I have an article that went up on Al Jazeera yesterday. It’s on the future of the Eurozone and its got some good responses so far. Readers might be interested.
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Fixing the Economists 
Good article – I like the mention of tax-backed bonds, it’s very similar to Rob Parenteau’s ‘Tax Anticipation Notes’ idea:
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2013/12/exit-austerity-without-exiting-euro.html
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/12/rob-parenteau-how-to-exit-austerity-without-exiting-the-euro.html
I think these (excellent) ideas suffer the same problem as recognition of endogenous money, and of MMT in general: An instant effect of eyes-glazing-over and cognitive dissonance, which prevent people even trying to bother to understand (nevermind take seriously) these concepts – which is one way you could interpret that Dail response to your own proposal.
I think ideas like these though, are what will be needed to revitalize ‘the left’ in Europe – so a way must be found to break through those mental barriers.
On the topic of Ireland: What left-leaning political parties do you view as credible here? Out of all of them, I can’t think of any that may respond positively to such ideas, perhaps outside of the Green party (who may possibly be amenable, to following the UK Green Party’s lead in endorsing endogenous money) – and of course, they completely discredited themselves by joining with FF.
Maybe Sinn Fein…
I just spent the last half hour or so, reading up on Sinn Fein and trying to get a better idea of their recent history, and reasons to be critical and/or supportive of them – as I wasn’t able to tell if you were serious, heh 🙂
I guess I have a bit of an unquestioned/kneejerk reaction against SF (coupled with a relative lack of knowledge of Irish politics), but on thinking about it, the worrying thing is I can’t actually tell if they are worse than FF/FG.
I’m perfectly serious. I don’t know why you’d think that I wasn’t.
Okey, apologies if I came across as flippant – I admit I am a bit ignorant of SF’s history, and due to that had unquestioned/kneejerk views/reaction against them.
I’ll check them out more to better inform myself – if they are amenable to some of these alternative economic policies, things would look a fair bit more hopeful than I thought 🙂
“But ultimately, this solution won’t work if countries such as Greece do not reform their broken tax-collection systems.”
This is an important point which is often overlooked. It is also important from a political.strategic perspective as it helps to illustrate that the powers that be do not just not care about unemployment but also do not care about what they claim to care about, healthy public finances. Otherwise Greece would have not been forced to reduce public expenditures but would have been assisted in creating a decent public finance system.