Rediscovering IMF Working Papers

His summary: "Personally, I am a long way from reaching a conclusion in this extraordinary debate. Let it run, and let us all fight until we flush out the arguments."

We're not so sure that it is necessary to straddle the proverbial fence. In early September we wrote about this paper as follows:

"Government" money is a default position of the powers-that-be. If "they" cannot control the money supply directly through facilities like the quasi-public/quasi-private Federal Reserve, they will control it through public facilities and make arguments via their surrogates for this sort of remedy.

We see this trend building once again with "The Chicago Plan Revisited." These two authors, IMF staffers, have rediscovered a plan by Irving Fisher, a monetarist, to strip banks of lending power.

Basically, Fisher's plan has similarities with Stephen Zarlenga's plan that calls for full reserve banking and for the government to spend money into existence via huge public works programs.