Voedselbanken

Food-banks have been a hotly debated issue in the last Parliamentary elections in the Netherlands. How is it that in such a rich country (look up the statistics at the OECD or European Union: Holland has regained her place among the richer countries in Europe..) so many families depend on food-aid supplied by these "voedselbanken" (food-banks)? Well. That is a good point.
As usual, the plot is a little bit thicker than the easy but slightly too long headline "Foodbanks show anti-social effects of evil right-wing/christian coalition government policies". The facts are that foodbanks started out as a supply-driven phenomenon: they are here because people wondered if nothing useful could be done with the nearly out-of-date supplies food retailers wanted to get rid of. In this light foodbanks should be seen as a sign of excess, of somewhat sub-optimal planning, not of poverty.
We cite
"In maart 2003 is de Stichting Voedselbank Nederland opgericht. Deze stichting
kwam voort uit een project van de Stichting MinusPlus, die in 1999 is
opgericht. Het idee van deze laatstgenoemde stichting was om de minderbedeelden
in onze samenleving te laten profiteren van de restgoederen van de
beter bedeelden. Bij leveranciers verzamelt voedselbank Nederland volwaardige
goederen die om welke reden dan ook niet in de winkel terechtkomen
maar zullen worden vernietigd."
http://docs.szw.nl/pdf/129/2006/129_2006_3_8743.pdf
And babelfish translates (atrociously):
"n March 2003 the foundation food bank the Netherlands has been set up. This foundation originated from a project of the foundation MinusPlus, which has been set up in 1999. The idea of this last mentioned let profit foundation was to the minderbedeelden in our society of rest goods of the better bedeelden. At suppliers food bank collects the Netherlands full goods which do not arrive for any reason whatsoever in the shop but will be destroyed."
Minderbedeelden = those that received less (literal translation, a nice way to say: the poor)

Remember the economic anti-christ

Milton Friedman (1912-2006)

Milton Friedman is no more among the living. A loss to all those that value the truth, no matter how inconvenient, above the doctrines, the beliefs that we cherish make the world acceptable to us. To many Friedman was the economic anti-christ. Wasn't he the man behind heartless Reagan - government is not the solution, but the problem - and Thatcher - there is no such thing as society ? He was not. At least not the man that advocated some of the more strident policies of those transatlantic Cold War buddies. He was the staunchly free-market propagandising economist that once wrote 'the only business of business is business', to maximime profits? Well. He was. But, he should really be seen as a rebel. A man that did not just accept the dominant doctrine of his time, but actively tried to poke holes in that theory. And succeeded. He was vilified for his 'monetarist doctrine'... but it is my firm believe that his doctrine will in the end prevail. Contrary to what many people think, the central role of central banks in our economies - at least in the eyes of the professional beholders.. the many professional analysts and commentators that follow the musings of central bankers like Bernanke and Trichet like the "Kremlin Watchers" of old - is not a testament to Friedman's monetarist doctrine. For Milton Friedman did not like activist central banks... central banks that tried to steer the economy by frequently adjusting their (interest rate) policy. His idea was simple: let the amount of money grow by a fixed amount every year and the economy will become more stable and inflation will never become out of control if the growth of money is limited. No frequent small adjustments after long deliberations anxiously watched by hordes of analysts. Just a simple rule that will take out all the second guessing by all those 'professional' economists that spend so much time trying to find out what central bankers consider to be the state of the economy, instead of just trying to find out what the demand for money at the moment really is. Of course central bankers don't like this simple rule. It would give them little to do. It would make them quite jobless. But let us be honest: wouldn't the world be better of with a few more doctors or gardeners and a few less game-playing economists? After all, the rate of unemployment in an economy cannot be permanently lowered by just manipulating the rate of growth of money. That mr Friedman and his followers have proven quite decisively by now. And one can add: Keynes would probably have agreed.
Another great insight we can derive from Friedman (and from Bernanke, the successor to Alan Greenspan, a demi-god in the eyes of many financial market participants... but blower of bubbles according to this economist who thinks we will come to be very sorry for Greenspans' last several years of policy-making...) is that central banks may actually not have succeeded in stabilising economies, but in the case of the (American) Federal Reserve actually have greatly contributed to the Great Depression of the 1930's (and the recession of 1921). In "A Monetary History of the United States 1867-1960" Friedman demonstrated (as did later papers by Bernanke) that it was the concious decision by the Federal Reserve to let the banking system shrink - because the Fed considered there to be too many weak banks - that actually caused the Depression and a later decision to restric the money supply nipped an incipient recovery in the bud. In the many crises that preceded the founding of the Federal Reserve (previous central banks were disbanded) the economy never sank as deep, because co-operating commercial banks ensured that the banking system never really collapsed... something the Fed actually willingly engineered. So much for the stabilising role of the US Federal Reserve...