Letters

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Dear Peace News readers,

I am hoping that one of you will be able to help me.

Way back in the 1990s, I think at the time of the Gulf War, I got some paper copies of a Picasso dove image printed for peace banners to use on demos.

I felt that too many of the messages on other banners did not mention ‘Peace’, and that people should have the choice to show that this was what they were demonstrating for.

I had many hundreds printed onto Correx which we made into double-sided banners and handed out on the anti-Iraq war march, and they were much appreciated.

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I still get them made for me, and I sell them from home and to Housmans and they have been on many marches and vigils, and are in windows around the world.

Women in Black, London, have them around Edith Cavell’s statue each week at their vigil down in St Martin’s Place [see Caroline’s placard at the 14 December 2018 protest (left) - ed].

The reason I used this image is that I remember being told that Picasso gave this image to the peace movement. But… my problem is now that I cannot remember who told me this and what the source is of this information.

I am hoping that someone is able to verify with a reference of some sort that Picasso did indeed give the image to ‘the peace movement’ and that no one should worry about copyright and royalties and so on.

If you can help, please call PN on 020 7278 3344 or email your info to

admin@peacenews.info

Many thanks,

Caroline Simpson, London

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Congratulations on the excellent article on the alleged ‘fiscal black hole’ (‘Austerity 2.0 is a choice not a necessity’, PN 2663).

It may also be worth noting that the notion of a fiscal black hole is one of a cluster of myths that grow out of a misunderstanding of the way money works in a financially sovereign state.

A related myth is that taxation and borrowing ‘pay for’ government spending, so that the government is limited in what it can spend by the the amount financial institutions are willing to lend it and the amount of tax the electorate is prepared to bear.

The basis of these misconceptions is the belief that, when it comes to finances, a government is subject to the same constraints as is a household.

This is simply not true for a sovereign government – that is, one that creates its own currency and is not committed to maintaining fixed foreign exchange rates. (It does hold for local authorities, for federated states – such as the individual states in the US – and for members of the Eurozone, since none of these creates the currency in which its citizens are taxed.)

An economic analysis that explores these issues as well as their implications for a greatly expanded ‘policy space’ is ‘Modern Money Theory’.

For further reading on the topic, I would recommend Stephanie Kelton’s The Deficit Myth or L Randal Wray’s Modern Money Theory: A Primer on Macroeconomics for Sovereign Monetary Systems.

The latter is a perhaps a bit technical for many readers and, for a layperson’s introduction, I would like to recommend my book, The Magic Money Tree: How Money Really Works.