The Financial Times has reported a debate among accountants
about giving a ‘fair value’ to company assets.
What does this mean? As we know, finance capital has a slight problem at present.
Banks, hedge funds and other financial institutions have assets on their books
that they have found out are actually not worth as much as they thought when
they paid for them.

The nineteenth century was an era of price
stability. It was also the age of the gold standard. Inflation can have many
triggers, but it always involves an increase in money emissions at some point
in order to give expression to higher prices. It is difficult to increase the
money supply quickly if you have to mine precious metals, so runaway inflation
just didn’t happen back then. The government can’t really control inflation.
Now it’s back!

World stock markets are still reeling from yet another shock to the
system brought on by the so-called credit crunch that has enveloped capitalist
financial markets since last summer. The latest shock was the biggest yet. Late on Sunday night, 16 March, the US
Federal Reserve Bank announced that Bear Stearns, America’s fifth-largest investment
bank, was bust.