Description
Book SynopsisThis book is the first of its kind in several overlapping and rapidly developing fields that now dominate news headlines – among them the fields of crypto-currency, digital payments platforms, ‘fintech,’ and central bank digital currencies (‘CBDCs’). With crypto and fintech now threatening to transform finance in destabilizing and anti-democratic ways, and with China and other nations now digitizing their national currencies in the form of CBDCs that make the US dollar and national payments infrastructure look ever more quaint and outmoded, this book shows both why the US and other democratic commercial societies must, and how they can, democratically digitize their currencies, their national payments systems, and the authorities that respectively issue and administer them – in the US, the Federal Reserve System (‘the Fed’).
Table of ContentsChapter 1. Introduction: Money, Finance, & Production in Contemporary Commercial Republics A. Money & Production, Public & Private: The Two-by-Two Matrix of Commercial Republican Economies B. Ills of Financial Hybridity—& Their Possible Money-Tech Cure C. Digitized Citizen Ledger Finance as Our Newly Available Cure Chapter 2: Money, Capital, & Investment: Fixing Some Critical Terms & Relations A. Capital: A Crucial Yet Oft-Muddled Term 1.Production: What Capital is (Ultimately) For 2.Generic Capital 3.Generic Capital in Production—Investment Capital B. Investment: Antonym & Antidote to Speculation 1.Investment & Finance 2.Stratification & N-ary (a.k.a.”Meta-”) Markets 3.Intermediation, Derivation, “Financialization” C. Money: From Measure to Medium—and Back 1.Paying—Including Investing 2.Accounting 3.Crediting / Debiting Chapter 3: Franchise Finance: A Brief Exposition & Exposé A. Hybridity In the Large: Exposition B. Hybridity in Detail: Exposé 1.Credit-Money’s Endogeneity: Private Lending of Public Capital 2.Endogeneity’s Blessing—and Curse: Production & Wealth, Speculation & Recursive Collective Action Problems Chapter 4. Franchise Finance: Why & How We Got Here A. Why Credit and Currency 1.Credit: Production & Payment in Time 2.Currency: From Ledgers to Tokens—and Back B. Why Uniformity 1.Spatial Uniformity: Payments & “Universal Equivalents” 2.Temporal Uniformity: “Sound Money” & “Elastic Currency” Chapter 5. Franchise Finance: Why We Retain It— & Why We Need Not 52 A. Why We Retain It: New Facts, Old Ideas B. Why We Need Not: New Facts, New Prospects C. Ending Hybridity—Citizen Ledger Finance in Broad Outline Chapter 6. Digitized Citizen Ledger Finance: What We Now Can & Must Do A. Liability-Side Reform: Reserve Accounts, Citizen Wallets, & Resident Wallets 1.What the U.S. & Others Do Now: Reserve Accounts 2.What We Must Add: Digital Citizen Wallets, Resident Wallets, & Their Common Digital Ledger B. Asset Side Reform: Digitized CB, NIC, PSF, & Other Public Issuances 1.What We Do Now: Finance Ministry Debt, Agency Debt, & (Sometimes) Other 2.What We Must Add: Digitized CB-Discounted Paper, NIC Issuances, PSF Holdings, & Other C. Systemic Ramifications: Private Sector Transformation, Public Sector Consolidation 1.Private Money Capital: From Credit-Generation & -Multiplication to Honest Intermediation 2.Public Investment Capital: From Central Bank & Finance Ministry, Fiscal & Monetary, and “T-Bill,” “Fed Note” & “Mint Coin” Separation to Digital Consolidation Chapter 7. Digitized Citizen Ledger Finance: Logistics & Technics A. From Abstract Accounting to Concrete Logistics: Making It Happen Now B. From Macro Logistics to Micro Technics: Why to Digitize Now 1.The Bright Side of the Ledger 2.The Dark Side of the Ledger
Chapter 8. From Digitized Citizen Ledger Finance to Citizen Fintech: Democratic Digitization & Its Possible Forms A. Moneys and Payment Systems B. From Payments to Moneys: Technical Options for the Democratic Digital Currency Chapter 9. Digitized Citizen Ledger Finance: Cavils & Competitors
