and live in peace with technology. However, I believe that this will only be possible if we make the right decisions now. I very much hope that the ideas presented here could help stimulate a wide-ranging discussion on this vital and pressing issue.
4pourMille - an idea in the documentary Kiss The Earth Simon Thorpe 2022-04-24 | This is a short section from a 2020 documentary on NetFlix called "Kiss the Ground". It describes how, at the 2015 COP21 conference in Paris, the then French Minister for Agriculture, Stephan LeFol was pushing for the 4 per Thousand idea which involves using 0.4% of agricultural land every year to sequester Carbon in the Soil. I was very surprised when I watched the documentary because, although I live in France, I had not heard of the idea. I think it could be a option of dealing with Climate Change
AI, Neural Technology & Social Transformation Simon Thorpe 2017-11-05 | This is a modified version of a talk I first gave at the EmTech (Emerging Technology) meeting in Toulouse France, on the 10th of October 2017. For the first time, I managed to talk about my two passions in the same talk - my interest in brain-inspired computation, and my interest in economic reform. Essentially, I argue that $10 chips with Neural Computing algorithms will be replacing humans in many paid jobs. The resulting transformation in society will lead to a catastrophy if we continue with the current system. However, solutions already exist. I claim that we need a Universal Basic Income, and suggest three perfectly valid ways to implement such a system. These are (a) using negative income tax, (b) using Central Bank Money Creation, and (c) imposing a tiny Financial Transaction Tax on all electronic transactions.
Des solutions pour sortir de la crise Simon Thorpe 2015-09-14 | Voici une présentation que j'ai donné à Alterniba Toulouse le dimanche 15 septembre 2015. Je présente trois idées clés pour sortir de la crise de la dette:1) Au lieu d'injecter €60 milliards par mois dans les marchés financiers, la BCE doit donner la même somme aux 330 millions citoyens de la zone Euro - environ €182 par personne. Pour éviter de l'inflation, la BCE pourrait imposer une taxe sur les transactions en Euro partout dans le monde.2) Les autorités (nationale, régionale ou locale) pourraient introduire une monnaie parallèle - le N-Euro. On pourrait payer une partie des salaires, des retraites et des aides avec, et sa valeur serait garantie par le fait de pouvoir payer des taxes avec à parité avec l'euro classique. 3) Introduire un système de crédit citoyen où les transactions peuvent être fait avec des "IOU" (des reconnaissances de dette). Un tel système permet de faire fonctionner l'économie sans avoir besoin de faire appel à l'argent dette des banques commerciales
Fixing the economic system Simon Thorpe 2015-02-28 | This is a seminar that I gave at the Toulouse School of Economics on Tuesday the 24th of February 2015. In it, I explain why I think that the current system is unworkable. Global debt levels are now 2.5 larger that the total money supply of the planet. It is therefore impossible to get out of of the current mess if we stick with the current system in which 97% of the money in circulation is created by commercial banks as interest bearing debt. The good news is that there are several ways that we could get out of the mess. They include (1) Public Banking, (2) Debt Annihilation, (3) Money creation by Central Banks in the form of payments to governments or via direct payments to citizens, (4) the creation of a parallel N-Euro system of debt-free money (a sort of official bitcoin), and (5) the introduction of an IOU based system for Credit Creation for Citizens. All of these measures could be introduced today. The major problem is that there is virtually no public debate of the issues.
Toulouse - Nous sommes tous Charlie Simon Thorpe 2015-01-10 | 3pm on Saturday 10th January 2015. I was standing at the centre of the Place Jean Jaurès, waiting for the march to start. Around 120,000 people in Toulouse came together to reject violence. Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.....
Simon Thorpe Vers un monde pratiquement sans taxes Simon Thorpe 2014-09-21 | Voici ma présentation TEDx sur "Vers un monde (pratiquement) sans taxe" que j'ai fait à Toulouse en mai 2014. Vous pouvez regarder directement sur le site TEDx Rue Remusat ici youtube.com/channel/UCC4uS3kUfRpHDUcv-DGZUZQ
Conventional versus IOU-based Money Systems Simon Thorpe 2014-06-03 | This is a quick presentation that tries to explain the fundamental differences between a standard token based monetary system, and one based on the emission of IOUs. One system that only uses IOUs is the Owe'm system (www.owem.net)
The Bank of England explains how commercial banks create money out of thin air Simon Thorpe 2014-04-26 | This is Ryland Thomas from the Bank of England in a recently released video where he explains how money is created by commercial banks. The background with all the bars of gold give additional impact to what he says!"Banks create additional broad money whenever they make a loan. Now while this is nothing new, it is sometimes overlooked as the main way in which money is created. And it runs contrary to the view sometimes put forward that banks can only lend out deposits that they already have. In fact loans create deposits - not the other way round. "
How to eliminate Eurozone Public Sector Debt without austerity Simon Thorpe 2013-04-14 | This is an English version of a talk that I gave at a meeting that took place in Montbrun-Bocage on Saturday 13th April 2013. I shared the stage with Professor François Morin, an economist from the University of Toulouse. I thank the organisers for the invitation to what ended up as a very lively debate.In the talk I argue that there is a way out of the the current Eurozone Crisis. It requires 3 key steps that would allow governments to get out of debt and avoid the 3% of GDP that is currently lost in interest payments to the financial sector. 1) The the European Central Bank should be forced to take over all public sector debt2) The ECB should impose a tax on all electronic transactions denominated in Euros, irrespective of where they occur.3) The ECB should then redestribute revenues from the tax according to each country's population size within the Eurozone and use the money to pay off each country's debt.I back the proposals with data on the scale of Euro-denominated transactions in areas such as Foreign Exchange and Interest Rate Swaps. Although much of this activity occurs outside the Eurozone, 19.5% of foreign exchange involves Euros, and 40% of Interest Rate Swaps currently involve Euros. During the debate after the talk, François Morin agreed with the numbers I used, but was not very optimistic about the chances of such reforms getting through. I would agree that there will be massive resistance from the financial sector who currently receive hundreds of billions of euros every year in unjustifiable interest payments. However, the stakes are very high. If political parties at next year's European Elections were to take the three key ideas on board, I believe that it is possible to fix the system before it is too late.
Comment éliminer la dette publique de lEurozone sans austerité Simon Thorpe 2013-04-14 | Cette présentation a été donnée dans une réunion publique sur "La démocracie" est-elle soluble dans la crise?", réunion qui a eu lieu le Samedi 13 avril 2013 à Montbrun-Bocage dans l'Ariége. Je remercie vivement les organisateurs pour leur invitation.En gros, je propose que l'on pourrait s'en sortir de la crise de la dette publique si on adoptait les mesures suivants.1) Obliger la Banque Centrale Européenne à reprendre les dettes des états2) Instaurer une taxe sur toutes les transactions en Euros pour éponger ces dettes3) Redistribuer les revenus de la taxe en fonction de la population de chaque paysJ'ai eu le plaisir de partager le plateau avec l'économiste François Morin. François a confirmé les chiffres avancés dans ma présentation, mais considère que la probabilité de pouvoir faire passer mes propostions est faible, vu la resistance et le pouvoir du monde de la finance. Il a peut être raison de dire que ca ne va pas être facile. Mais, je suis persuadé qu'il vaut la peine d'essayer!
Paranormal Phenomena Simon Thorpe 2013-01-22 | This 55 minute talk is a presentation that I originally made on the 15th of January 2013 to a group called "Incognu" which is an association of people interested in Cognition in Toulouse. I was asked to talk about Paranormal phenomena, and so I did. My basic position can be summarized as follows:Can paranormal phenomena be studied scientifically? YES!Is it important to study such phenomena? YES!Is there convincing evidence? YES!! (for some phenomena)Does it make sense? YES - It can help explain the evolution of consciousnessAre there possible explanations? Yes, possibly (Quantum Physics, entanglement....)In my case, I tended to ignore work on paranormal phenomena. However, since reading the work of Dean Radin and Rupert Sheldrake, I feel that it is no longer possible to pretend that such phenomena are illusory. And if they are real, the implications for our understanding of the universe that we live in will be revolutionized.Note added Sunday 27th JanuaryIn the talk, I mentioned what I thought was an unpublished metareview of the anticipatory physiological effects. But I have since discovered that the paper was actually published in october 2012.You can find it herehttp://www.frontiersin.org/perception_science/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00390/abstractMossbridge, J., Tressoldi, P. E., & Utts, J. (2012). Predictive Physiological Anticipation Preceding Seemingly Unpredictable Stimuli: A Meta-Analysis . Frontiers in Psychology, 3, 390.
The N-Euro Solution Simon Thorpe 2012-09-30 | In this video (under 13 minutes) I propose a way of allowing Eurozone governments to introduce a nationally based, debt-free parallel currency that could be called the N-Euro (for "National-Euro" or "New-Euro"). Each country would set up a national citizens bank with accounts for all citizens. Citizens receiving payments from the government (such as salaries, pensions and benefits) could choose to have a proportion of the payment made in N-Euros. It would be completely voluntary, with the percentage varying from 0% to 100%. The government would ensure that the N-Euros had value because they would be accepted for payment of taxes. Businesses could also have N-Euro accounts, and would be able to accept payments from customers using an N-Euro payment card. The government would be able to run the payment system free of charge, meaning that merchants could avoid the fees normally charged by credit card companies.Such a system would have the enormous advantage that the governments could create N-Euros without having to borrow from the commercial banking system, which currently has a virtual monopoly on creating the Euro money supply. This would save hundreds of billions a year in totally unnecessary interest payments.
How the Eurozone countries could fix the global economic crisis Simon Thorpe 2012-08-18 | In this presentation, I argue that the Eurozone countries could act together to provide a solution to the global economic crisis. The basic cause of much of the current mess is the money creation mechanism . Commercial banks currently have a virtual monopoly on money creation and, in recent years, they have been creating trillions of euros in debt by creating money out of thin air, lending that "money" to governments, businesses and individuals, and then charging interest on those loans. Governments are currently paying hundreds of billions a year in interest charges - thus crippling the economy. I argue that, if the 17 eurozone governments acted together, then could ban money creation by private banks, and require all new money to be created debt-free via the ECB. I propose that the money created this way could be distributed between the 17 countries pro-rata as a function of the size of each countries population. A key advantage would be that the Eurozone economy would no longer have the inbuilt inflation required in currency areas where the creation of the money supply requires interest to be paid. This would make Euros very attractive relative to other currencies which are forced to continuously devalue. As a result, the ECB could create large quantities of Euros without risking inflation - thus providing a massive boost to the Eurozone economies. I suggest that once a major currency block like the Eurozone has switched to debt-free money creation, it is highly probable that other currencies zones would be compelled to follow - thus ridding the world of the millstone of debt-based money creation
Des Propositions pour une Réforme Radicale du Système Monétaire Simon Thorpe 2012-06-23 | Une version française de ma présentation "Some Radical Proposals for Monetary Reform"
Some Radical Proposals for Monetary Reform Simon Thorpe 2012-06-17 | The 14 minute talk is a revised version of a previous presentation called "A Radical Proposal for Monetary Regulation" that I uploaded onto Youtube on Saturday 16th June. In the first 24h it was seen by 111 people and was "liked" by 11 of them. There were also 8 comments, but to make thing simpler, I have decided to remove the old version. I got some excellent feedback on the original version, especially from Bill Still. Bill said that while he supported what I was proposing, he sent me a list of 15 suggestions for removing some imprecisions and factual errors. I'd like to thank Bill for his input and hope that this new version meets with his approval!The key proposals include two ideas that have already been proposed by a number of authors including Bill Still himself, Ellen Brown, James Robertson and the Positive Money group (not to mention Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison and JRR Tolkein, to name but a few!). All have argued that money creation by commercial banks should be banned, and that all money creation should be done debt free by elected governments, via the Treasury in the USA, or via central banks in most other countries. This would immediately save countless billions of taxpayers money that have been paid to banks as unjustifiable interest charges. The amounts are mind-blowing. US taxpayers have paid $8.5 trillion in interest charges since 1988, and taxpayers in the 27 European Union countries have paid €5.6 trillion since 1995. This is more than half of all government debt, and it totally unnecessary.One new idea is the proposal that money creation by governments should be restricted to actions that receive massive support from citizens. I suggest that the threshold could be as high as 90%. Decisions could potentially be made using a referendum, or in the future by some form of electronic voting system. The one real criticism of systems in which governments are allowed to create money debt-free iis that there is a potentially a risk of inflation. My second main proposition proposes a solution that avoids this problem. The idea would be to introduce a continuously variable Financial Transaction Tax that be used to automatically remove excess money from the system. At the first sign of inflation, the FTT rate would be automatically increased to mop up the surplus. And if there was deflation, the rate would be decreased. The optimal level for the money supply could be determined by an independent authority. Note that this independent authority would have no say in whether or not money is created by the government. Its only role would be to vary the FTT rate to keep the money supply level at the optimal level.In such a system, there would be no need to match government expenditure with tax revenue. Indeed, government spending could be increased to cover the costs of any project that receives overwhelming public support. This would allow the money supply to expand naturally with the economy, and would allow wastage to be eliminated. It would allow a return to full employment, because as long as there are jobs to be done in the economy, it would be worth creating the government money to pay the people to do those jobs. Indeed, as long as there was still unemployment and spare capacity in the economy, there may not be much need for taxation at all.Note that the scheme would avoid the possibility that people could "live off the state" on benefits. Unless someone was incapable of work, or had already reached retirement age, it is almost certain that they would be able to do something useful to do. It is likely that 90% of the population would prefer to see people paid to do something useful for society (paid for with freshly created government money) than providing them with money for doing nothing.These are radical ideas that could really change the sort of society in which we live.
Anéantir La Dette Simon Thorpe 2012-05-28 | Dans cette présentation de 13 minutes, je propose une nouvelle piste de sortie de la crise de la dette. Spécifiquement, j'envisage la création d'une banque "cityonne" dont le but est d'utiliser le système de création d'argent utilisé par les banques commerciales ("fractional reserve banking") afin de générer "l'argent" nécessaire pour anéantir la dette. Je donne l'exemple de la Grèce où le gouvernement doit €350 millions. Pour pouvoir créer cette somme, il suffit d'avoir une banque avec un minimum de €30.4 milliards en dépôts, car la réglementation "Bâle III" accepte qu'une banque ne puisse avoir que 8% en dépôt. L'argent crée pourrait être être prêter au gouvernement Grecque pour une période de 1000 ans au taux de 0.0%. Cette argent pourrait être fournis par les contribuables Grecs qui, de toute manières ont payer 15 milliards en intérêts en 2011. En 2 ans, le montant investi pourrait être remboursé.Le même mécanisme peut être utilisé à tous les niveaux, du niveau national, régional et municipal. Il peut également être utilisé pour sauver les entreprises et les universités de la piège de la dette, ainsi que les individus surendettés.Alors que la création de monnaie par les banques commerciales est de la pure folie (toute la création de l'argent devrait être dans les mains de banques centrales et dans l'intérêt des citoyens), en attendant son abolition nous pouvons utiliser ce mécanisme pour réparer les dégats provoqués par des décennies de prêts totalement irresponsables.
Debt Annihilation Simon Thorpe 2012-05-27 | In this 12 minute presentation I argue that there is a way to get out of the debt crisis by using the commercial banks' money creation trick to generate enough money to cancel out debt. To generate a given sum, the Basel III rules require that a bank has about 8.7% of the sum in deposits. Thus, Greece's national debt of €350 billion could be generated by a special Debt Annihilation Bank if it had an account containing the threshold value of €30.4 billion. Once that threshold has been reached, the account could be frozen and the bank could generate €350 billion out of thin air which could be used to pay off the entire national debt. The Greek government would agree to pay the entire sum after (say) 1000 years with interest at 0%. The €30.4 billion mainly come from Greek citizens who could be given tax rebates to recover their costs over the next two years. This would be possible because the government would save at least €15 billion in interest charges every year (the amount paid to the banking sector in 2011). The same mechanism can be used at all levels, from the national level, to regional and city council levels. It can also be used to save companies and universities from the debt trap, as well as helping individuals who are locked into debt.While money creation by commercial banks is pure folly (all money creation should be in the hands of publicly banks in the interest of citizens), in the meantime we can use the banks' own insane mechanism to clear up the mess left by decades of totally irresponsible lending.
Comment Régler la Crise de la Dette (Version corrigée) Simon Thorpe 2012-05-02 | Dans cette présentation de 13 minutes je présente des propositions pour régler la crise de la dette. En gros, il faut obliger les banques centrales de prêter de l'argent aux états en passant pas des établissements publics de crédit, quelque chose qui est autorisé par la traité de Lisbonne. Les états peuvent utiliser cet argent pour rembourser intégralement leurs dettes vers le secteur bancaire. De cette manière, les contribuables récupèrent les 370 milliards d'intérêts actuellement versés aux banques.(Cette version remplace une version précédente du 29 avril (vue par 29 personnes), qui avait de nombreuses fautes dans mon français!).
Solving The Debt Crisis Simon Thorpe 2012-04-26 | In this 13 minutes presentation, I argue that there is a simple way out of the debt crisis facing governments. Central banks such as the European Central Bank and the Bank of England should be forced to lend governments enough money to pay off the entire debt to the banking system. Expect massive resistance from the bankers, who have extracted a massive €5.6 trillion in interest charges from Europe's taxpayers since 1995. They will fight to keep this gravy train on the rails.
Le Plan 0-0-0-0.x (V.F.) - 4ème Partie Simon Thorpe 2012-03-22 | Voici la quatrième partie d'une présentation d'environ 41 minutes qui décrit ma proposition pour remplacer l'essentiel des taxes existantes (taxe sur le revenu, taxe sur les sociétés, TVA et charges sociales) par une seule taxe sur les transactions financières.
Le Plan 0-0-0-0.x (V.F.) - 3ème Partie Simon Thorpe 2012-03-22 | Voici la troisième partie d'une présentation d'environ 41 minutes qui décrit ma proposition pour remplacer l'essentiel des taxes existantes (taxe sur le revenu, taxe sur les sociétés, TVA et charges sociales) par une seule taxe sur les transactions financières.
Le Plan 0-0-0-0.x (V.F.) - 2ème Partie Simon Thorpe 2012-03-21 | Voici la deuxième partie d'une présentation d'environ 41 minutes qui décrit ma proposition pour remplacer l'essentiel des taxes existantes (taxe sur le revenu, taxe sur les sociétés, TVA et charges sociales) par une seule taxe sur les transactions financières.
Le Plan 0-0-0-0.x (V.F.) - 1ère Partie Simon Thorpe 2012-03-21 | Voici la première partie d'une présentation d'environ 41 minutes qui décrit ma proposition pour remplacer l'essentiel des taxes existantes (taxe sur le revenu, taxe sur les sociétés, TVA et charges sociales) par une seule taxe sur les transactions financières.
Le Plan 0-0-0-0.x - Version en Français de 15 minutes Simon Thorpe 2012-03-20 | Voici une version en français de ma presentation sur le Plan 0-0-0-0.x. L'idée est de supprimer le système de taxation actuel (taxe sur le revenu, taxe sur les sociétés, T.V.A.) et de le remplacer par une seule taxe sur les transactions financières. Avec environ 300 mille milliards de transactions par an en France, une taxe d'environ 0.27% pourrait suffir pour remplacer les autres taxes. Un tel système serait (i) juste, (ii) indolore, (iii) peu couteux à implementer et (iv) quasi-impossible à frauder.
The 0-0-0-0.x Tax Reform Plan : Part 5 Simon Thorpe 2012-03-18 | This is the final part of a 50 minute presentation of the 0-0-0-0.x Plan, a proposition to replace the existing tax system with a single flat rate financial transaction tax. This part discusses who would lose out as a result of such a change, as well as discussing the question of whether it should be considered as left wing or right wing.
The 0-0-0-0.x Tax Reform Plan : Part 4 Simon Thorpe 2012-03-18 | This is part 4 of a 50 minute talk that I gave at the Toulouse School of Economics in March 2012. It presents my proposal for replacing the current tax system with a single flat rate financial transaction tax. This part looks at the advantages and potential difficulties of such a proposal
The 0-0-0-0.x Tax Reform Plan : Part 3 Simon Thorpe 2012-03-18 | This is part 3 of a 50 minute talk that I first gave at the Toulouse School of Economics in March 2012. This section deals with the details of implementing a variable rate Financial Transaction Tax
The 0-0-0-0.x Tax Reform Plan : Part 2 Simon Thorpe 2012-03-18 | This is part 2 of a 50 minute talk replacing the current tax system by a single flat rate financial transaction tax. This part deals with the numbers on the level of transactions, and the implications for the level of the FTT needed to abolish the other taxes.
The 0-0-0-0.x Tax Reform Plan : Part 1 Simon Thorpe 2012-03-18 | This is the first part of a 50 minute talk that I first gave at the Toulouse School of Economics on the 5th of March 2012. The talk presents my proposal for replacing virtually all the current tax system with a single flat rate Financial Transaction Tax. Part one looks at what would be the characteristics of an optimal tax system, and looks at the history of the Financial Tax option.
The 0-0-0-0.x Tax Reform Plan : 13 minute presentation Simon Thorpe 2012-03-17 | This is a quick presentation of Simon Thorpe's 0-0-0-0.x plan which proposes to abolish the current tax system based on Income Tax, Business Taxes and Sales Taxes and replace the whole lot by a single flat rate financial transaction tax that for most countries would be a fraction of 1%. There is a longer 50 minute presentation for those who want more detail.
