See my unique, critical videos on Australia’s money system, superannuation, bank power, energy, public policy, and the odd bit of satire. No culture war distractions, just facts and accountability. Subscribe here youtube.com/@just-imagine

YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE UNTIL IT'S GONE Save and expand Post Offices to underpin national cash distribution and other public services @auspost @AnikaWells @katty @SenKatyG @AustralianLabor @Greens @LiberalAus @The_Nationals @OneNationAus @AlboMP youtu.be/BEms2NDSOxY

Is it a cunning plan to kill cash? The four major banks are pushing us onto private digital platforms, and now they want to control a private cash pool CBA predicts cash use will fall to just 4% by 2030 The RBA says it has stabilised at 15% youtu.be/uFViQhk5lNQ

The REAL private debt rarely spoken about: $4.87 trillion — around 168% of GDP. Private debt was central to both the Great Depression and GFC, yet orthodoxy and the media obsess over $1 trillion of Commonwealth pseudo-debt that supposedly needs to be reined in.

I recently gave evidence to a House committee on critical minerals. My question was simple: if these resources are genuinely strategic, why assume private and foreign ownership when the Commonwealth can retain public ownership and strategic control? youtu.be/6dgoj0q4WGc

POLICE STATE?? @DavidShoebridge sets the stage at 15.25 @AlboMP gross hypocrisy in his own words youtu.be/WiCsfmT5638

youtu.be/WoUBiZt8mH4 I was invited to appear before the AUKUS inquiry and took the opportunity to raise an issue that is almost completely absent from the public debate: currency issuance and what actually constrains Commonwealth spending. I am not an economist, and I delivered it in my own way, but I think I got the central point across. Time prevented me from explaining the other side of the monetary system, debt-based money creation by commercial banks. That leaves an obvious vulnerability in the argument if currency issuance and bank created credit are conflated. Given the time available, how did I do?

The Brand new Kurri Kurri fossil fuel power station can export up to 660 MW. The proposed neighbouring AI data centre could consume 520 MW. That's nearly 80% of the station's export capacity. When renewables fail who will get priority?

The RBA calls unemployment above 4 per cent “full employment”. Tell that to the unemployed. Then explain it to the 10.9 per cent of the workforce who are unemployed or cannot get enough hours. billmitchell.org/blog/?p=632…

You got to love pommy politics Count Binface takes on Farage youtu.be/Z-hUOlP7-l8

player.captivate.fm/episode/… Disturbing but well worth a listen. Macro N Cheese, featuring Bill Mitchell discussing MMT, neoliberalism, capitalism and state power. Mitchell’s core point is that MMT is a lens, not a political program. It shows that currency issuing governments are not financially constrained like households. But knowing that is not enough. The harder question is why governments choose war, corporate support and austerity instead of housing, health care, jobs and public services. His answer is class power. He argues that the neoliberal era was not an accident or a policy mistake. It was a deliberate capture of the state by capital. Government did not become weak. It was redirected. Its legislative, regulatory and spending powers were increasingly used to serve capital rather than workers. Mitchell says progressives often misunderstand this. They think the system is broken and can be fixed by electing better people. He argues the system is working as designed for those who captured it. The economy is failing ordinary people, but succeeding for the wealthy, corporations, finance and the military industrial sector. The discussion also covers debt, consumerism, media control, AI, propaganda and climate breakdown. Mitchell presents a bleak view. Ordinary people are trapped by debt, work pressure and survival needs, while elite power becomes more concentrated. His final message is not cheerful, but it is practical. People should stay informed, help those around them, fight injustice where they can, and be ready to challenge the system when instability forces deeper change.

JUST ANNOUNCED New Senate inquiry now open into the Australia Post retail network. If you care about local post offices, regional services, postal banking and the future of @auspost, make a submission here: aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Bus…

youtu.be/KX1jasLGYA4 The Anachronism of Treasury Bonds: Phasing Out the Illusion of Government Debt Sovereign governments that issue their own fiat currency do not need to issue Treasury bonds in order to spend. Bond issuance is not a financing necessity. It is a policy choice inherited from earlier monetary arrangements, including the gold standard era, when public finance was explained through a borrowing framework that no longer fits a modern currency issuing state. Treasury bonds may still serve financial market functions. They provide safe assets, collateral and benchmark interest rates. But those functions should not be confused with funding the Commonwealth. A government that issues its own currency does not need to borrow back the currency it alone can create. The traditional bond market now carries a heavy public cost. It helps sustain the false household metaphor. It encourages the public to believe that the national government must first borrow before it can invest, and that public purpose is limited by a stock of debt rather than by real productive capacity. Modern central banks can manage interest rates directly by paying interest on reserve balances. There is no functional need to maintain a large bond issuance system merely to preserve the appearance that the Commonwealth is financially dependent on private markets. Phasing out routine Treasury bond issuance would help expose the real limits on public investment. Those limits are not the availability of dollars. They are labour, skills, materials, energy, technology, supply chains, ecological capacity and inflation risk. Australia needs a new economic narrative. Public investment should be judged by whether it serves public purpose and whether the real economy can absorb it, not by whether it adds to an accounting fiction called government debt.

Pauline Hanson said in her national press club speech: "...Governments have no money of their own other than what they take from taxpayers..." Can anyone in One Nation explain who issues the $AUD taxpayers use to pay tax?

apra.gov.au/news-and-publica… APRA Chair John Lonsdale has given an important speech on geopolitical risk. He is right to warn that the world is becoming more unstable, more contested and more dangerous. Banks, insurers and super funds cannot pretend that war, sanctions, cyber-attacks, foreign interference, trade disruption and offshore shocks sit outside the financial system. Those shocks can move very quickly. They can affect fuel prices, inflation, interest rates, funding markets, cyber security, offshore assets, third party providers and public confidence. APRA is right to say that boards need to prepare for that world, not just acknowledge it in risk papers. But the speech also shows the limits of current prudential thinking. It talks about capital, liquidity, cyber security, sanctions, insider threats, foreign interference, offshore dependencies and crisis planning. All of that matters. But it does not properly deal with the domestic systems that allow ordinary people and businesses to keep functioning during a real crisis. The first omission is cash. If power fails, banking apps fail, card networks fail, ATMs fail, telecommunications fail or the internet goes down, people still need to buy food, fuel, medicine and basic services. Cash is not nostalgia. Cash is public resilience infrastructure. A country that cannot transact without electricity, apps and telecommunications is not resilient. But cash resilience cannot exist if the banking system keeps dismantling the very infrastructure that supports it. Bank branch closures, ATM removals, reduced cash handling, merchant pressure toward card payments and the retreat from face-to-face banking are not neutral commercial decisions. They are driving the decline of cash use, then using that decline as the excuse to remove more cash services. That is a manufactured loss of resilience. If APRA is serious about geopolitical risk, it cannot ignore the domestic banking decisions that make the community more fragile before a crisis even arrives. The second omission is energy. The financial system does not operate in the abstract. Banks, payment systems, data centres, branches, ATMs, supermarkets, hospitals, fuel distribution, telecommunications and logistics all depend on reliable electricity. If the energy system is fragile, weather dependent, expensive, import dependent and reliant on gas firming, that is not just an energy policy problem. It is a financial stability problem. The third omission is telecommunications failure. Modern banking assumes continuous telecommunications. Online banking, mobile apps, EFTPOS, fraud detection, identity verification, call centres and payment networks all depend on it. A serious telecommunications failure caused by cyber attack, sabotage, software failure, satellite disruption, undersea cable disruption or power failure could paralyse everyday commerce very quickly. That is why cash, branches, ATMs and face to face banking still matter. They are not legacy services. They are part of national resilience. The fourth omission is private debt. Lonsdale talks about public debt, but not enough about private debt. That is the wrong emphasis. The Commonwealth is the issuer of the Australian dollar. Its real constraints are not dollars. Its real constraints are skilled labour, energy, materials, logistics, productive capacity, inflation risk and institutional competence. The deeper fragility sits in private balance sheets. Australia has households carrying large mortgage debts, businesses exposed to higher costs, banks heavily exposed to residential property, and communities already under pressure from food, fuel, energy, insurance and housing costs. Geopolitical shocks do not hit spreadsheets first. They hit households and businesses first. Then mortgage stress rises. Defaults rise. Forced sales rise. Credit tightens. Asset prices fall. Then the shock becomes a banking problem. So yes, APRA is right to talk about capital, liquidity, cyber security, sanctions and board governance. But that is only part of the picture. A financial system is not resilient just because banks have strong capital ratios. It is resilient only if people can still transact, businesses can still operate, essential services can still function and households are not crushed by private debt when external shocks arrive. Real resilience means cash resilience. Energy resilience. Telecommunications resilience. Public banking capacity. And a serious conversation about private debt. Anything less is only partial preparedness.