{"id":103904,"date":"2025-08-30T23:33:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-30T23:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/103904\/"},"modified":"2025-08-30T23:33:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T23:33:10","slug":"wales-could-be-a-prosperous-country-if-it-had-its-own-currency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/103904\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Wales could be a prosperous country if it had its own currency’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Warren Mosler at the Tramshed in Cardiff<\/p>\n

Martin Shipton<\/p>\n

Wales could become a more prosperous nation by ditching the pound and creating its own currency, according to a monetary guru whose anti-establishment ideas are challenging economic orthodoxy.<\/p>\n

Warren Mosler had a highly successful career in the US financial sector, founding his own hedge fund and owning his own bank, before embarking on a mission to convince the world that mainstream economics is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the way money is created \u2013 and that once that\u2019s understood, public spending can be used to create full employment.<\/p>\n

On Friday August 29 he gave a lecture at Tramshed Tech in Cardiff that was attended by former Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood and Mark Hooper, Plaid\u2019s lead Senedd candidate in the new super-constituency of Pen-y-Bont Bro Morgannwg, which covers Bridgend and the Vale of Glamorgan.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The gold standard<\/p>\n

Mr Mosler\u2019s starting point is that since the gold standard was abolished during the Great Depression of the 1930s \u2013 before which the value of a country\u2019s currency was linked to the amount of gold it possessed \u2013 money has essentially been created by governments. Contrary to popular belief, banks do not lend to borrowers the money deposited with them by their customers. Instead, the money they lend is created by banks simply by creating credit in a borrower\u2019s bank account.<\/p>\n

The same can be done to ensure the economy is working for people, rather than people working for the economy. Both at the time of the banking sector crash in 2008 and the Covid-19 crisis in 2020, banks injected billions of pounds into the economy to ensure its survival. There is no reason why that couldn\u2019t be done in the interests of social improvement.<\/p>\n

When that is understood, argues Mr Mosler, there is no reason for a country to punish itself by cutting public spending to \u201cbalance the books\u201d. A country\u2019s independence is determined by its ability to act freely economically. Being linked to the British pound would not provide such freedom because crucial decisions would be taken by the central bank \u2013 the Bank of England \u2013 over which Wales has no control.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Independent Wales<\/p>\n

Asked by Nation.Cymru what advice he would give to those arguing for an independent Wales in terms of the currency issue, Mr Mosler said: \u201cThe first thing that comes to mind is that 30 years ago, this was the same question in Quebec, Canada. The people there knew me, and I wrote a paper on how they could have their own currency and how it would work. They would go to an immediate prosperity and it would be a strong currency. My ideas got published in the French separatist newspaper, two pages in the centre section. But they lost the referendum in 1995 [by 50.58% to 49.42%]. It was very close. So I\u2019m not new to this.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wrote a paper for Scotland on how to start an independent currency, and from a purely economic prosperity point of view, you would want to have your own currency. Not that there aren\u2019t things you can do as halfway measures. But you\u2019re far better off starting your own currency, because the UK doesn\u2019t operate their currency properly. They don\u2019t operate it for a public purpose, the way it could be operated.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they were doing it properly, we wouldn\u2019t be having this discussion. You would be more than happy to be a member of the UK and you\u2019d be at full employment, with prosperity. Life would be nice. The streets would be clean, the schools would be excellent, education would be good, and, you know, the air would be clean and the public health service would be fully funded. You\u2019d be at full employment all the time. That\u2019s the natural state of an economy with a government that knows how to operate their currency.\u201d<\/p>\n

Deficit<\/p>\n

Asked how he responded to the often mooted argument that Wales couldn\u2019t afford to operate independently of England and would instantly have a huge deficit, Mr Mosler said: \u201dWell, the first thing you say is why does it matter? The US has run a huge trade deficit. It\u2019s the strongest growth country in the world, with the highest standard of living.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce you have control of your economy, whatever deficit you\u2019ve assigned to Wales, it\u2019s gone. We\u2019re going to wipe that out and you\u2019ll never have that again.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll take care of our own finances. OK, now you can tax and spend. You\u2019ll have your own interest rate in your own punt or whatever you want to call it, and you can have a proper zero rate policy.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can have a properly funded public sector. You\u2019ll be running some kind of a residual deficit. It might be 2% of GDP, it might be 10%. You don\u2019t even have to publish a number. It doesn\u2019t matter. You\u2019ll have a far higher level of price stability than the United Kingdom. Nobody can ever have perfect price stability.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got a crop failure. Food prices are going to go up. Somebody strikes oil. The oil price is going to go down, up and down. You\u2019re going to have relative value changes all the time, but you\u2019re going to have an inherent level of price stability and the ability to cope with it far better than the UK.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, Mr Mosler is scathing about the way Chancellor Rachel Reeves is running the economy. He said: \u201cYou would have full employment if the government were doing its job properly. Yes. Whereas, you know, Rachel Reeves is saying, well, we\u2019ve got to screw people because we\u2019ve got to get more money. So they\u2019re thinking up new ways of taxing people in order to get more revenue. It\u2019s totally unnecessary.\u201d<\/p>\n

Support our Nation today<\/p>\n

For the price of a cup of coffee a month you can help us create an
\n independent, not-for-profit, national news service for the people of Wales, by
\n the people of Wales.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Warren Mosler at the Tramshed in Cardiff Martin Shipton Wales could become a more prosperous nation by ditching…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":103905,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[84,1294,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-103904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}