Spell out that Scotland needs to become a currency-issuing state

His advocacy for money creation in order to finance the urgent action required to achieve net zero can only mean that Scotland must become its own currency issuer, with our own currency and central bank. It is puzzling though that he does not just come out and say it.

He is wrong to argue, however, that if Scotland acts unilaterally, without being in step with other governments, it will devalue our currency. Of course it is better to be working in a global coalition in co-operation with other governments but that does not mean we have to wait for someone else to take the lead.

Using our currency for productive purposes, which means to produce all the things we need to live well and in harmony with nature, will support the value of our currency, not diminish it.

Dealing with climate change will mean reallocation of our resources – our labour, skills, technologies and physical resources – and a reallocation of money to finance the things we need to do. This does not mean a devaluation of the currency will result, but it does mean that we will have to make choices of what activities we reallocate resources away from.

GMK also makes the mistake of assuming that quantitative easing (QE) is the only way to re-allocate money. Relying on QE means that we expect banks to make the decisions about re-allocating credit. QE has been used extensively since 2008 but banks have yet to demonstrate that they can be relied upon to provide credit in support of productive activity. They have shown a clear preference for asset speculation and for fuelling the housing market bubble. Government intervention and regulation of banks is necessary so that the government is able to direct where credit is provided. The Scottish Banking & Finance Group article in The National on August 9 (“How an independent Scotland can make its bankers more responsible”) addresses this issue.

GMK’s article is a welcome contribution to the debate we must have about Scotland’s future but he still needs to recognise that looser monetary policy in the form of QE, which drives interest rates down to near zero, is neither an effective nor sufficient means for reallocating finance in our economy.

Jim Osborne
On behalf of the Scottish Banking & Finance Group

GORDON MacIntyre-Kemp says the climate emergency is real and not an exercise. I have known this for 40 years, and have worried myself sick for that amount of time, along with my fellow environmental campaigners in the hundred or so organisations I support.

Neil MacKay wrote in The Herald on August 10 “we can look forward to explaining that [we have been betrayed by politicians who promised that they can save the planet] to our grandchildren”. Nobody wants to understand that there will be NO GRANDCHILDREN. There can be no children on a DEAD PLANET.

Ian Macwhirter writes in The Herald of August 11 “we can’t save the world by going green”. In that case, we can’t save the world at all. What is so difficult about understanding that we would have plenty of money to do what is required to stop the damage if we stopped spending trillions of pounds or dollars on useless NUCLEAR WEAPONS?

Our children carry banners saying “leave the carbon in the ground” and still Shell, BP and Exxon etc etc want to exploit more oil fields. Still we listen to the nonsense that electric cars will save us, despite the fact that extracting the lithium for batteries causes damage to the environment AND exploits the people who get it out of the ground. Still we are sleepwalking into oblivion.

Margaret Forbes
Kilmacolm

I WOULD like to thank Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp for his excellent article on climate change and on what we can do about it.

The solution, as he suggests, and as I have always suspected, relies on international cooperation. Get that word: “CO-OPER-AT-ION”.

We could all print money without running up any debts, if we all did it at the same time to an agreed and strictly limited extent.

Recognising that that is the case, however, is impossible for those like deluded Brexiteers who harbour the impossible ambition of being free from all restrictions – because ... well ... because we are too important, you know, to have to stick to any pesky rules, even the pesky ones we have agreed to ourselves about pesky things like the pesky Northern Irish border (both of them).

So if WE print money, poor people will have to pay it all back again, while rich people get even RICHER. It’s called the FREE market.

Hugh Noble
Appin

FOLLOWING on from Alex Mathieson’s letter on noting Scottish Government attainments (Letters, Aug 12), might it be relevant to highlight this as a feature article? This would show facts of living in Scotland compared to rUK. In the list would be items like the cost of prescriptions, student fees, UK poverty drivers mitigated by Scottish Government intervention, electricity charges in Scotland compared to Yorkshire or London and the cost of Scotland-generated electricity compared to south-Britain-generated being transmitted to the grid.

There could be about 10 items or more. It may also be useful to have a possible future comparative on figures such as a likely Scottish Government pension rate. All this could demonstrate to the unconvinced that we can set a better governance for ourselves once we have the parasitic Number 10 and its apparatus of our backs.

M Ross
Aviemore