Keiser Report (E281), 28.04.2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVB-5J…
“Say a king wishes to support a standing army of fifty thousand men. Under ancient or medieval conditions, feeding such a force was an enormous problem—unless they were on the march, one would need to employ almost as many men and animals just to locate, acquire, and transport the necessary provisions. On the other hand, if one simply hands out coins to the soldiers and then demands that every family in the kingdom was obliged to pay one of those coins back to you, one would, in one blow, turn one’s entire national economy into a vast machine for the provisioning of soldiers, since now every family, in order to get their hands on the coins, must find some way to contribute to the general effort to provide soldiers with things they want. Markets are brought into existence as a side effect. […]
This was particularly true in the colonial world. To return to Madagascar for a moment: I have already mentioned that one of the first things that the French general Gallieni, conqueror of Madagascar, did when the conquest of the island was complete in 1901 was to impose a head tax . Not only was this tax quite high, it was also only payable in newly issued Malagasy francs. In other words, Gallieni did indeed print money and then demand that everyone in the country give some of that money back to him.”
– David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, pp. 49, 50
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/193…
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)
Debt, Deficits and MMT
http://hir.harvard.edu/debt-deficits-…
MMT http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartalism
Understanding MMT http://pragcap.com/understand-the-mod……
MMT Primer http://neweconomicperspectives.org/p/…