Cheers Mark

Money as a means of exchange and money as a store of value and money as a mechanism for deferred payment are, as economist insist, different. Using identity infrastructure to remove cash has no bearing on the substitution of demand deposits with, say, energy currencies or whatever. A fascinating topic, to me, different.

Regards,
Dave.

They do, but it should be a separate transaction.

Some people say that, Totnes is 5 square miles surrounded by reality.

The US debt situation is going to increase at $1 trillion a year for the foreseeable future, around 2015/16 the US reaches the same level of debt as Greece in 2012. 130% of GDP.

Does anyone on Dave’s blog think this is sustainable to the wider financial system?

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2013 Is Bernanke’s Year: Unlimited QE And Total Control Of The Fed

“Thus, interest rates will remain repressed through 2013, the U.S. dollar should depreciate moderately, and stock markets will continue to receive masses of liquidity.

Bernanke and several of his central bank colleagues around the world have unleashed a new era of monetary policy, marked by zero-bound nominal interest rates coupled with unprecedented and massive balance sheet expansion. In this post-financial crisis world, the Fed has taken a Keynesian edict and turned it on its head: instead of the government stepping in after a crisis to make up for the loss of aggregate demand from the private sector, it has fallen to central banks.

Through that process, the Federal Reserve has become the most important market participant, flooding markets with liquidity and owning more than a third of the Treasury market by the end of next year, according to Barclays’ economics team. The latest iteration of their asset purchases, or QE4, consists of $40 billion a month in RMBS purchases and $45 billion in unsterilized Treasury purchases, meaning the Fed’s balance sheet will grow at a rate of $85 billion until the Fed sees a substantial improvement in labor markets.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2012/12/20/2013-is-bernankes-year-unlimited-qe-and-total-control-of-the-fed/print/

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Would the people arguing against the motion that “Identity is the new money” please state how much of their assets are invested in the stock market as a percentage? (Excluding their pension).

And the people who do believe that “Identity is the new money” state their percentage?
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I do believe that “Identity is the new money” (always has been), I presently have no stock holdings and my pension is in a cash position.

Back in the 1970s when we were designing computerised business systems we just did it and sometimes they worked. Sometimes we wondered how we did it. Could we improve our methods? Was there a method? Could we teach it?

There were lots of little bits of tradecraft. For example, if a client said “we always pay monthly”, you soon learnt to ask what they meant by “monthly”. But there was no single unifying philosophy until, at some point, someone said “the structure of the system must follow the structure of the data”. That sounded pretty good. It’s gibberish, of course, it didn’t help anyone design a system, but it sounded good.

Ditto “identity is the new money”.

I only bother to write this because it’s you and because you set high standards. “Identity is the new money” is gibberish. Don’t get hung up on it, don’t waste any time trying to explain it or developing a theory about it, just carry on doing the practical, sensible, helpful things that you do well.

“Identity substitutes for cash: when I go into Waitrose and pay with my John Lewis MasterCard, it’s an identity transaction.”

“It’s an identity transaction”. Is it? Only if you say so.

It’s a transaction alright, but why call it an “identity transaction”?

Waitrose see the MC on your card and know they’ll be paid. They don’t care who you are. They just want to be sure they’ll be paid. Their systems may they check to see if the card has been revoked. They’re still not checking your identity, they’re just checking that they’ll be paid irrespective of who you are.

“Identity is the new money” is eye-catching, it’s entertaining, it probably doesn’t do any harm to say it, any more than it hurt to say “the structure of the system is determined by the structure of the data”, saying it is a polite but glib way of ending a boring conversation, you might even tell new recruits on day one of their induction course that it summarises the job.

But “deep truth”?

I don’t fink so.

Those new recruits may think they know what it means but even so they’re no use to you, CHyp or the clients without the tradecraft.

(2) I think you’re right about trustworthy assertions being a barrier to cross-border trade, but think we need to broaden the problem statement beyond ‘assertions of identity’ and ensure that we’re designing for ‘assertions of attributes’ (including, as you say, ‘assertions of creditworthiness’).

Do you see an oppurtunity for private players in Europe (e.g. Mobile operators, Insurance co’s, Banks) to encash the identity information they store? Can they become identity brokers for other countries?. I’m sure no government thinks about encashing this as it helps them track money flow, but what’s in it for the private players?