Organisations

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Q1: Does this financial system work?

A1: it works for the private banks, at least for a while, but it does not work for the rest of the world.

Q2: How just is this financial system?

A2: no not at all, just read this:

“During the COVID pandemic the interestrate on TLTRO III was lowered to -1% , which means that the ECB pays banks 1% of the value of their loan every year. This generous support has continued until the coronavirus hit and then strongly increased (see Figure 1).”

https://www.global-rates.com/en/interest-rates/central-banks/central-banks.aspx
https://www.global-rates.com/en/interest-rates/central-banks/central-banks.aspx

src: http://www.positivemoney.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Green-TLTROs.pdf

Which means: if you are a bank, you even get paid by the central bank, for taking a loan.

“PLEASE! TAKE AS MUCH MONEY AS YOU WANT! WE WILL EVEN PAY YOU FOR IT!”

If someone with ideas, walks into a bank to request a loan, they will laugh at you.

The “Big” (downward) “Hit” came after 2008.

So are those low interest rates just “fresh blood” for a zombie (the current financial system) to survive a bit longer?

Has the financial system actually collapsed in 2008 and not recovered since?

Why don’t do banks their job?

The job of a bank is to: actively (!) look and engage and foster and support entrepreneurs to finance new ideas, products, jobs…

not: take the freshly printed money and put it into the stock market casino.

Then there would be no “inflation” problem.

Btw: the “independent” central banks failed at their core job: to not do, what “experts” feared the state would do with the privilege of money printing:

print as much money as you like and cause massive dysfunctional financial system and inflation

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Tax (in)Justice: Corporate Tax Haven cost the world $483 billion in tax a year – 2021 Top10 Top15 Toplist of Tax Haven

Did you know that Luxembourg (25% corporate tax rate) has the HIGHEST GDP IN THE WORLD?

  • not buying the answer “because it is small“
  • not buying the answer “because we sell so much alcohol tobacco and oil”
    • Luxembourg is maybe a marketplace for oil, but has no oil-fields or tobacco fields
    • Luxembourg is rich for the same reason why some people in Switzerland are very rich
      • not because they export SO MUCH GOOD CHEESE (the cheese is good but makes up a very very little portion of income for Switzerland) but thanks to clever advisors and tax avoidance schemes supported by the state
    • “In April 2009, concern about Luxembourg‘s banking secrecy laws, as well as its reputation as a tax haven, led to its being added to a “gray list” of nations with questionable banking arrangements by the G20.” (Wiki)
  • the #3 in GDP Macau (CHINA!) “is an offshore financial centre, a tax haven, and a free port with no foreign exchange control regimes.[41] [42][43] ” (source: Wiki)

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2021-04-05/yellen-calls-for-global-minimum-corporate-tax-rate-video

Financial Service Industry aka Banking aka moving around money that avoids taxes

“It is impossible to estimate how much private banking wealth has evaded taxation, but the chart above points to a correlation between states with some form of banking secrecy

  • Switzerland
  • Singapore
  • Channel Islands
  • Caribbean
  • Luxembourg

…and a high global market share in offshore private banking.

The Swiss Bankers Association estimates that 54,000 people were employed in the wealth management business in Switzerland in 2012 (1% of total jobs in Switzerland).

The productivity of the sector is also unsurprisingly high, private banking alone accounts for 2.8% of the annual Swiss GDP (CHF16 billion of value added to the economy).”

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/by-the-numbers_is-switzerland-really-the-country-of-bankers-/40473658

So yes financial crime pays too well (still in 2021), Yellen do something! (so this blog can stop Yelling)

GDP by Country

snapshot at 2021-04-05 from source worldometers.info

Latest official GDP figures published by the World Bank. Population figures based on United Nations data.
World’s GDP is $80,934,771,028,340 (nominal, 2017).

See also: GDP per Capita

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“Greenpeace activists have landed on the roof of a European Central Bank building to protest the financial institution’s loans policy, which they say favors heavily polluting industries”

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/greenpeace-protests-ecbs-loans-carbon-heavy-industries-76358324

ECB injects over €7 billion into fossil fuels since start of COVID-19 crisis

Key findings

  • Between mid-March and mid-May 2020, as part of its response to the coronavirus pandemic, the European Central Bank (ECB) purchased corporate bonds to the tune of almost €30 billion.
  • €2.4 billion went into bonds of integrated, upstream and downstream oil and gas companies. The estimated carbon footprint of bond purchases of Shell – one of the most polluting companies on earth – Total, Eni, Repsol and OMV is almost 8 million tons of CO2.
  • A total of €4.4 billion went to utilities, with the bond purchases of prominent polluters Engie and EON alone contributing an estimated 3.2 million tons of CO2.
  • A further €5.6 billion went into industries such as aerospace, automobiles, cement, and other environmentally damaging companies, such as Airbus, Daimler or Peugeot.

Read the full analysis by Greenpeace Central and Eastern Europe.

https://www.greenpeace.org/eu-unit/issues/climate-energy/3942/ecb-bankrolling-climate-crisis/

Comment: yes a “better” world is possible and needed for mankind to survive long term

actually it is “easy” to create “a better world”

all that would be needed is

banks giving easy access loans to “good projects”

not “bad projects”

many banks (including the GLS Bank) are not doing a very good job at this

PS: just hope Greenpeace did not use fossil fuel in the process of landing on that building? (those gliders were all battery powered! ok good to know!)

Links:

“stop lending against brown bonds”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-09/ecb-urged-to-rethink-collateral-rules-to-lower-carbon-footprint

https://apnews.com/article/europe-climate-climate-change-environment-germany-50b570632c8c5172ea03fc3848501e9f

China Carbon Neutral by 2060?

While it is certainly good great news to hear some numbers, but even more important:

  • how will this big aim be divided into sub-targets?
    • for example: can China increase it’s renewable energy usage to 50% by 2040?
  • Coal-fired electricity generation in China, the world’s largest coal consumer, is expected to remain flat through 2040, according to EIA’s International Energy Outlook 2017 (IEO2017).
  • Other fuels, such as renewables, natural gas, and nuclear power, are expected to make up increasing shares of China’s electricity generation.
  • (https://gastopowerjournal.com/markets/item/7772-china-s-power-mix-shifts-towards-renewables-gas-and-nuclear)

2060 is the year oil and gas fossil fuel reserves of the planet will likely have come to an end anyway, with still a lot of coal in the ground.

Will China stop burning coal in 2060?