Britain's move to 'capitalism with Chinese characteristics'

In the West, commercial banks have traditionally created money. But the MMR might mark the beginning of a revolution.

We've written here several times over the last few years about the way in which money is created in the West. So regular readers will understand that the supply of money is not created in the main by central banks, but by commercial banks - they create it out of thin air every time they make a loan.

This isn't the kind of thing that the authorities much like to talk about it is hard to maintain the idea that central banks are in absolute control of monetary policy when everyone knows that commercial banks print 97% of the new money every year as and when they feel like it.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.