I must be particularly thick today, Fickle Pickle, for which I apologize.

Re: Cotter dam.

You are selling "right to a kilolitre of water for the next 40 years".

"These water rights can be traded independently and can be used as currency."

For which there would need to be an open market, both spot and future?

I also assume you would simply trade in the certificates against your standard water bill in order for them to realize value?

This might be a little hazardous. Since it is unlikely that the spot market for water will fluctuate in the same way as e.g. electricity in Victoria (as there are alternative supplies not under your regime), the price of the certificates would almost invariably trade permanently at a tiny discount to the open market rate.

"This investment would be most attractive to superannuation and pension funds who have a need to preserve their assets and to have an asset whose value keeps up with inflation"

Only if the price of water is lifted in line with inflation, surely?

And with the additional supply available, I suspect there may be some political difficulty in achieving this.

Also, the funds would have to continually trade their certificates, in order to avoid the situation where they ended up with more water rights than the people of Canberra could absorb (sorry!).

I have not touched on some other tricky areas, such as the price behaviour of the rights in drought conditions, the limitation of those rights to Canberrans (or do you have cross-border trading with Victoria in mind also?) and so on.

But what puzzles me most is that there is so little difference between this scheme, as I read it, and the total privatization of Canberra's water supply. Instead of "water rights", read "shares".

Write prospectus, issue shares, build dam.

This would overcome many, if not all, of the likely supply/demand fluctuations at the point of consumption, while maintaining a stable, long-term, appreciating asset that is traded on the stock exchange.

But I'm reasonably certain that is not what you had in mind.

See the latest debate between Ron Paul and Ben Bernanke about monetary policy. http://www.ronpaul.com/

The debate centres around keeping rates too for too long,yet the Bernanke solution is to keep rates low for even longer.You cannot solve a problem of debt by creating more of it.This is what Kevin Rudd is doing with his stimulus packages.To borrow from China just to create more inflation here,is insanity of the grandest magnitude.

What must happen is the worthless derivatives be isolated from real productive assets.The worthless derivatives must be put into bankruptcy and thus the real productive economy will save your super assets.

All,

I have put up a draft of a submission I wish to make to the Senate Committee looking into Access of small business to Finance.

http://stableproductivemoney.wordpress.com/2010/03/19/submission-to-senate-inquiry-on-small-business-access-to-finance/

Please see if it makes sense and try to pull it to pieces. Hopefully it is reasonably "concrete" in that it makes suggestions on what to do but without going into too many of the details. I am working on some diagrams to go with it so that people can visualise it better but not sure if I will have them done by the 30th.

Pericles the kilolitres as a substitute for money was something I tried to explain but it only makes matters more difficult as shown by your comments. So I have gone away from trying to use substitutes for dollars and gone back to the idea of "tagging" money for special purposes.

The criticism of peer to peer that no one bears the loss is not correct. The lender is the one who bears the loss that is why it is called peer to peer. It does work as evidence by the swiss system that has been going since 1934.

Compliance with the systems I have proposed is achieved by excluding people who break the rules. People can get back into the system if they pay back their loans or make adequate compensation in some way or other.

I am floating this with the banks because this is a potentially huge new market on which the banks can do very well without any risk to them.

Many of the ideas have come from my participation in an online forum with a group in the USA who are attempting to get public banks introduced into their States. The banking system in the USA is in dreadful trouble and I am hoping something along these lines - particularly the state infrastructure proposals may get a trial.

*You cannot solve a problem of debt by creating more of it.*

Arjay, Ron Paul is a republican. He should have done something when
his leader, George W, was borrowing money like crazy and driving
the US economy into a ditch. Sorry, but his party is to blame
for the GFC, nobody else. Shame on him.

It is pure politics to now come forward and complain about debt,
when it was his party which created it.

Obama inherited a country that was heading for a depression. All
he can do is his best, to try and dig them out of the disaster that
Ron Paul's party created.

At such a moment, you need to consider many things, from various
perspectives, which is what Bernanke is doing. Fair enough.

Frankly, right now, another trillion $ hardly matters. All it might
do is help solve the US problem, plus get through to the Chinese,
that rigging their currency, is not going to work, for they will
be the ultimate losers.

But I doubt if you are smart enough to understand all that. You
tend to focus on one little thing, rather then look at the big
picture here. That is why Bernanke is where he is and you are
where you are. Perhaps you will learn one day, we'll see.

For me Yabby is the only one making any sense. Fundamental management perspective realises, if you don’t have the macro parameters identified, how are you going to comprehensively define the problem? Common sense. For if your initiatives are observed at such formulative stage, their extrapolation is a minefield, exactly what parameters, if any, are defined?

Although I admire the initiatives demonstrated within this discourse, it appears to me they are defined reasonably as tinkering with existing infrastructure, which renders them micro consideration, even if they are linked to a ’big’ development initiative.

Arjay, alike Pericles before him, touches on some moot points;

“Not enough money goes into R&D particularly in this country”

Next to nothing comparative of GDP, and not likely to, unless new paradigm and dynamics drives its integration.

“concern of available capital for real productive ventures”

“address the possible short falls in available capital for real productive enterprises?”

Not realistic within present practice, it is required to be generated, therefore new paradigm, dynamics, and ideas must be developed.

“our present financial system is dysfunctional”

“Global mono-cultures are a disaster.”

The former is a product of the latter, we need to find other ways of knowing, that are inclusive, as opposed to our present culture of exclusivity.

A hypothetical example: Until GDP rates between the eastern tigers and the west, balance, the west is reliably predicted to be in decline. We cannot compete in manufacturing owing to the advantage in labour costs in the east [a problem of our own making when we set in stone a cultural refusal to balance distribution of wealth]

If we cannot compete with the east in trade, we cannot compete with them in their own markets, right? Wrong.

Continued

The GDP rate = standard of living rate. The majority [per capita] of people in the east still retain a much lower standard of living comparative to the west. Therefore, if we are able to find commodities we may produce and export for prices people of the east can afford, such initiative will not only assist sustainable GDP growth, it will supercharge that requirement for GDP rate balance. Of course we will need to kiss goodbye our aspiration for profiteering.

e.g. an enterprising Australian is about to commence exporting cane toads to Asia, they utilise for food, skins, and medicines from fluids such as toxins [and it doesn’t have to be a ‘think big’ scheme].