Bloody clowns – another one for Labour's Business Forum. Psssst! Hawn, Marlene! Manny!
Owen Bonnici MP: he'd best stay off the money.
Hot on the trail of Mlatasatr and fewer trips + more passengers = bad news, we have Labour MP Own Bonnici in The Times today, expounding in fifth-form-essay fashion on how money “cannot be created out of nothingness”.
The Times, today
A case of Malta going slow
Owen Bonnici
Money, like energy or matter, cannot be created nor destroyed. Money can change its form, can be relocated from one place to another but it cannot be created out of nothingness.
Malta’s success lies in attracting as much money as possible and promoting the best climate possible in order to increase its wealth as a nation. The good news for tiny Malta is that globalisation of world markets has led to the realisation, famously expounded by media guru Rupert Murdoch, that today’s world “is not anymore a game of big beating small, but fast beating slow”.
Within minutes, readers were tearing their hair out on the comments-board.
E Muscat
Money is NOT like matter or energy: it can be increased by printing of paper money supply as the western nation central banks are doing, or destroyed by devaluation or inflation. Even if it was in gold form it will be subject to the vagaries of the price of gold!
You could have said that Malta’s best course is finding niche markets that use our strengths and abilities and stopped there!
Politicians do not understand science or engineering and usually are proud of the fact and as soon as they open their mouth about it, it shows immediately.
Kevin Smith
With all due respect Mr Bonnici, a basic understanding of ‘fractional reserve banking’ will show you that money IS created from nothing and equally destroyed when a debt is paid off.
Then Owen Bonnici, who felt it necessary to put ‘M.P.’ after his name lest we confuse him with somebody else who didn’t write this piece of crap, put in with an explanation.
Owen Bonnici M.P.
@ Mr Smith and Mr Muscat. Allow me to offer an explanation to your “not exactly generous” comments relative to the opening statement in the article “A case of Malta going slow”. Firstly one has to read “money” in that article, which is written in a layman’s language and for public consumption, as holding the same meaning as the word “wealth”. Some economists explain the opening phrase as follows:
“If we go by fundamentals of addition and subtraction, 2a can be added to 3a
making sum to 5a. Similarly when 2a is subtracted from 5a we get 3a. Let “a” be wealth
and “b” be non-wealth. Can we add 2a and 3b? No. In algebra only like terms can be
added. Similarly can we subtract 2b from 5a? No. We can subtract only like terms. Let us
consider units. When we add 10cms to 15cms we get 25cms. Can we add 10cms and
20gms? No. Therefore only wealth can be added to wealth and only wealth can be
subtracted from wealth. We cannot add or subtract non-wealth to wealth. This means
that wealth cannot be created or destroyed but can be changed from one form to the other.”
Maybe somebody should explain to him that when you copy and paste stuff off the internet, you’ve got to go through it very carefully, knocking out the spaces between the lines one by one, otherwise – when somebody else copies and pastes your bit of plagiarism as I just did – the naughty computer shows up the formatting that the original webmaster used when uploading the work you copied, and the lines come out all…..funny.
Owen Bonnici M.P.’s interlocutors were not impressed.
Kevin Smith
As garbled an explanation as only a lawyer and an MP can manage. Oranges and lemons, oranges and lemons.
E.Muscat
@Owen Bonnici:if you meant ‘wealth’ instead of ‘money’ you should have said so to start with.
If you meant this article for the ‘populace’ you chose the wrong newspaper.
Your algebra and what ‘some economists’ (who are not scientists or mathematicians!) said is very elementary.
What you say about ‘wealth’ is also very much still subject to perception and therefore not
only mathematical. Politicians should not expect ‘generous’ comments.
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If money can’t be created out of thin air, what do you call trading in carbon footprint points, considering that theories underpinning global warming have fallen into discredit?
Are you serious?
…. and there was I about to hand him a shovel ….
They have reached the professional level of digging deep holes.
Let’s start with the basics, Owen. Since you’re using algebraic expressions, what are the units for wealth and, as you put it, non-wealth?
The plagiarised source, courtesy of B.V. Gopinath of India :
First page, 3rd paragraph.
http://129.3.20.41/eps/get/papers/0503/0503009.pdf
Owen iehor ghall ripijterrrrrrrrrr class.
Another one who cannot copy properly. He used the word “money” instead of “wealth” only to have to make a correction later.
Where’d he get the idea that wealth and money are the same thing? And if money can neither be created nor destroyed, he’d surely have no objection if all his loot went up in flames.
As for wealth, I guess Neanderthals were gazillionnaires, what with sharing the planet’s wealth between the few thousand that were around then, as opposed to today’s few billion.
Kevin Smith, you are very correct. Banks have the possibility to create credits which are not backed up by hard cash but rather made possible by their dynamic operation of their liquidity ratio. Money, even if abundant, in itself is not as important as the dynamics in timing securities and maturities. True, banks can lend money which is not ‘there’, and the risks involved can be very scientifically calculated.
So this one is supposed to be part of Labour’s acceptable face?
It is not a face that Labour needeth, but a brain.
This guy was actually elected? Further proof of my theory on the IQ of Labour supporters. ‘Brains’ can be created out of nothingness.
Owen what? I had never heard about this guy. Now you say he is an MP. The next thing I’ll hear is that he is shadow minister for economic affairs.
Oh good gracious me! As the St Joseph School sisters used to say – what does he mean that “money has to be read as wealth” as we say around here “che c***** c’entra?”
Also, he just put his foot in it a little deeper with the explanation, as both money and wealth can be created. Mur ghidilhom all the wealth creation experts and economists that Dr. Owen Bonnici MP from Malta thinks they’re just wasting their time.
Little island thinking: wealth is finite and scarce, therefore if you have any, it’s because you’ve taken my share.
That’s some comment gold!
There was another gem in that article:
In Parliament I had invited the government to set up an inter-party Parliamentary Committee to devise a roadmap that would lead to the drawing up of a piece of legislation setting up the structures leading, hopefully, to the birth of this niche.
Someone call a midwife.
Actually money is a medium of exchange that should represent accumulated wealth. Wealth is a subjective term, but generally is that which satisfies human demand. Certain types of ‘wealth’ cannot be bought by money, like e.g. peace of mind; although this may be deemed to result from material wealth. However not everybody uses ALL his wealth ALL the time and this is where creating wealth (or its medium of exchange) may be promoted by banks through credit creation. Of course loans have to be repaid but through loans people can enjoy commodities before they can otherwise afford them because other people’s accumulated wealth can be alternatively used to finance the loans.
@Fausto The proverbial elephant which gives birth to – yep you said it – a mouse. Typically Labour.
He’s wrong. Money CAN be created out of thin air. It’s done all the time by Central Bankers. Where do you think inflation comes from? Lack of supply?
You never fail to disappoint. I was wondering how long it would take you to pop in and say that.
He is wrong. Money can also be destroyed – like when Alfred Sant suggested we should devalue our currency by 10%.
Imma kif meta jifthu halqhom hlief cucati ma johorgux? Biex jghaxxaqha meta pprova jiccara dak li kien kiteb hu stess, aktar hawwad l-imhuh.
Bhal ma jghidu l-Inglizi – ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.’
Politikant iehor, hafna pompozita u sugu xejn. Basta fetah halqu. Povru partit PL. Dan il partit donnu ghandu sahta fuqu. Ma jistax jaghmel wahda tajba.
He’s a bloody idiot for God’s sake! Why give him all this attention?
[Daphne – Oh, hadn’t you noticed? He’s a member of parliament and one of Labour’s great white hopes.]
Miskin Owen Bonnici M.P.- qed jipprova kemm jiflah biex meta u jekk jitilghu fil-gvern isir Ministru tal-Finanzi – ghax issa Leo Brincat ftit xieh.
What a twat….
“Here money money, come to daddy…..”
Used car salesman anybody? (The photo and stance)
The most serious problem with the Labour Party is that its politicians think they are superior to the rest, and their supporters too feel they have to look up to them. This is the source of terminology such as “is-salvatur”, “kemm hu bravu”, “ghallimna” and all that over-reliance on doctorates in this and that.
This way of going about thinks doesn’t work with those who traditionally vote PN.
Here’s where he got it from:
http://129.3.20.41/eps/get/papers/0503/0503009.pdf
He thinks we are all idiots.
Are these the people expecting to run our country in 2013?
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