Tom Hickmore

That's how the bond system started in C12 Venice. The wealthy familes engineered a war with Byzantium, which obliged the state to borrow money from them and pay interest in perpetuity - an incredible scam. An early secondary market developed in C13 after the original prestiti loans were consolidated into a single fund called the Monte Vecchio, centred around the Rialto market where the trading took place. Traders found they could influence state bond yields by driving them up in the secondary market. This was the platform on which the early merchant-banking families rose to prominence as organised usurers. By C17 the system had migrated North to be fully institutionalised by the Dutch and the British. Basically, it was the restoration of the aristocratic debt-servicing system that had been institutionalised around 1500 BC and led to the collapse of Antiquity in C5 AD. Between that point and C12 it was temporarily repressed by Christian anti-usury laws, currency diversity/instability and the normalisation of violent retribution during the 'Dark Age'. Once again, wars are now being engineered to rescue and renew a private debt-servicing system on the verge of collapse. History rhyming.

The question here is - does Rachel actually know she's talking complete nonsense or does she believe it? Money that doesn't exist?? Issuing public or private credit creates money, a fact confimed by that wacky fringe anarcho-commie organisation called the Bank of England.

The Marxists are right about this. The tendency of the rate of profit to fall. The 'investors' - the creditor class - can no longer make enough money on normal stuff like agriculture and manufacturing. They have to cancel democratic politics, disempower the state and privatise everything that was once public. One sweeping, final asset-strip for the rentiers. They also task their tech nerds with the creation of a decadent fantasy world we can rent from them every day. To sustain 'investor confidence', nothing must be public, nothing free, nothing sacred and nothing real. But it rests on the big lie that we need their money. In fact we have our own money, created by the state every day. They're desperate to restrict that, so the IMF tells each nation to keep its spending/investment down to 3% of GDP. Enough for the minimal welfare and everyday maintenance required to quell civil unrest. Defy the creditor class and they'll sell off your bonds and currency on global markets and tank your economy. The other big lie - they can do that only if we let them. This is why the creditor class is terrified of the economic truths uncovered by heterodox economics positions such as post-Keynesianism and #MMT. Understanding this simple fact - we do not need them or their money - is revolutionary.

Apologies, been a bit sweary again over the past few days. But, honestly, Argentina collapsing, people living in tents in the US, a quarter of the UK population outside London living in poverty, yet so many still swear by neoliberal-monetarist claptrap. I just despair.

Well, the publisher isn't pushing our last book so hard now it's three years old. Do some publicity yourself, they said. OK, I lack experience but I'll have a go. "Buy our book and know more stuff you tightarses!" How am I doing so far?

Never believe anything you hear from the Institute of Economic Affairs. Taxes do not pay for the NHS, the social insurance reimbursement system still requires state funding and, because of admin costs, the French system costs 20% more per capita than the NHS. All wrong.

This 'taxes fund public spending' myth is tiresome. We've known it's not true for some time now. Don't take it from me, take it from two Fed chairmen. “While taxes might be important for other purposes (that we’ll examine later), government doesn’t need “revenue” in order to spend.” Beardsley Ruml, 1946 “It’s not tax money. The banks have accounts with the Fed, much the same way that you have an account in a commercial bank. So, to lend to a bank, we simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account that they have with the Fed. It’s much more akin to printing money than it is to borrowing.” Ben Bernanke, 2009