The tweet basically said 'Money is a Lie' and had a video of Ben Bernanke (Economist and former Chair of the Federal Reserve) saying, effectively, that money (for government spending) is created on a balance sheet (rather than through taxes).
After tweeting a reply, saying basically that 'Money is a paradox, not a lie' albeit that 'Banking is the Lie', I went for a long walk and ruminated on what that would look like as an aphorism and thinking of the form of words that could sum up most precisely the 'truth' about money and banking as I see it.
Here's what I've come up with
'Money is a paradox given a veneer of coherence by the lie of banking.'
The double-bind is that banking is all about trust. Our account balances are 'the truth'. 'Numbers don't lie'. Etc.
We all know that the most effective way to lie, is to wrap up your lies, in truth. And even better, to believe in those truths so fully, that the lie itself is made effectively, invisible: so impossible to assimilate into our consciousness that even when exposed directly to us it has no effect because we simple are unable to see it.
Hence, Ben Bernanke can say 'we don't need taxes for government spending' or Mervyn King can say in one famous interview 'Money is just bits of paper, really', and we just carry on, regardless.
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MMT (Modern Monetary Theory) is having a real moment in the sun. The increases in government spending in these times of crises gives succour to their arguments about the state and the household being (economically speaking) very different beasts.
British folks of my age might remember those last days of Jim Callaghan and the ending of the Keynesian consensus, brought low by Maggie and her shopping bags?
It seems to me that - let me put this precisely - at the current moment of humanity's assimilation of the paradox of money into its social formations - we have 'fuck all' chance of avoiding the return of the bite of austerity once the current crisis has run its course. The 2008 'financial crisis' surely proved that, beyond all reasonable doubt. The entire edifice of the financial system was laid low before our eyes - exposed beyond reason as a lie - and yet our response was ten years of 'austerity' 'to pay back what was owed'. Or, 'not to borrow from future generations'.
A more reasonable conclusion to draw from 2008 would be to say (as Nicholas Taleb did) that over time no bank has ever made profit lending money. (If that sound's like rubbish, I'd urge you to think more deeply about it.)
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If you missed it - near the end of last week's Ramble on Joshua Ramey's Politics of Divination - I talk about what I consider to be the heart of the money paradox.
[ Look for this line 'I've become very interested in the idea of money as both finite and infinite.]
As we drill down into our ideas about money we inevitably arrive at these metaphysical and theological questions asking us about our relations to God (or whatever way you want to say it). What is it to be a being bound within the finite but able to at least consider (if unable to fully comprehend) the infinite? This is the question contained (repressed) within money. And like everything that's repressed it is always seeking to resurface.
My argument (after Simmel) is that m̶o̶n̶e̶y̶'̶s̶ (let's be precise) currency's unit of account function is fundamentally created by an unconscious equivalence of absolutes. But inherent within this is the paradox of the relation between the finite and the infinite. This is because the equivalence can only be achieved through a 'third perspective' - in other words, it takes a 'finite being' to equate absolutes (infinities).
My own definition of money - as an aspect of being - skirts around these issues. Being is a word that transcends the hard conceptual boarder between the finite and the infinite. It has an implied timelessness and non-locality that encompasses both that which exists between birth and death, and that which exists outside them.
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As I kid I used to lie in bed and really try to imagine what it was to be infinite - or at least, to properly conceive of infinity. I have a very clear memory of doing this. I would have been about ten. I can remember my bed clothes. I can remember my brother telling me it couldn't be done but believing that maybe, if I tried really hard, I could. I'd go to sleep imagining I'm on some never-ending journey into space.
I only gave up doing this when I started wanking.