Richard Douthwaite, the author of The Growth Illusion, looked at the problems created by the availability of cheap energy. He believes it shaped capitalism and our monetary systems, led manufacturers and farmers to adopt unsustainable technologies, and permitted a six-fold increase in the human population while creating a concentration of power and wealth in very few hands.

Recorded on day three of The New Emergency Conference: Managing Risk and Building Resilience in a Resource Constrained World. Held on 10-12 June 2009, All Hallows College, Drumcondra, Dublin 9, Ireland

newemergency.org

This conference was organised by Feasta, the Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability.

feasta.org

Apologies for the poor sound quality for the first 13 minutes.

Cast: Feasta

Tags: Richard Douthwaite, Justmultimedia, Feasta, conference, New Emergency, economy, energy, climate and Emergency

Source: Vimeo / Feastas videos | 14 Jan 2010 | 2:14 pm UTC

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Fleeing Vesuvius is the most recent publication of Irelands Feasta – the Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability. The Cork launch was held at Cork City Library and co-hosted by Cork Environmental Forum.

Fleeing Vesuvius draws together many of the ideas developed within Feasta over the years and applies them to a single question: how can we bring the world out of the mess in which it now finds itself? The conventional answer — even more economic growth — is seen in the book as part of the problem rather than the solution.

Fleeing Vesuvius confronts this mess squarely, analysing its many aspects: the looming scarcity of essential resources such as fossil fuels – the lifeblood of the world economy; the financial crisis in Ireland and elsewhere; the collapse of the housing bubble; the urgent need for food security, especially in todays climate of rising food prices; and the enormous challenge of dealing with climate change.

The solutions it puts forward involve changes to our economy and financial system, but they go much further; this substantial, wide-ranging book also looks at the changes needed in how we think, how we use the land and how we relate to others, particularly those where we live. While it doesnt discount the complexity of the problems we face, Fleeing Vesuvius is practical and fundamentally optimistic. It will arm readers with the confidence and knowledge they need to develop new, workable alternatives to the old-style expanding economy and its supporting systems. Its a book that can be read all the way through or used as a resource to dip in and out of.

A North American edition of the book has been published by New Society Press and a New Zealand/Australian version will be published shortly, proving that this book has both regional and global relevance. As Richard Heinberg of the Post-Carbon Institute states in his introduction to the North American edition, Fleeing Vesuvius is a goldmine.

Feasta, the Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability, was launched in Dublin in October 1998 to explore the economic, cultural and environmental characteristics of a truly sustainable society – and to disseminate the results of this exploration to the widest relevant audience. Feasta currently has 10 working groups focussing on: Climate; Communication; Democracy; Education; Energy; Food; Health; Land and Housing; Measuring Progress; and Money.

While most of Feastas members live in Ireland, people from other countries have joined because they have found that its form of hard sustainability is not being discussed in any depth in their own circles. This has turned the organisation into an international network with an Irish office. Feasta has gained increasing national influence since its foundation. Two members of the Executive serve on the 20-person council of Comhar, the Irish Governments National Sustainability Partnership and on monitoring committees overseeing the National Development Plan.

Cast: Feasta

Tags: David Korowicz, FEASTA, economics, ireland, peak oil, food security, property bubble, transition towns, cork city library, food crisis, energy prices and unemplyment

Source: Vimeo / Feastas videos | 25 Mar 2011 | 6:49 pm UTC

Fleeing Vesuvius is the most recent publication of Irelands Feasta – the Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability. The Cork launch was held at Cork City Library and co-hosted by Cork Environmental Forum.

Fleeing Vesuvius draws together many of the ideas developed within Feasta over the years and applies them to a single question: how can we bring the world out of the mess in which it now finds itself? The conventional answer — even more economic growth — is seen in the book as part of the problem rather than the solution.

Fleeing Vesuvius confronts this mess squarely, analysing its many aspects: the looming scarcity of essential resources such as fossil fuels – the lifeblood of the world economy; the financial crisis in Ireland and elsewhere; the collapse of the housing bubble; the urgent need for food security, especially in todays climate of rising food prices; and the enormous challenge of dealing with climate change.

The solutions it puts forward involve changes to our economy and financial system, but they go much further; this substantial, wide-ranging book also looks at the changes needed in how we think, how we use the land and how we relate to others, particularly those where we live. While it doesnt discount the complexity of the problems we face, Fleeing Vesuvius is practical and fundamentally optimistic. It will arm readers with the confidence and knowledge they need to develop new, workable alternatives to the old-style expanding economy and its supporting systems. Its a book that can be read all the way through or used as a resource to dip in and out of.

A North American edition of the book has been published by New Society Press and a New Zealand/Australian version will be published shortly, proving that this book has both regional and global relevance. As Richard Heinberg of the Post-Carbon Institute states in his introduction to the North American edition, Fleeing Vesuvius is a goldmine.

Feasta, the Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability, was launched in Dublin in October 1998 to explore the economic, cultural and environmental characteristics of a truly sustainable society – and to disseminate the results of this exploration to the widest relevant audience. Feasta currently has 10 working groups focussing on: Climate; Communication; Democracy; Education; Energy; Food; Health; Land and Housing; Measuring Progress; and Money.

While most of Feastas members live in Ireland, people from other countries have joined because they have found that its form of hard sustainability is not being discussed in any depth in their own circles. This has turned the organisation into an international network with an Irish office. Feasta has gained increasing national influence since its foundation. Two members of the Executive serve on the 20-person council of Comhar, the Irish Governments National Sustainability Partnership and on monitoring committees overseeing the National Development Plan.

Cast: Feasta

Tags: David Korowicz, FEASTA, economics, ireland, peak oil, food security, property bubble, transition towns and cork city library

Source: Vimeo / Feastas videos | 25 Mar 2011 | 6:58 pm UTC

Fleeing Vesuvius is the most recent publication of Irelands Feasta – the Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability. The Cork launch was held at Cork City Library and co-hosted by Cork Environmental Forum.

Fleeing Vesuvius draws together many of the ideas developed within Feasta over the years and applies them to a single question: how can we bring the world out of the mess in which it now finds itself? The conventional answer — even more economic growth — is seen in the book as part of the problem rather than the solution.

Fleeing Vesuvius confronts this mess squarely, analysing its many aspects: the looming scarcity of essential resources such as fossil fuels – the lifeblood of the world economy; the financial crisis in Ireland and elsewhere; the collapse of the housing bubble; the urgent need for food security, especially in todays climate of rising food prices; and the enormous challenge of dealing with climate change.

The solutions it puts forward involve changes to our economy and financial system, but they go much further; this substantial, wide-ranging book also looks at the changes needed in how we think, how we use the land and how we relate to others, particularly those where we live. While it doesnt discount the complexity of the problems we face, Fleeing Vesuvius is practical and fundamentally optimistic. It will arm readers with the confidence and knowledge they need to develop new, workable alternatives to the old-style expanding economy and its supporting systems. Its a book that can be read all the way through or used as a resource to dip in and out of.

A North American edition of the book has been published by New Society Press and a New Zealand/Australian version will be published shortly, proving that this book has both regional and global relevance. As Richard Heinberg of the Post-Carbon Institute states in his introduction to the North American edition, Fleeing Vesuvius is a goldmine.

Feasta, the Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability, was launched in Dublin in October 1998 to explore the economic, cultural and environmental characteristics of a truly sustainable society – and to disseminate the results of this exploration to the widest relevant audience. Feasta currently has 10 working groups focussing on: Climate; Communication; Democracy; Education; Energy; Food; Health; Land and Housing; Measuring Progress; and Money.

While most of Feastas members live in Ireland, people from other countries have joined because they have found that its form of hard sustainability is not being discussed in any depth in their own circles. This has turned the organisation into an international network with an Irish office. Feasta has gained increasing national influence since its foundation. Two members of the Executive serve on the 20-person council of Comhar, the Irish Governments National Sustainability Partnership and on monitoring committees overseeing the National Development Plan.

Cast: Feasta

Tags:

Source: Vimeo / Feastas videos | 25 Mar 2011 | 7:05 pm UTC

Energy prices, the boom/bust cycle and prospects for global economic growth
Richard Douthwaite, economist and author

Cast: Feasta

Tags: energy and money systems

Source: Vimeo / Feastas videos | 14 Oct 2011 | 9:55 am UTC

Energy prices, the boom/bust cycle and prospects for global economic growth
Richard Douthwaite, economist and author

Cast: Feasta

Tags: energy and money systems

Source: Vimeo / Feastas videos | 14 Oct 2011 | 9:55 am UTC

Cast: Feasta

Tags:

Source: Vimeo / Feastas videos | 14 Oct 2011 | 11:00 am UTC

The introduction of a parallel currency will not assist Ireland’s economy

Terrence Mc Donough – Economics Dept, NUI Galway

Cast: Feasta

Tags: money systems and Irish economy

Source: Vimeo / Feastas videos | 14 Oct 2011 | 11:02 am UTC

Dual currencies – learning from the Californian solution

Professor Charles Goodhart – Professor of Banking and Finance, LSE

Cast: Feasta

Tags: money systems and eurozone

Source: Vimeo / Feastas videos | 14 Oct 2011 | 11:03 am UTC

The role of regional currencies in a wider currency union

Bernard Lietaer – Currency systems expert, Research Fellow at the Center for Sustainable Resources of the University of California. Member of the Club of Rome

Cast: Feasta

Tags: Money systems and eurozone

Source: Vimeo / Feastas videos | 14 Oct 2011 | 11:04 am UTC

Ireland should pre-empt a break up of the euro-zone and leave on its own terms

Professor Ray Kinsella – Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business

Cast: Feasta

Tags: eurozone and Irish economy

Source: Vimeo / Feastas videos | 14 Oct 2011 | 11:05 am UTC

Debt forgiveness and moral hazard

Peter Brown – Managing Director of the Irish Institute of Financial Trading

Cast: Feasta

Tags: debt and irish economy

Source: Vimeo / Feastas videos | 14 Oct 2011 | 11:57 am UTC

Toward a true United States of Europe or else Irish Divorce from the Euro

Marshall Auerback -Fellow at Economists for Peace and Security, Research Associate at the Levy Institute and former Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute.

Cast: Feasta

Tags: Eurozone, Irish economy, money systems and MMT

Source: Vimeo / Feastas videos | 14 Oct 2011 | 6:53 pm UTC

 Ein toller Erfolg wurde die Abschlusstagung des Interreg Projektes "Gemeinschaft, Vorsorge, Nahversorgung" am 21. Oktober 2011 in Vorarlberg: Über 100 Besucher aus fünf Ländern zeigten großes Interesse – weitere Infos dazu finden Sie auf der Online-Plattform für die Zusammenarbeit regionaler Transaktionssysteme za:rt auf http://www.zart.org/193.0.html?&pos=2

Foto: Thomas Ender/zart.org

Source: Unterguggenberger Institut RSS-Feed | 25 Oct 2011 | 8:00 am UTC

Zur Exkursion des Zertifikatskurs "Nachhaltige Entwicklung ländlicher Räume" erstellte Christian Holzner für das Regionalfernsehen Oberbayern den Beitrag "Lokale Lösungen für die Finanzkrise" über den Chiemgauer und den Besuch in Wörgl – online abrufbar auf http://www.rfo.de/mediathek/Lokale_L%C3%B6sungen_f%C3%BCr_die_Finanzkrise-13775.html

Source: Unterguggenberger Institut RSS-Feed | 2 Nov 2011 | 10:29 am UTC

 “Die Zeit der Banken und des Geldes ist vorbei”, schreiben die beiden Wirtschaftswissenschaftler Franz Hörmann und Otmar Pregetter, der am 8. November 2011 zu Gast im Studio der ORF1-Fernseh-Diskussion Contra – der Talk war. Denn Banken erfinden Geld aus Luft, die freien Märkte sind Blasenmaschinen zum Missbrauch für die Eliten, unser gegenwärtiges Finanzsystem ist ein reines Betrugsmodell. Die Folge: Der ultimative Finanzcrash droht; damit verbunden, das Ende des Geldes. Doch die beiden Autoren verbreiten in diesem Buch keineswegs Hiobsbotschaften, wenn sie “grundlegende Veränderungen der Gesellschaft” fordern. Sie zeigen realistische Möglichkeiten auf, wie eine Gesellschaft auch ohne Geld funktionieren kann, und sie bieten einen Wegweiser in eine ökologisch und sozial orientierte Zukunft. Weitere Infos zum Buch auf http://www.das-ende-des-geldes.at/

Source: Unterguggenberger Institut RSS-Feed | 9 Nov 2011 | 8:42 am UTC

Der Sterntalerverein STAR e.V. und die Hochschule München laden am Sonntag, 20. November 2011 um 19 Uhr in der Salzachhalle Laufen zum Vortrag "Das Geld der Zukunft" mit der Währungsexpertin Prof. Dr. Margrit Kennedy  – weitere Info hier…

Source: Unterguggenberger Institut RSS-Feed | 14 Nov 2011 | 7:28 am UTC

Alternativen zum Euro wie die Regionawährung Waldviertler und Tauschsysteme in Österreich stellt das Magazin TOP-GEWINN in der November-Ausgabe 2011 vor. Unter dem Titel "´Jedem seine Währung" stellt Mathias Kirner Parallenwährungen in Österreich vor. Seinen Artikel als pdf zum Download gibt´s hier und weitere Infos hier…

Source: Unterguggenberger Institut RSS-Feed | 15 Nov 2011 | 5:13 pm UTC

Viele Infos und interessante Veranstaltungstipps beinhaltet der neueste TIMESOZIAL-Newsletter, den Tobias Plettenbacher zusammengestellt hat. Unter anderem weist er auf den online abrufbaren Vortrag von Franz Hörmann "Das Ende des Geldes" hin – weitere Info hier…

Source: Unterguggenberger Institut RSS-Feed | 16 Nov 2011 | 11:50 am UTC

Professor Jem Bendell ist Direktor und Gründer der Liveworth Consulting, die für einen Systemwandel hin zu nachhaltiger Entwicklung arbeitet. Jem Bendell spricht in seinen Vorträgen über die versteckte Ursache der Wirtschaftskrise im Geldsystem und sieht Komplementärwährungen als Weg aus der Krise, nicht nur im Finanzbereich, sondern auch im Umweltbereich. Bendell thematisiert das Tabu großer Medien, sich mit der wahren Ursache der Krise auseinanderzusetzen – einen Livemitschnitt von einem seiner Vorträge gibt´s auf youtube unter http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5uGLbV5zVo

Source: Unterguggenberger Institut RSS-Feed | 17 Nov 2011 | 5:47 am UTC

Als Botschafterin für das  Wörgler Freigeld-Experiment von1932/33 wirkt Hollis Doherty in den USA. Die Schriftstellerin, Schauspielerin und Währungsaktivistin mit Hochschulabschluss in Biologie an der Universität für Colorado besuchte das Unterguggenberger Institut im April 2009. Ihren Blog gibt´s auf  http://hollisdoherty.wordpress.com/. Ihren Vortrag bei TEDx Black Rock City online auf http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0K65v_V8Sg&feature=youtu.be

Source: Unterguggenberger Institut RSS-Feed | 22 Nov 2011 | 8:31 am UTC

 Dr. Christian Thiel verfasste 2011 seine Dissertation am Institut für Soziologie an der Universität München, die nun in Buchform der Öffentlichkeit zur Verfügung steht. Thiel befasst sich mit den seit einigen Jahren deutschlandweit entstandenen Regionalwährungen. "Diese, nur regional gültigen, privaten Gelder sollen bei den Menschen ein besseres – moralisches, soziales oder ökologisches – Verhalten bewirken. Dahinter steckt eine aktive soziale Bewegung, die mit ihrem praktischen Gegenkonzept das globalisierte Wirtschafts- und Finanzsystem reformieren will. Die historische und ethnographische Analyse offenbart die hier zugrunde liegenden verschiedenen Geldkonzepte, die seit Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts von diversen geldreformerischen Bewegungen als Lösung für krisenhafte Modernisierungserscheinungen propagiert werden. Weiterhin wird in einer qualitativen Fallstudie bei einem dieser privaten Geldexperimente untersucht, wie dieses andere Geld im Alltag eingesetzt wird und welche individuellen und sozialen Auswirkungen es tatsächlich hat", schildert der Autor seine Arbeit. Buchtipp:  Das ‚bessere’ Geld. Eine ethnographische Studie über Regionalwährungen. Erschienen in Wiesbaden im VS Verlag, ISBN: 978-3-531-18333-6 – weitere Info: http://www.vs-verlag.de/Buch/978-3-531-18333-6/Das-‚bessere’-Geld.html

 

Source: Unterguggenberger Institut RSS-Feed | 23 Nov 2011 | 9:09 am UTC

Source: Unterguggenberger Institut RSS-Feed | 28 Nov 2011 | 4:09 pm UTC

Einen Überblick über aktelle Entwicklungen im Komplementärwährungsbereich gibt der Artikel "Alternative Währungen: An den Banken vorbei" in der deutschen Wochenzeitung "Die ZEIT", der online nachgelesen werden kann: http://www.zeit.de/zeit-wissen/2011/06/Alternative-Waehrungen

Source: Unterguggenberger Institut RSS-Feed | 29 Nov 2011 | 7:13 am UTC

Der ORF 2 sendet am Mittwoch, 30. November 2011, um 23 Uhr einen Club 2 zum Thema "Wenn der Finanzcrash kommt – was dann?" Bei Peter Rabl im Studio diskutieren Franz Hörmann, Wirtschaftswissenschafter, Autor des Buches „Das Ende des Geldes“, Dirk Müller, Börsenmakler, bekannt als „Mister DAX“, Mathias Horx, Zukunftsforscher, Barbara Kolm vom Hayek Institut, Veronika Spielbichler vom Unterguggenberger Institut Wörgl und Reinhard Schanda, Wirtschaftsanwalt. Weitere Info: http://tv.orf.at/program/orf2/20111130/540439101/326206/

Source: Unterguggenberger Institut RSS-Feed | 29 Nov 2011 | 3:22 pm UTC

 Im Buch "Monetäre Modernisierung" schildert der Wirtschaftssoziologe Joseph Huber die Funktionsweise und die Fehlfunktionen des heutigen Geldsystems. Im Anschluss stellt er verschiedene Reformansätze vor, insbesondere der Vollgeld-Ansatz. Dieser beruht auf der Trennung von Geldschöpfung und Kreditvergabe. An die Stelle des Giralgeldes der Banken tritt das vollwertige gesetzliche Zahlungsmittel, das ausschließlich von der unabhängigen Zentralbank in Umlauf gebracht wird. Weitere Infos zum Buch hier sowie ein Interview mit dem Autor hier.

Source: Unterguggenberger Institut RSS-Feed | 30 Nov 2011 | 5:23 am UTC

Den Club 2 zum Thema "Wenn der Finanzcrash kommt – was dann" gibt´s eine Woche lang online in der orf.tv-thek – hier der Link: http://tvthek.orf.at/programs/1283-Club-2/episodes/3256433-CLUB-2/3256435-CLUB-2

sowie auch danach online auf: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYA59QTiVCs

Einen Beitrag dazu von Veronika Spielbichler, Obfrau des Unterguggenberger Institutes, lesen Sie hier…

Source: Unterguggenberger Institut RSS-Feed | 2 Dec 2011 | 6:30 am UTC

"John Chandor hat den bisher besten Film über die Bankenkrise gedreht: Margin Call – der große Crash" befand die ZEIT über einen Film (Info: http://margincallmovie.com/), der hinter die Kulissen dubioser Wertpapiergeschäfte an der Wall Street blickt und jetzt in den Kinos läuft. Am 2. Dezember 2012 fand dazu eine Podiumsdiskussion in Wien statt. Am Podium Franz Hörmann http://www.franzhoermann.at, Otmar Pregetter, Max Edelbacher (ehem. Leiter des Wiener Sicherheitsbüros) http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Edelbacher, Christian Felsenreich (Psychotherapiewissenschafter, Human Factors Training, Kabarettist) und Karl Kriechbaum (Börsen Psychologe) http://www.kriechbaum.eu/, Diskussionsleitung: Yolanda Kramer – online auf youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNHGNUt76U8
 

Source: Unterguggenberger Institut RSS-Feed | 6 Dec 2011 | 10:51 am UTC

Ein interessanter Artikel über die Oligarchie der Finanz erschien in der FAZ: Unter dem Titel "Der Krieg der Banken gegen das Volk" setzt der Lösungsvorschlag bei der Geldschöpfung an. Der Vorschlag: Die EZB soll das tun, wofür Notenbanken gegründet wurden: Geld drucken. Hier der Link zum Artikel: http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/oligarchie-der-finanz-der-krieg-der-banken-gegen-das-volk-11549829.html

Source: Unterguggenberger Institut RSS-Feed | 9 Dec 2011 | 2:33 pm UTC

Source: Twitter / regionetzwerk | 13 Nov 2011 | 9:12 am UTC

Source: Twitter / regionetzwerk | 29 Nov 2011 | 7:51 pm UTC

Mit einem abenteuerlichen, aber ernstgemeinten Vorschlag will die Boston Consulting Group  (BCG) die Schuldenkrise lösen: durch Enteignung der privaten Sparvermögen. Dies wurde in einer großen Analyse vorgeschlagen:  In der Studie „Back to Mesopotamia“ (Zurück nach Mesopotamien, pdf) fordern die Autoren praktisch eine Teileinteignung der Sparer, um die Schuldenkrise zu entschärfen. Insgesamt verfügen die privaten Haushalte in der Eurozone demnach über ein Vermögen von 18 Billionen EUR. Würde man ihnen ein Drittel davon abnehmen, dann wäre das Schuldenproblem gelöst.

Aus der Theorie könnte Wirklichkeit werden, denn die Regierung heuerte nun einen Top-Berater der BCG in die Dienste des Finanzministeriums.

Weiterlesen: http://www.mmnews.de/index.php/politik/9063-regierung-heuert-enteignungs-experten

Source: Zeitpunkt.ch: Aktuelle News | 15 Dec 2011 | 12:57 am UTC

Mit einem abenteuerlichen, aber ernstgemeinten Vorschlag will die Boston Consulting Group  (BCG) die Schuldenkrise lösen: durch Enteignung der privaten Sparvermögen. Dies wurde in einer großen Analyse vorgeschlagen:  In der Studie „Back to Mesopotamia“ (Zurück nach Mesopotamien, pdf) fordern die Autoren praktisch eine Teileinteignung der Sparer, um die Schuldenkrise zu entschärfen. Insgesamt verfügen die privaten Haushalte in der Eurozone demnach über ein Vermögen von 18 Billionen EUR. Würde man ihnen ein Drittel davon abnehmen, dann wäre das Schuldenproblem gelöst.

Aus der Theorie könnte Wirklichkeit werden, denn die Regierung heuerte nun einen Top-Berater der BCG in die Dienste des Finanzministeriums.

Weiterlesen: http://www.mmnews.de/index.php/politik/9063-regierung-heuert-enteignungs-experten

Source: Zeitpunkt.ch: Aktuelle News | 15 Dec 2011 | 12:57 am UTC

Die Ursache der aktuellen Finanzmarkt- und Wirtschaftskrise ortet die Schweizer Vollgeldreform-Initiative "Monetäre Modernisierung" in der Art und Weise, wie heute Geschäftsbanken Geld schöpfen und in Umlauf bringen. Ihre Reformvorschläge bleiben nicht bei der Symptombehandlung im bestehenden System, sondern gehen tiefer: eine zeitgemäße Geldordnung sehe Geldschöpfung ausschließlich durch die öffentliche Hand vor (Monetative). Dieses neue Geld soll zinsfrei in Umlauf gebracht werden. Weitere Informationen zur überparteilichen Initiative MoMo, die 2012 Vollgeld per Volksentscheid einführen will, finden Sie hier… 

Keine Geldreform ohne Neudefinition des Eigentums-Begriffes? Dieses heiklen Themas nimmt sich am 28. Jänner 2012 eine Fachtagung in der Schweiz in Bern an, die auch von den MoMo-Beiräten Ph.Mastronardi und P. Ulrich mitgestaltet wird: "Eigentum und Freiheit" – weitere Info hier…

Source: Unterguggenberger Institut RSS-Feed | 12 Dec 2011 | 8:16 am UTC

The euro-zone should be saved and Ireland is better off within it

Dan OBrien – Irish Times Economics editor

Cast: Feasta

Tags: Irish economy and eurozone

Source: Vimeo / Feastas videos | 21 Oct 2011 | 10:50 am UTC

Das herrschende neoklassische Wirtschaftsdogma ignoriert in seinen Modellen die Kreditgeldschöpfung durch die Banken. Die Lösungsvorschläge der „Experten“ sind darum alle zum Scheitern verurteilt und die Politik schlecht beraten. Steve Keen, Wirtschaftsprofessor aus Australien, schlägt für die Schuldkrise folgende radikale Lösung vor: Schuldabschreibung, Bankrott der Banken, Verstaatlichung der Geldschöpfung, Neustart.

Weiterlesen: http://www.mmnews.de/index.php/wirtschaft/9090-ende-aus-neustart

Source: Zeitpunkt.ch: Aktuelle News | 18 Dec 2011 | 11:45 pm UTC

I am reading The New Capitalist Manifesto by Umair Haque in preparation for SIBOS 2011 where I will have an opportunity to join in a common conversation. I will be speaking on a panel called New Economies along with several other distinguished presenters (see Below).

New Economies = The Values

The most important thing about the discussion of new economies is the idea of Value.  It is essential that we define Value much more completely than just those things that can be articulated with money and shift to include all forms of Value in our entrepreneurship.  The Sun delivers value to the Earth. Parents deliver value to their children.  Communities deliver value to society.  A true accounting of all value is essential to the discussion of new economies.

The New Capitalist Manifesto is a hugely important book; Here are a few of my thoughts.

First; it provides a vital framework to begin accounting for what we call “True Value”; an accounting of real net value creation as opposed to borrowing, transferring, or destroying value that is not necessarily represented on a financial balance sheet.

Second; the new economy and emergent new accounting system will happen whether we like it or not.  There is little that people can actually do to avoid it. The new economy is a matter of survival – it will happen at the speed and drive of survival (hence “Capitalism”).   So make your choices now as these will define your future.

The third observation is that nobody is immune from the new economy.  The more one resists, the more it will persist.  The stronger that a country, corporation, or traditionalists hold to legacy ideas about linear value and forest-to-dump consumerism, the faster and more dramatic will be their demise.

So what does this have to do with Social Flights?

Social Flights is attempting to replace the horrific concrete wasteland of the command and control “Hub & Spoke” system with a Democracy.  Our premise is that people can self-organize around two points and efficiently share an airplane that flies directly between them from smaller airports.  In effect, we replace the infrastructure with cloud data to accomplish the same thing with a far superior customer experience, and therefor, greater true value.

Think about it; all of the world’s airlines are competing with each other in a race to the bottom around the Hub and Spoke system.  The two largest aircraft manufacturers are beating each other up around the strengths and limitations of the Hub and Spoke System. The whole system is limping along on razor thin margins. Yet, the vast majority of “true and complete” Value of travel is the human experience and the value of relationships, communities, and their actions together.  The only reason that Travel exists is being unceremoniously tossed out on the tarmac….

If you don’t listen to your customers, then at least listen to Umair Haque.

So, if you are a university, a corporation, government, or any institution dependent on physical infrastructure in order to match supply and demand while insulating yourself from competition, then you should be very concerned about the new economy.

New economies
Is money the only form of transaction value and wealth? What about social currencies? We will expose you to new thinking on new economies such as the trust economy, the intention economy, the relationship economy, the social economy and the ethical economy.

Already confirmed:

• Jerry Michalski, Founder – The REXpedition
• Art Brock, Co-Founder – Metacurrency Project
• Dan Robles, Founder – Director – The Ingenesist Project
• Umair Haque, Director Havas Media Lab and Author New Capitalist Manifesto > Via Skype
• Gregory J. Rader, Blogger – InTheSpiral
• Doc Searls, VRM initiative and Alumnus Fellow – Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard
• Craig Burton, Founder of Novell, and Founder of The Burton Group, [blog]

Source: The Ingenesist Project | 31 Aug 2011 | 9:59 pm UTC

Source: Kerstin-Andreae.de | 26 Oct 2011 | 8:44 am UTC

Vizepräsidentin Petra Pau: Das Wort hat die Kollegin Kerstin Andreae für die Fraktion Bündnis 90/Die Grünen. Kerstin Andreae (BÜNDNIS 90/DIE GRÜNEN): Frau Präsidentin! Liebe Kolleginnen und Kollegen! Herr Liebich, irgendwie tun Sie mir leid, dass Sie jetzt hier diesen Müll verteidigen müssen, obwohl Sie sich als einer der wenigen auf diesem Programmparteitag dagegengestellt haben. (Stefan Liebich [DIE LINKE]: Stimmt gar nicht! Ich habe zugestimmt!)

– Das mag vielleicht Strategie sein. – Sie haben jetzt versucht, uns dieses Programm anhand einzelner Punkte nahezubringen. Dabei haben Sie natürlich immer das weggelassen, was zu großer Kritik führt. Wenn in einem Programm von Freiheit durch Gleichheit gesprochen wird, dann wird dem Begriff „Freiheit“ damit sein eigener Wert genommen. Dem werden wir uns immer  entgegenstellen. (Beifall beim BÜNDNIS 90/DIE GRÜNEN, bei der CDU/CSU, der SPD und der FDP – Dr. Diether Dehm [DIE LINKE]: Nein! Selbst in den Freiburger Thesen der FDP war das drin! – Weitere Zurufe von der LINKEN)

Ehrlich gesagt, die Inszenierung, die Sie hier machen, dieser Bierzeltcharakter, den Sie zur Verteidigung Ihres Programmes hier hineinbringen, ist wirklich unmöglich. (Beifall beim BÜNDNIS 90/DIE GRÜNEN sowie bei Abgeordneten der CDU/CSU und der FDP)

Sie führen allerdings eine Retrodebatte. Ihre wirtschaftspolitischen Vorstellungen sind nicht von heute, sondern aus dem 19. Jahrhundert. (Beifall beim BÜNDNIS 90/DIE GRÜNEN sowie bei Abgeordneten der CDU/CSU und der FDP) Wir leben in einer globalisierten Welt. Wir sind keine Insel. Unsere Wirtschaft ist enorm exportabhängig. Diese Exportabhängigkeit ist ohne Zweifel ein Problem. (Zurufe von der LINKEN) Derzeit hängen aber viele Arbeitsplätze an dieser Exportwirtschaft. (Dr. Diether Dehm [DIE LINKE]: Damit habt ihr die Deregulierung begründet!) Sie schlagen uns jetzt jedoch wirtschaftspolitische Konzepte vor, für die wir eine abgeschottete Box brauchen. Das ist der Vorwurf, den wir Ihnen machen müssen.

– Dr. Diether Dehm [DIE LINKE]: Eure Hedgefonds! – Dr. Dagmar Enkelmann [DIE LINKE]: Sie sollten einmal nachlesen! – Gegenruf des Abg. Markus Kurth [BÜNDNIS 90/DIE GRÜNEN]: Hören Sie doch einmal auf, zu brüllen! – Weitere Zurufe von der LINKEN) – Darf ich bitte reden? Das ist ja furchtbar. (Beifall beim BÜNDNIS 90/DIE GRÜNEN sowie bei Abgeordneten der CDU/CSU und der FDP)

Es gibt mittlerweile einen breiten Konsens im Mitte-Links-Lager, dass wir eine Vermögensbesteuerung brauchen. Ein Vorschlag aber, der auf eine Vermögensteuer von 5 Prozent hinausläuft, die jährlich zu entrichten ist, ist weder wirtschaftspolitisch sinnvoll noch in irgendeiner Form relevant. (Beifall bei Abgeordneten der LINKEN) – Klatschen Sie wenigstens dafür, dass er wirtschaftspolitisch nicht sinnvoll ist. – Sie melken eine Kuh auf einer Weide, die keinen Zaun hat. Das müssen Sie endlich einmal verstehen! (Beifall beim BÜNDNIS 90/DIE GRÜNEN, bei der CDU/CSU und der FDP sowie bei Abgeordneten der SPD – Dr. Diether Dehm [DIE LINKE]: Wer ist hier die Kuh? – Weitere Zurufe von der LINKEN) Man könnte jetzt folgende Überlegung anstellen: Angesichts einer Finanzmarktkrise, einer Bankenkrise, einer Staatsschuldenkrise könnte es ja sein, dass die Menschen sagen: Ja, die Linke macht das richtige politische Angebot. (Beifall bei Abgeordneten der LINKEN)
– Das könnte sein, so ist es aber nicht; da können Sie tausendmal klatschen. Sie präsentieren ein psychologisches Programm, das nach innen gerichtet ist; es ist aber kein Programm, von dem die Menschen meinen könnten, es würde ihnen irgendwie nützen. (Beifall beim BÜNDNIS 90/DIE GRÜNEN, bei der CDU/CSU und der FDP sowie bei Abgeordneten der SPD – Widerspruch bei der LINKEN) Denn die Menschen wollen ernstgenommen werden. Sie wollen Vorschläge hören, die ihnen eine echte Perspektive zu wichtigen Fragen geben. Sie wollen wissen: Wie kommen wir aus dieser Misere heraus? (Beifall bei Abgeordneten der LINKEN) Welche Angebote und Vorschläge gibt es im politischen Raum, die umgesetzt werden können? Wie müssen zielgerichtete Lösungen aussehen, die umsetzbar sind? – Solange eine Partei sagt: „Wir wollen ja gar nicht regieren“, ist sie doch gar nicht in der Pflicht, hier die Machbarkeit darzustellen. (Beifall beim BÜNDNIS 90/DIE GRÜNEN sowie bei Abgeordneten der CDU/CSU und der FDP – Stefan Liebich [DIE LINKE]: Sagen wir doch gar nicht! – Weiterer Zuruf von der LINKEN: Ihr wollt nicht! Deshalb haben wir die CDU in Berlin in der Landesregierung!) Von daher, das Ganze ist doch sowieso ein Wünsch-dir-was-Programm. (Zurufe von der LINKEN)

Am besten finde ich aber noch Ihre Verstaatlichungsnummer. Sie wollen Großbetriebe und große Energieversorgungsunternehmen verstaatlichen. Liebe CDU, unsere grünrote Regierung in Baden-Württemberg hat das Erbe angetreten, das euer Stefan Mappus – unser ehemaliger Ministerpräsident – mit der verfassungswidrigen Teilverstaatlichung des Energieversorgungsunternehmens EnBW hinterlassen hat. Was haben wir jetzt davon? 1 Milliarde Steuergelder wurde aufgrund von Kursverlusten in den Sand gesetzt. Und die Linke redet von Verstaatlichung? (Beifall beim BÜNDNIS 90/DIE GRÜNEN sowie bei Abgeordneten der SPD – Dr. Diether Dehm [DIE LINKE]: Gebt es dem Ackermann!) Und die CDU hat noch nicht einmal eine vernünftige Positionierung zu dieser Politik, die Mappus dort betrieben hat. (Christian Lange [Backnang] [SPD]: Da sehen wir einmal: Die CDU ist die neue Linkspartei!)

Wir brauchen keine Staatsgläubigkeit in dem Sinne, wie die Linke uns das vorschlägt. Es waren die demokratisch gewählten Landesväter, die sich mit ihren Landesbanken kräftig verzockt haben. Was war denn mit der WestLB? Was ist denn mit der Sachsen LB? Was ist denn mit der Bayern LB? (Dr. Diether Dehm [DIE LINKE]: Und die Sparkassen?) Staatsbanken sind doch nicht die Lösung. Was wir brauchen, (Dr. Diether Dehm [DIE LINKE]: Sind Sparkassen!)
ist Bankenregulierung. Was wir brauchen, ist die Finanztransaktionsteuer. Was wir brauchen, ist das Trennbankensystem. (Beifall beim BÜNDNIS 90/DIE GRÜNEN – Dr. Diether Dehm [DIE LINKE]: Sparkassen brauchen wir! – Dr. Dagmar Enkelmann [DIE LINKE]: Genossenschaftsbanken!) Das sind die Lösungen, die wir entwickeln müssen. Die soziale Marktwirtschaft muss nicht sozialistisch werden, aber sie muss wieder sozial werden. (Beifall beim BÜNDNIS 90/DIE GRÜNEN sowie bei Abgeordneten der LINKEN – Zurufe von der LINKEN) Sie muss auch grün werden, meine Damen und Herren. Die Union darf sich derzeit nicht rühmen, Vertreter der sozialen Marktwirtschaft zu sein; denn ihre Vertreter vergessen das Soziale. (Beifall beim BÜNDNIS 90/DIE GRÜNEN – Michael Grosse-Brömer [CDU/CSU]: Das wüsste ich aber!) Sie lassen mit der jüngsten Instrumentenreform Langzeitarbeitslose im Regen stehen. Sie streichen das Elterngeld für Hartz-IV-Empfänger. (Dr. Dagmar Enkelmann [DIE LINKE]: Sie haben Hartz IV eingeführt!) Sie stehen beim Mindestlohn auf der Bremse. Sie müssen in sich gehen, sich prüfen und dafür sorgen, dass die soziale Marktwirtschaft wieder sozial wird, dass entsprechende Angebote für die Menschen in diesem Land gemacht werden. (Beifall beim BÜNDNIS 90/DIE GRÜNEN) Wir brauchen keinen Systemwechsel, (Zurufe von der LINKEN) aber wir brauchen einen Politikwechsel. Vielen Dank. (Beifall beim BÜNDNIS 90/DIE GRÜNEN sowie bei Abgeordneten der SPD –  Michael Grosse-Brömer [CDU/CSU]: Bis auf die letzte Passage war das ganz ordentlich!)

Source: Kerstin-Andreae.de | 27 Oct 2011 | 1:17 pm UTC

Source: Kerstin-Andreae.de | 7 Nov 2011 | 2:34 pm UTC

The New Economies Panel at SIBOS Innotribe this year in Toronto represents the most important elements of a new economy which many people believe is emerging to replace the old one that continues to crumble around us.

The common message of New Economy movement is the vastly expanded definition for the term “Value’ – far beyond that which can be articulated with money.  Very few organizations hold this idea as explicit to their DNA as The Metacurrency Project.

Few can deny that the Sun delivers all value to our Earth.  The Mass of our Universe provides the rest; Gravity, Motion, and time.  In this context, money is a trivial device that simply articulates the relatively archaic things that humans can manage to conjure and horde from the vast natural resources that are delivered to us for free.

The idea that Energy can exist is many forms cannot be separated from the fact that Value can and must also exist in many forms.  The challenge that we face as a civilization is to build an economy that articulates all Value completely and truthfully.

The Metacurrency Project has become a Worldwide conversation expanding the definition of value and building systems to articulate such value in communities, companies, and society.

I had the opportunity to meet Art Brock at The Future of Money and Technology Summit in San Francisco earlier this year.  Art represents a very important voice in the discussion of new economies at SIBOS/Innotribe on September 19-23 in Toronto.

We look forward to seeing you in Toronto.  If not, then thank you for continued interest and participation in the important subject of New Economies.

Source: The Ingenesist Project | 2 Sep 2011 | 7:03 pm UTC

TxtEagle est une société américaine, qui s’est montée sur un business très particulier. Elle a créé des partenariats avec des opérateurs de téléphone mobile dans plus de 100 pays, essentiellement des pays émergents, et elle organise des sondages par SMS pour des opérations marketing ou -mieux- pour des enquêtes ou des recherches de terrain. Elle prétend avoir ainsi potentiellement accès à une population de 2,1 milliards d’individus !

Le point intéressant, c’est que TxtEagle rémunère les personnes participantes par des minutes de temps de communication sur leur mobile. Nous voilà donc bien face à une monnaie !

Cette société est un exemple – un bel exemple – de monnaie complémentaire : une communauté accepte des minutes de communication mobile comme moyen d’échange. Il est clair que dans les pays émergents, où l’argent (billets ou moyens de paiement) manque souvent, un moyen aussi fluide que les minutes de communication mobile est extrêmement pratique. J’ai mon compte bancaire dans ma main, je peux le consulter à tout moment, payer quelqu’un en minutes de communication (par un transfert de minutes d’un téléphone à l’autre), etc.

Source: 1001 monnaies | 19 Apr 2011 | 10:00 am UTC

En plus des abeilles et de l’occitan, les monnaies locales continuent leur diffusion en France… Le mouvement, qui est promu notamment par Philippe Derruder, prend de l’ampleur. Il est initié en général par des associations locales, et parfois par des collectivité – comme à Toulouse, Nanterre, ou Fontainebleau.

• D’ici quelques semaines, la Mesure circulera à Romans Bourg de Péage
• La Commune est en mode pilote à Roanne
• Les lucioles en Ardèche devraient s’envoler d’ici peu
• Toulouse met en place le SOL Violette, en mai, avec une quarantaine de commerces…
• Angers prépare également une monnaie locale, l’écHo. Quelques articles à propos de la préparation de ce projet.
• A Aubenas, c’est la Bogue qui se prépare
• En Lorraine, le Déodat est en cours d’élaboration.
• Annemasse, le Havre, Nanterre, Fontainebleau, etc. sont en pleine définition de projet…

On devrait bientôt arriver à avoir une monnaie par ville, à ce rythme-là !! Par contre, je me demande quel volume va atteindre chacune de ces monnaies. Vont-elles rester un peu confidentielles, limitées à quelques militants ? C’est probable pour la plupart d’entre elles…

A noter qu’un très bon site s’est ouvert sur le sujet des monnaies locales en France, vous pouvez y trouver beaucoup d’informations : http://monnaie-locale-complementaire.net/. Il est en cours de rassemblement de contenu. Si vous avez des informations sur des projets locaux, n’hésitez pas à prendre contact avec eux pour qu’il devienne un site de référence sur le sujet !

Source: 1001 monnaies | 29 Apr 2011 | 1:24 pm UTC

La Banco Palmas, c’est l’histoire extraordinaire d’une favela de la ville de Fortaleza. Grâce à un mouvement communautaire, les habitants de la favela se sont pris en main, ont assaini le quartier, se sont organisés pour obtenir l’eau courante, etc. Toute cette histoire est relatée dans un livre passionnant, Viva Favela !, qui est sorti en octobre 2009.

Cette histoire m’intéresse car dans le processus qui les a amené à s’organiser, les habitants du Conjunto dos Palmeira ont créé une banque locale qui était au démarrage une institution de microfinance classique. Mais la réflexion des habitants, menés par Joaquim Melo, les a amené à se rendre compte que le problème principal, qui les empêchait de sortir de la pauvreté, c’était la fuite de la monnaie hors de la favela. En effet, de nombreux habitants ont un travail et un petit salaire, mais ils le dépensent hors de la favela. Cela fait que le quartier reste un endroit sous-monétarisé, et les commerçants locaux manquent de clients, de liquidités, etc.

Ils ont donc créé leur propre monnaie, le Palma, à parité avec le real. Et la banque Palma propose donc des microcrédits d’investissement, en real, avec un taux d’intérêt, et des microcrédits de consommation, en palma, à 0%. Les palmas ne peuvent être dépensés que chez les commerçants du quartier, ce qui, comme les monnaies locales, privilégie les échanges économiques dans le quartier.

Courte émission sur la Banco Palmas, France 24

La Banco Palmas a de plus créé plusieurs entreprises locales, des centres de formation, etc.

Cette initiative, qui a failli être étouffée par la Banque centrale du Brésil, bénéficie maintenant de son soutien. De nombreuses banques communautaires voient le jour au Brésil et au Venezuela, sur le modèle de la Banco Palmas.

Personnellement, je connais bien la microfinance. Je suis persuadé que les liens entre la microfinance et les monnaies complémentaires sont multiples, et pleins de sens, mais étonnamment, il y en a très peu. Je ne connais que le système des banques communautaires, et j’ai appris depuis peu que le chiemgauer avait créé un système de microcrédit en monnaie locale. Mais c’est tout ! J’espère qu’à l’avenir, le secteur de la microfinance sortira un peu de ses rails et deviendra un peu plus créatif, en s’inspirant de ce qui se fait avec des monnaies complémentaires…

Source: 1001 monnaies | 3 May 2011 | 8:00 am UTC

OWNI, média internet, a publié avec Zoupic une BD augmentée (dessins de Loco), entendez une BD consultable sur internet.

Cette BD parle – rapidement – de la création monétaire, en termes assez polémique (mais ça fait du bien parfois !). Puis elle enchaîne avec le témoignage des personnages sur une monnaie locale – avec la mise en exergue de l’effet de solidarité et de de résilience que ce type de système permet.

Sur la page de présentation de la BD, il y a de plus une interview de Philippe Derudder, particulièrement actif dans la création des monnaies locales.

Une bonne BD pour se mettre en appétit, ou pour sensibiliser.

Source: 1001 monnaies | 5 May 2011 | 10:00 am UTC

Si la France a déjà un certain nombre de monnaies locales en préparation et en action, elle n’est qu’un petit nain comparé à l’Allemagne… A ce jour, 65 projets de monnaies locales sont en cours, dont 28 actifs – le plus vieux date de 1998, à Bremen (encore en activité). Au total, ce sont près de 900 000 EUR qui sont en circulation en monnaie locale sur toute l’Allemagne – bon, OK, ce n’est pas grand chose, mais vous avez bien compris que je pense qu’on n’est pas à l’abri d’un effet boule de neige et d’une croissance exponentielle -. 55% de ces systèmes sont des monnaies fondantes, certaines sont adossées à l’euro, d’autres non… Bref, une belle diversité ! Le secteur est en train de connaître des phénomènes de fusion et d’alliances entre systèmes, et tout ce mouvement essaye de s’organiser – site internet fédérateur, mise en commun des expériences et des outils, réflexion commune… -.

Mais de cette profusion ressort une monnaie qui est la plus connue et la plus développée : le Chiemgauer, né en 2003 dans la région de Prien en Bavière. Elle a été créée par les élèves de l’école Waldorf et leur professeur d’économie, Christian Gelleri (une interview en français de Christian Gelleri de décembre 2008). D’une simple expérimentation au départ, le projet a pris beaucoup d’ampleur, jusqu’à faire des émules, et devenir une expérience internationalement reconnue.

Comment ça fonctionne ?

Le chiemgauer est une monnaie papier, adossée à l’euro. Les billets sont émis par l’association qui gère la monnaie. Ils sont vendus à 97 EUR pour un 100 chiemgauer (CH) à des associations sportives ou sociales de la ville. A leur tour, ces associations vendent aux consommateurs ces billets, à 100 EUR pour 100 CH. C’est donc pour les citoyens un acte militant : ils savent qu’en utilisant le chiemgauer plutôt que l’euro, non seulement ils favorisent l’économie locale, mais en plus, ils financent les associations de leur territoire.

Nos citoyens-consommacteurs vont donc acheter dans les commerces locaux ce dont ils ont besoin. Les commerçants ont le choix entre continuer la chaîne en utilisant ces chiemgauers pour eux-mêmes consommer localement, ou bien les changer en euros, avec une pénalité de 5% – un billet de 100 CH étant changé contre 95 EUR. Les 2 euros de marge servent à financer le fonctionnement de l’association Chiemgauer. Et les commerçants payent ainsi 5% le service rendu par la monnaie locale, à savoir rediriger la consommation vers leur boutique plutôt que vers les supermarchés ou les chaînes. Système simple où tout le monde est gagnant.

Et bien entendu – mais vous connaissez le système maintenant – le chiemgauer est une monnaie fondante, qui perd 2% de sa valeur faciale chaque trimestre. Résultat : un chiemgauer circule en moyenne 20 fois dans l’année, contre 3,5 fois pour un euro. 6 fois plus de transactions en monnaie locale… bel exemple de vélocité de la monnaie !

Résultats et développement

Le système, outre son essaimage et son rayonnement, continue sa croissance et ses expérimentations :

• 582 000 chiemgauer en circulation (sachant qu’il y a l’équivalent de 900 000 EUR en monnaie locale en circulation en Allemagne, je ne vous fais pas un dessin sur le poids de cette monnaie particulière dans le secteur…) ;
• 3000 utilisateurs particuliers, qui consomment auprès de 600 commerces ;
• Le système a permis de financer à hauteur de 170 000 EUR les associations locales ;
• Ils ont créé dernièrement une alliance avec sterntaler, une autre monnaie locale voisine, ce qui a porté le réseau à 820 commerces au total ;
• Ils ont développé dernièrement une offre de microcrédit en chiemgauers et en euros : ils ont déboursé près de 500 000 EUR, dont 1/3 en chiemgauers.
• (ce sont les chiffres que j’ai récupéré à Lyon lors de la conférence sur les monnaies sociales et complémentaires en février 2011).

Source: 1001 monnaies | 10 May 2011 | 12:03 pm UTC

Un mouvement très important est apparu en Grande Bretagne en 2006 : celui des Territoires en Transition – Transition Towns en anglais -, sous le leadership de Rob Hopkins, un enseignant en permaculture. Je vous laisse découvrir ce mouvement très intéressant et son ampleur en France par le site http://www.transitionfrance.fr/.

En très gros, il s’agit d’un mouvement de citoyens qui partent du principe que nous sommes face à 2 événements majeurs qui vont bouleverser nos modes de vie : la fin du pétrole et le changement climatique. On ne peut pas lutter contre ces réalités, et l’idée du mouvement est de les anticiper en s’organisant pour créer des lieux de vie (les fameux territoires en transition) organisés de manière cohérente et résiliente. Il faut pour cela ré-inventer nos modes de production, de consommation, pour qu’ils soient adaptés à ces phénomènes. Cela nous amène à re-localiser beaucoup de choses…

Ce mouvement fonctionne en réseau non-hiérarchique et décentralisé. Il prend de l’ampleur au niveau mondial, un peu partout et y compris en France.

Le point qui m’intéresse ici, vous l’aurez deviné, c’est cet aspect re-localisation de l’économie, qui amène forcément à se poser la question des monnaies, et notamment des monnaies locales. C’est ainsi que 4 villes en transition de Grande-Bretagne ont commencé à émettre entre 2007 et 2009 leur propre monnaie, valable uniquement sur leur territoire. Il s’agit des villes de Totnes (où est né le mouvement), Lewes, Stroud et Brixton (dans la banlieue Sud de Londres).

Les caractéristiques de ces monnaies sont classiques – vous les connaissez bien si vous lisez régulièrement ce blog…- :

• La monnaie ne peut être utilisée que dans les commerces indépendants du territoire. L’idée est bien d’éviter la fuite de liquidités. Selon une étude de 2002 de la New Economics Foundation, basée à Londres, en moyenne seuls 10 à 12 pennys pour une livre sterling dépensée au supermarché restent dans l’économie locale !
• Les commerçants sont incités à faire des réductions (ou autres avantages) pour les personnes payant en monnaie locale. Totnes et Lewes ont essayé de rendre ces réductions obligatoires, mais ils ont fait marche arrière, car cela ne fonctionnait pas pour certains commerçants.
• le Stroud pound est le dernier né (septembre 2009), et est basé sur le même système que le Chiemgauer allemand : quand un consommacteur l’achète sur la base de 1 pour 1, 3% de la somme est reversée à une association locale. Il y a une taxe de 5% pour les commerçants souhaitant l’échanger contre des livres sterling, et la monnaie « fond » trimestriellement pour 3% de sa valeur.
• Pour les 3 autres, le système est plus simple : on échange la monnaie sur la base de 1 pour 1, et elle peut être convertie en livres sterling dans quelques points de vente précis – sans taxe.
• Comme vous pouvez le voir en ce qui concerne le Brixton Pound, son design est assez flash ! L’accent est très fortement mis sur l’identité locale, puisqu’il s’agit de « héros » du quartier.
• Une curiosité : le Lewes pound se décline sous la forme de billets de 1, 5, 10 et… 21 livres…

Source: 1001 monnaies | 13 May 2011 | 11:00 am UTC

Notre système monétaire meurt par manque de féminité…

Le nouveau Lietaer est sorti ! Il est chaud, il est beau ! Bernard Lietaer a encore frappé, et fort encore une fois.

Son « nouveau » livre s’intitule Au cœur de la monnaie / Systèmes monétaires, inconscient collectif, archétypes et tabous (aux éditions Yves Michel). « Nouveau » entre guillemets car il s’agit de la traduction française – par Michel Ickx – de son livre Mysterium Geld: Emotionale Bedeutung une Wirkungsweise eines Tabus paru en … 2000 ! Mais qu’importe, le manque est réparé.

Un gros beau livre, bien lourd (très lourd…!) préfacé par la Princesse Constance de Polignac, grande amie de Pierre Rabhi, avec pleins d’images, de schémas, c’est alléchant. Et on n’est pas déçu par le contenu…

Ici, pas de considération économique, de technicité monétaire, de savants calculs financiers… Bernard Lietaer nous invite à le suivre dans une enquête qu’il mène, pour laquelle il réunit peu à peu des preuves, des pièces du puzzle, pour prouver (il s’agit de sa thèse centrale) que seule une société se réconciliant avec et intégrant son côté féminin – au sens archétypal du terme – peut apporter la prospérité. Et que cette réintégration du côté féminin est liée à la mise en place d’un éco-système monétaire comprenant 2 types de monnaies :

• D’une part des monnaies qu’il qualifie de yang, que nous connaissons bien puisque nous vivons dedans. Elles favorisent la compétition, la vitesse, l’efficacité, la logique, l’autorité centrale, etc. mais aussi l’accumulation, la guerre, etc.
• D’autre part, des monnaies de type yin, qui ont existé et qui ressurgissent à travers le mouvement des monnaies complémentaires – monnaies locales, SEL, etc. -. Ces monnaies-là favorisent la collaboration, la communauté, etc.

Selon Bernard Lietaer, ce n’est pas parce que nous utilisons une monnaie yang que nous connaissons les problèmes monétaires actuels, mais parce que nous utilisons uniquement une monnaie yang et que nous voulons tout faire avec. C’est l’excès qui créé le déséquilibre, les monnaies yang n’étant pas en soit mauvaises.

Et pourtant Bernard Lietaer nous montre que cet excès n’a pas toujours existé. Il y a eu des époques qui ont connu cet équilibre en utilisant à la fois des monnaies de type yang et des monnaies de type yin. Il nous emmène dans un voyage périlleux : au contact de l’inconscient collectif, des archétypes qui sous-tendent nos sociétés. Je ne vous referais pas en quelques lignes sa démonstration – je vous renvoie au livre – mais ce qu’il défend avec brio est le constat suivant suivant :

L’histoire des civilisations montre que le modèle patriarcal, avec son lot de guerres et conquêtes, a peu à peu dominé le monde. Ce modèle patriarcal dominant a entraîné une répression de la féminité. Jusque là, tout va bien, pas de scoop, tout le monde suit.

C’est après que ça devient passionnant : Bernard Lietaer relie ces changements aux systèmes monétaires en place à ces époques. Il pose l’hypothèse que dans les sociétés à tendance patriarcales, seules les monnaies de types yang sont en circulation dans l’économie. Cela entraîne tout son lot de conséquences : phénomènes de compétition, d’autorité centrale, etc. Alors que dans les sociétés où la féminité n’est pas réprimée, où le masculin et le féminin sont relativement plus équilibrés, on trouve un double système monétaire, où une monnaie yang cohabite avec une monnaie de type yin.

1er focus : le cas du Moyen Âge Central

Le Moyen Âge Central (de 1000 à 1290 environ) a a connu une période de prospérité inexpliquée. C’est une période peu connue – on a l’habitude de considérer le Moyen Age comme une période un peu trouble, homogène. C’est l’époque de l’érection de la quasi totalité des cathédrales d’Europe (300 cathédrales, quasiment toutes dédiées à Notre Dame), de la création des grandes universités (La Sorbonne notamment), de la fondation et la construction de plusieurs milliers d’abbayes. C’est à cette époque, selon certains historiens, que la qualité de vie du citoyen fut la plus haute en Europe ! Or, curieusement, cette période a connu une résurgence importante de l’archétype de la déesse mère, au travers du culte marial et surtout du mouvement des vierges noires. C’est une période où le statut de la femme connut une renaissance et une liberté qu’elle n’avait plus depuis longtemps, et qu’elle ne retrouvera plus…

Plus intéressant encore, l’économie à cette époque utilise 2 types de monnaies : des monnaies de type yang, que nous connaissons bien (lingots, bezant, etc.), et d’autres de type yin, « fondantes ». Concrètement, tous les 5 ou 6 ans, les pièces en circulation étaient reprises et réémises moyennant une taxe d’émission (souvent 3 nouveaux deniers pour 4 anciens deniers). Ce système de démurrage décourageait l’accumulation, mais encourageait les échanges et les investissements long terme : si votre monnaie perd de la valeur avec le temps, vous allez l’utiliser rapidement pour faire des investissements : bétail, moulins, greniers, routes, ponts, cathédrales fleurissent à cette période. Ces investissement deviennent donc la norme et non l’exception. L’épargne était possible, elle se faisait simplement sous la forme de biens d’équipement…! La construction des cathédrales notamment est la conséquence directe de ce système monétaire. Cette économie équilibrée permit une prospérité extraordinaire qui bénéficia dans une grande mesure aux petites gens !

Vers 1300, ce mouvement s’arrêta. Le patriarcat reprit ses habits de conquête, la féminité – et donc l’archétype de la déesse mère dans l’inconscient collectif – fut de nouveau écrasée, les monnaies fondantes furent déstabilisées par des abus de ceux qui les frappaient, la guerre amena son lot de famine et de misère, ce qui a jeté l’Europe dans les bras de la peste noire. Fin d’une belle période qui avait réussi à réconcilier et équilibrer ses deux côtés, féminin et masculin.

2ème focus : le cas de l’Égypte ancienne

Il se trouve qu’avant cela, l’Égypte – avant la conquête romaine – était une société à part sur le pourtour méditerranéen : la place de la femme y était importante, à quasi égalité avec celle de l’homme. On peut le voir par le rôle d’Isis dans la religion, par le fait que plusieurs femmes auront le pouvoir en Égypte, mais aussi par de multiples autres aspects moins connus.

Or il se trouve qu’en Égypte, on trouve également la cohabitation de 2 types de monnaies : les monnaies yang, utilisées pour les échanges « internationaux » et pour l’accumulation, et une monnaie yin, sous forme de reçus de stockage sur un morceau de poterie – appelé ostracon. Ce reçu pouvait être utilisé comme moyen de paiement, puisqu’il était la matérialisation d’un produit stocké. Et lorsqu’une personne venait chercher son bien, on lui déduisait le prix du stockage : pour 10 sacs de céréales déposés, une personne ne récupérait que 9 sacs au bout d’un an. On est donc bien dans le même système de monnaie « fondante », qui décourage l’accumulation et favorise la circulation.

Pour Bernard Lietaer – et bien sûr il étaye sa thèse -, le fait que le peuple égyptien reconnaisse sa composante féminine – dans sa religion, dans la place qu’il donne aux femmes dans la société ou même à la tête du royaume – va de pair avec un système monétaire double et explique la grande prospérité du royaume, considéré comme le grenier à grains du monde ancien.

Quelle signification de tout cela pour nous aujourd’hui ?

Bernard Lietaer se penche ensuite sur notre époque, pour mettre en exergue certains phénomènes :

• D’une part, il observe un développement très fort des monnaies complémentaires, pour la plupart des monnaies yin (souvent fondantes comme beaucoup de monnaies locales, toujours centrées sur leur fonction d’échange et donc inutile à stocker comme les monnaies de crédit mutuel utilisées dans les SEL). Ces monnaies viennent compléter le système monétaire actuel, purement yang, et le rééquilibrer.
• D’autre part, il propose comme lecture des changements en cours qu’un mouvement général de reconnaissance de notre part féminine est en marche. Cela passe notamment par le mouvement des créatifs culturels, et son importance croissante dans la société, ainsi que par l’évolution de conscience qui va avec.

De cela, il tire l’espoir d’un avenir plus conscient, d’une culture intégrant ses 2 côtés masculin / féminin, avec le système monétaire équilibré qui lui correspond et qui nous amène à une société de prospérité.

En conclusion, que penser de ce livre ?

Personnellement, je l’ai lu d’une traite, comme un roman policier ! Il faut rappeler que Bernard Lietaer est un ancien banquier central et ancien trader. On imagine le chemin personnel qu’il lui a fallu faire pour arriver à écrire un livre comme ça ! Je suis étonné par l’ouverture d’esprit dont il fait preuve ici. Un livre audacieux, donc, brillant.

C’est également un livre très étonnant, liant des éléments inhabituels ensembles : la monnaie et la féminité, la prospérité et le système monétaire en place, etc. Et pourtant, malgré son aspect original, son côté alternatif, on sent intuitivement la justesse de tout ce qui est présenté. La lecture n’est pas seulement intellectuelle, le lecteur est rejoint dans sa propre expérience, dans son propre cheminement personnel.

C’est aussi un livre savant tout en étant accessible, liant le passé, le présent et l’avenir. En plus, c’est un livre optimiste, et par les temps qui courent, cela fait du bien !

Un petit point de vocabulaire pour finir : j’ai appris en le lisant le mot de « surestarie », qui signifie le principe de fonte de la monnaie comme l’expliquait Silvio Gesell. On parle aussi de « démurrage ».

Source: 1001 monnaies | 10 Oct 2011 | 8:59 am UTC

Suite à la sortie du livre Au cœur de la monnaie (éditions Yves Michel), Bernard Lietaer a été interrogé par différents journalistes, notamment radio.

Etienne Hayem, alias Zoupic, de l’agence Emmapom qui s’est occupé de la promotion du livre, a répertorié ces émissions, et je voulais les partager avec vous :

• RFI – Autour de la question – Comment changer l’argent : Partie 1 et Comment changer l’argent : Partie 2
• France Info – Chronique Initiative : Ces monnaies qui défient l’euro
• A venir également sur France Culture, l’enregistrement de l’excellente émission Terre à terre, de Ruth Stégassy

A noter également:

• Un article « Au coeur de la monnaie : nos déséquilibres yang et yin » sur Lemnarama le blog d’Olivier Maurel, inventeur des lemnas, une monnaie d’entraide sur Facebook.
• Un article « Au coeur de la monnaie : Bernard Lietaer nous invite au voyage » par Etienne Hayem sur le blog d’Emmapom

A venir également, quelques retombées presse.

Je laisse le mot de la fin à Etienne, sur une remarque intéressante : « Pour les rencontres avec les journalistes, c’est intéressant de voir comment chacun répond et échange à un niveau de conscience propre à sa compréhension du moment. Tous les niveaux sont nécessaire pour faire passer le message mais la profondeur du discours de Bernard a varié largement selon les interlocuteurs. »

Bonne écoute et bonne lecture !

Source: 1001 monnaies | 13 Oct 2011 | 2:02 pm UTC

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Find this issue on: Issuu, Calameo, Scribd, DoxTop, Docstoc or download the PDF here.

Source: All content | 28 Dec 2009 | 12:58 am UTC

Source: All content | 17 Feb 2010 | 7:54 pm UTC

You can find a combined photo here;

http://www.coinforums.com/gallery/ .

I think a whole series is being issued.

Aidan.

Source: All content | 8 Apr 2010 | 7:05 am UTC

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Source: All content | 15 Sep 2010 | 9:01 pm UTC

One of the major barriers to achieving scale in a decentralised mutual credit economy is the fundamental inability of credis and debts to leave the system, making exchanges between groups difficult. however it is critical for the usefulness of the network that members be able to trade outside their local groups, across the network firstly with adjacent local groups

The most highly evolved solution seems to be that each scheme has a single 'intertrading' gateway account which holds the balance of all external transactions. The schemes then make a virtual transfer as user A pays into his schemes intertrading account, while user B is paid an equivalent from her intertrading account. CES was the first to offer this within it's network

This intertrading can take place perfectly well without an all the web sites being able to talk to each other. Community Forge is working with the French and Belgian SELs to set up interSEL trading even without software. Each transaction has to be negotiated by the scheme's accountants. In order for this to happen, all the participating schemes need to agree on a standard measure of value. 

This diagram shows how intertrading usually works between mutual credit clearing circles. Each contained circle is an account within the association, with the intertrading account protruding slightly. Since it is meaningless to transfer value outside the system, value is transfered instead to an intertrading account, while elsewhere an equivalent value is transferred from an intertrading account. This method means that both parties use their normal currency, no special accounts need to be created for one-off transactions, and the currency doesn't go out of circulation, like the Nepali Rupees I brought home and couldn't sell.

The Tauschring network has been working with the Cyclos team, and made a lot of progress in this area.

• They are automating the intertrading between Cyclos instances on different servers, which is harder because there needs to be better authentication and a registry of participating schemes.
• This mutual credit economy has balance-of-trade mechanisms designed in. Intertrading mutual credit associations must, like their members, keep the balances around zero. The equity of the intertrading account is a collective responsibility, as a poor balance-of-trade will restrict intertrading transactions from happening. The Tauschring network has a rule that no intertrading account should hold more than 10% of the scheme's activity.
• They have also agreed on an exchange rate mechanism which factors in a time-value for the currency unit, and the local Euro minimum wage. This is the most advanced, but there do need to be more objective measures of value.

This diagram shows what happens when too many of the above payments are made with too few going in the opposite direction. The intertrading accounts bloat and cause a liquidity crisis. The solution is for the association to constrain the balancing account, just as all the other accounts have minimum and maximum limits.

This summer Tim Jenkin at CES started work on opening up the intertrading API so that mutual credit systems – whatever the software, will be able to intertrade with CES. He's calling this '"Clearing Central". Watch out for it – it will make your local currency globally exchangable.

Source: All content | 17 Sep 2010 | 2:20 pm UTC

This is the first of the innovators updates stream.

Known currency innovators are encouraged to post project updates here once or twice per year to tell the rest of the community what they are up to. This is not a place for discussion, theory, speculation, debate, gossip, links or tweets.

Rather, the intention is to increase efficiency and encourage collaboration between projects as well as telling the rest of us where the leading thinking is.

The style should be something between academic (for which there is the IJCCR) and the popular. Easy-to-read innovation posts WILL be considered for the magazine. Any material posted here is considered creative commons licence, which is to say, we will share it as we see fit, but with your name on it.

If you want to be considered an innovator, please write us with a description of your work!

RSS is available or you can get email updates thus:

1. Creating an account on this site
2. Logging in
3. Clicking here and choosing the send interval

Source: All content | 24 Sep 2010 | 9:28 pm UTC

It's a situation that was all too familiar in the 1930s. On the one hand we have people who want to work, and councils that would like to employ them. On the other hand, we have communities, councils and a national government which would like the work to be done. In the 1930s many community currencies were launched, particularly in the US. Is that the solution this time?

Well, Dundalk, Ennis and Kilkenny all have a Green Party councillor who thinks that if their county helped launch an electronic currency which could be used locally to supplement the euro, its financial straightjacket would ease appreciably. The three – Malcolm Noonan in Kilkenny, Brian Meaney in Clare and Senator Mark Dearey in Dundalk – have been urging their officials to look at the feasibility of this approach.  

I must declare an interest here because the currency system in which they are interested – a liquidity network – was developed by a Feasta working group in which I play a part. The group's motivation was its belief that the supply of euros will get scarcer still because they are created when people go into debt and cancelled when those debts are repaid. It may be many years before ordinary folk and businesses feel it wise to increase the amount they owe because of their present high level of indebtedness. 

If that's the case, a non-debt-based form of money will be needed, so we've designed our new currency to ease the euro's scarcity by supplementing it with a second, complementary currency, the quid, which will be given, rather than lent, into circulation. It will be for local use but will free up euros for external transactions. 

How 'Quids' would work

Quid will not be given away for nothing. They will only go to users who are building the currency's usefulness and acceptability and, because all transactions are electronic, the system's managers will know who they are. 

In the early stages, the most important users will be the local authorities in the area in which the quid circulates. Accordingly, the interim organisation set up to launch a local system – every liquidity network will be run by a local trust made up of trustees charged with representing the users' interests – will give each local authority an advance on the quid it is expected to qualify to be given over the first few months of the system's operation. 

In return, the councils will commit themselves to accepting quid at par with the euro in payment for their local charges, including rates, council house rents, refuse and water charges, parking fees, betterment levies and motor tax. This commitment will run until a local authority has either earned the quid it was advanced or returned any unearned portion to the trust. 

One way the councils will spend their advances  u  is by persuading their employees to accept part-payment of their wages in quid. We expect the employees to agree because they will know that many shops in the area will accept quid at par with the euro and also that they will be given extra quid by the local trust the first few times they carry out quid transactions. They will also know that using the new money will enable the councils to employ more people and provide more services than would otherwise be the case. In other words, if they accept quid, they will make their own jobs safer.

The local traders will know that if they accept quid, they can always use them to pay their rates and other council charges. However, we think it will be competitive and social pressures which compel them to join the system. If they don't take quid, other shops will instead, thus gaining extra business and showing their commitment to the community. 

The quid's basic circulation is therefore from the councils to their employees, from the employees to the shops, and from the shops back to the councils. However, that circulation won't do very much good by itself and the success of the network depends on those who receive quid finding other ways to spend them. So, for example, shop owners should offer their staff and local suppliers part-payment in quid. If they do, the trust will be able to give them a bonus because the increase in the network's turnover they generate will require more quid to go into circulation. 

In short, although quid are given into circulation, they are given to those who have helped develop the system or, like the councils, promise to do so. This is as it should be since the value of a currency is created by those who use it. I will not accept payment in a new money from you unless I know I can pass it on quite easily to someone else, who in turn will need to know that they can spend it easily too. In view of this, a liquidity network rewards people who find new ways to pass its units on or who spend them in larger amounts with the same people.

Giving these bonuses is easy because all the trading records will be kept on one well-backed up computer server. Everyone using the system will need to have an account. One option is to give them a card containing a radio frequency identification (RFID) chip or a sticker containing a chip which they can attach to their mobile phone. They will be then able to make small payments just by tapping the card or their phone on a special pad while larger payments will require the use of a PIN as well. 

Users will be able to check the balance in their accounts on their mobile phones and to pay others via their mobiles as well. The local trust's server will send a text message to their mobiles whenever they earn a bonus payment. 

No-one will be able to get credit in the system. If you want to pay a hundred quid and there's only fifty quid in your account, then fifty is all you can pay and you will need to make up the difference in euros. Not allowing debt is a great advantage as it makes the system much easier to operate since credit checks are not required and users don't have to be chased through the courts to recover bad loans. 

The initial advances to the councils will be paid according to the level of trading they are expected to do in quid in the first year and the number of people and companies that they are expected to involve. Once a council has “earned out” its advance, it is no longer obliged to accept quid at par with the euro and can alter the exchange rate. 

Any user who has been rewarded for achieving  u a certain level of trading who then averages less trade for a specified period will find that the local trust slowly claws back some of the quid they were given to return their float to the level appropriate for their current trade. 

This would allow the total number of quid in circulation in a contracting system to be reduced, an essential feature because every type of money has to be kept scarce if it is to retain its value. If ever the euro became so abundant again that people no longer wanted to be bothered with using the quid, it would be possible to use a combination of the monthly account fee the trust will charge and the penalties on slowing accounts to withdraw quid from circulation and thus wind the system gradually down. 

Giving expanding users more quid and removing them from contracting accounts is only possible because all transactions are made via the internet and mobile phones or through a dedicated terminal. Of the three places that are considering having systems, Dundalk appears to have an edge because it is one of two towns in the country (the other being Tuam) which has had Zapa terminals installed in a hundred shops to make it easy to run local loyalty schemes. These terminals recognise RFID chips and allow payments to be made instantaneously. Dundalk people are already putting euros on to their Zapa cards to make small payments so they don't have to be bothered carrying cash. 

Launching the project

Zapa is an Irish technology start-up company and has agreed to collaborate in the launch of a liquidity network, so the Dundalk shops which have its terminals will be able to accept quid payments without having to purchase additional equipment and find space for it on their counters or checkouts. This is ideal as it will allow our system and its software to be tried out on a small scale without significant capital investment. Later on, other communities will be able to choose whether to use RFID terminals or not. 

If we go ahead in Dundalk, we will keep Kilkenny and Ennis abreast of progress so that their systems can start with little delay. The introduction of a liquidity network to an area breaks the link between the level of economic activity that it is possible to carry on there and the amount of money that the community has borrowed or earned from outside. A liquidity network enables an area to:

1. Build its local economy by developing its local trading links. Many jobs could be created by meeting local needs with local skills and resources.
2. Lessen the burden of mortgage payments and other types of loan service. As the same amount of euros will still be coming into the area, the payments made in quid are likely to be in addition, rather than instead of, payments in euros. Since the quid can be used for local payments instead of euros, it will leave more of the latter available for payments for which only euros are acceptable. As a result, the level of bad debts and rates and loan arrears should decline in areas with liquidity networks.
3. Settle invoices more quickly. Because users are rewarded for their turnover,  there is every incentive to settle accounts as quickly as possible.
4. Lower business costs. If a business is given part of its working capital by its local trust rather than having to borrow it from its bank, it will save part of its interest costs.
5. Local firms prepared to take payment in quid will have an advantage over outside firms which have no means of spending them.

The upside could be enormous. The downside is one of scale. The councils' bonuses need to be sufficiently large to justify the work they will have to put in to set up a parallel accounting system. The bonuses also need to be large – equivalent to a million or more euro – to do much good. Yet, to be safe, a liquidity network has to start small and expand only when the inevitable teething problems are overcome. As much as anything, whether the first system is launched in Dundalk, Ennis, Kilkenny or anywhere else depends on the willingness of the local authority's finance people to act as guinea pigs and co-develop the system in the knowledge that, if it fails, there probably won't be a second chance.

The liquidity network website is at www.theliquiditynetwork.org . 
A brochure can be downloaded from http://bit.ly/liquidbrochure 
There is also information and discussion on the proposal at http://bit.ly/liquidnet

Source: All content | 25 Sep 2010 | 10:54 pm UTC

FEDERAL currency was in short supply during the Great Depression, so local banks, stores, town governments and others with initiative issued their own scrip. In Springfield, Massachusetts, the publisher of the Springfield Union News, Samuel Bowles, began to pay his employees in scrip redeemable at local stores, which used it to pay for advertisements in the newspaper. Seeing Bowles regularly and knowing his character, locals developed more confidence in his dollars than federal money, which helped the Springfield economy stay relatively healthy during those hard times.

        As production for World War II and President Franklin Roosevelt's work programs helped get the national economy back on its feet, local money faded away. But the last few years have seen a resurgence in local currencies, which are being used to keep money in the community and out of mall-based chain retail stores that decimate downtowns and force longtime merchants out of business. Local currencies affirm the value of labor among everyone in the community and reaffirm connections frayed in a mobile, increasingly impersonal society.

        "The current revival is coming out of a sense of alienation with the global economy," says Susan Witt, executive director of the E.F. Schumacher Society and editor of its Local Currency Newspublication. "Scrip is deliberately limiting choices to local sources. It's also limiting choices to people you know, people you have a face-to-face relationship with — those you see at PTA and Board of Selectmen meetings or at work. A yearning for connectedness is behind this revival."

        The resurgence of local money flies in the face of global trends such as the consolidation of national currencies into one unit in the European Union. "Europe is catching up to the U.S., where the monetary destinies of hundreds of millions are controlled by fewer and fewer authorities," notes Paul Glover, founder of Ithaca HOURS, the local currency of Ithaca, New York. "When decisions are made by people far away with different priorities, many local economies become vulnerable. Farmers in this country, for example, have long understood that money moves from rural areas to major money centers — with deadly effect. Local and regional money can revive deflated, discarded economies, both rural and urban."

        The standardized products generated by multinational production hurt local economics and reduce people's sense of connection with a community, says Witt. "So many of our goods now are cookie cutter goods," she explains. "We don't know the story behind them. We don't know what our money is doing — it could be invested in wheelbarrows in Brazil or paper chips in North Carolina or a shoe factory in Taiwan using toxic materials and harming workers. When you buy a local product, chances are you know the person who made it. If it's a wooden table or chair, you might even recognize the forest it came from. There's a sense of wholeness, of connection."

        Like U.S. dollars, local currencies are a legal form of taxable income. The Federal Reserve and the Internal Revenue Service have no prohibitions on local currencies, as long as their value is fixed to the U.S. dollar, the minimum denomination is worth at least $1, and the bills do not look like federal money.

BEGINNINGS OF A RENAISSANCE

        The precursor of the resurgence in local currencies was a 1973 experiment in Exeter, Massachusetts by economist Ralph Borsodi. Fighting against the tide of inflation and Keynsian economics, he sought to demonstrate that people would use an alternative currency that did not devalue. With the cooperation of a local bank, a local newspaper and merchants, Borsodi issued the "constant," a currency that was based on 30 commodities and could be purchased with federal dollars at the bank. Many residents bought and used constants, and few redeemed them for dollars. They circulated for over a year until the nonagenarian Borsodi's health and age brought the experiment to close.

        The next milestone for local currencies came in 1989 when a bank rejected the loan application of a delicatessen owner in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, home of the Schumacher Society. Robert Swann, the society's president, had helped Borsodi with the Exeter experiment. The organization advised proprietor Frank Tortoriello to issue "Deli Dollars" to his customers, who bought notes at $8 each for $10 worth of products at the shop. Dated to stagger redemption over time, Deli Dollars financed the relocation of the store without further debt.

   The results showed how citizens investing in a local business through local currency think far differently from a loan officer feeding numbers into a computer. "His son had cancer and a lot of money that would have gone back into the business went to pay medical bills," notes Witt. "And maybe he's not as hard-nosed a business man as others. But anybody who's walked into the deli and watched Frank work knows he'll produce and do well. Instead of computer knowledge, it's human knowledge. It's a different basis for making decisions."

SUCCESS MULTIPLIES

        The success led five other local businesses to start similar programs, as well as two farms that joined together to issue Berkshire Farm Preserve Notes. In 1993, the Schumacher Society organized the issue of a town-wide currency, the Berkshare, that would circulate only during a six-week period for each of the next three summers.Shoppers received one Berkshare for every $10 they spent at participating stores, which paid $150 each to fund the program. On three consecutive days in September, consumers used Berkshares like federal dollars at stores for 25 to 100 percent of the purchase price of goods. Of the 75,000 Berkshares issued in the first year — representing $75,000 — 28,000 were returned. "That's an incredible return on a giveaway in a three-day period," notes Witt.

        As she collected the notes, Witt encountered reactions showing how the currency galvanized the community. For example, one merchant who thought his customers differed greatly from those frequenting most other establishments was stunned to find how many different stores had issued scrip that wound up in his till. The promotion created a spirit of festivity, as people pondered the possibilities of how to spend their Berkshares. Residents going on vacation during the redemption period gave neighbors their currency, and customers at the registers chipped in Berkshares for those who came up short. "Merchants told me of a sense of cooperation among consumers that they normally don't see," says Witt. 

  Banks and merchants now are pushing for a currency redeemable throughout the year. Residents would put down $90 at a local bank and receive $100 in local currency. The response of the Bank of Boston to the program — the only bank in town not locally owned — is telling. "They said, `what you're proposing is completely opposed to our corporate policy,'" Witt recalls. "`Our policy is to make it as easy as possible for customers to shop anywhere around the world for anything they want. What you've suggested is completely contrary — and we totally support it.' We're talking about human beings here, who happen to be bankers. They themselves are yearning for more connection to the community."

        And although the Berkshare program has been dormant over the last few years, the effects have been lasting. "What we found with Deli Dollars and Berkshares is that local scrip is an educational tool," Witt explains. "People become educated about the importance of shopping locally and begin making good decisions about federal dollars. It creates a general climate for more awareness of the need to support more mainstream local businesses."

ITHACA HOURS EMPOWER

        After receiving a grant to Study ecological economics, Paul Glover decided to issue scrip in his home town of Ithaca, New York. (Six months after starting, he spent a week of research at the Schumacher Society's library of local currency books.) "I saw that environmental concerns often were pushed from the stage in the rush for jobs and profits, and that money did not care about ecology," says Glover. "So, investments were not readily available for ecological innovations. Therefore, we've started a money system with a regional boundary dedicated to the expansion of commerce that considers ecology and social justice."

        Reinforcing trade within the town reduces transport of goods from elsewhere, therefore decreasing use of fossil fuels. "It also makes it easier to trace the environmental impacts of extraction, fabrication, transport and utilization," says Glover. "Also, by connecting people in a flesh-and-blood marketplace, where we become friends, lovers, and social and political allies, or resources, we reduce the social desperation that often leads to compulsive shopping. That may be a little abstract, but it's very relevant to a lot of what drives the manufacture of consumer goods. People often buy things to make themselves feel better, to fill a void, to feel more powerful. I think the role of the marketplace is to be a human intersection, not just a computerized abstraction."

        Glover started by signing up 90 people, showing them the prototype bill he designed. The basic unit, the Ithaca HOUR, is equivalent to $10, reflecting the ideals of a Sustainable minimum wage and pay equity (though professionals may charge multiple HOURS per hour). Ithaca HOURS are issued to residents agreeing to accept the currency, as bonus payments to those who remain with the program, as grants to community organizations, and as loans at zero interest. Five percent of the currency goes toward administrative costs such as printing, legal fees and publicity. The underpinning for Ithaca HOURS is HOUR Town, a bimonthly directory of goods and services that are available in exchange for the currency. The per capita supply of HOURS increases as more people accept them. "HOURS are backed by goods and services people will buy," notes Glover. "Dollars are backed by a $5.5 trillion national debt."

        The program has issued, $66,000 in five denominations of Ithaca HOURS. It has grown to include thousands of residents and 370 businesses, including a bank, movie theaters, a bowling alley, health clubs, restaurants, farmers, plumbers, carpenters, electricians and a hospital. Many honor HOURS for their entire bill, while others accept them for a percentage of the cost. "We have transacted millions of dollars in value," notes Glover. "There's not only an economic benefit, but a cultural and human one because it helps us learn about each other as resources rather than competitors for scarce dollars. In the regional economy, at its best, everyone can have a unique and creative niche, while in the global economy, everyone is disposable."

        Several hundred success stories published in HOUR Town have told of how the currency has supplemented household income, Made people feel less isolated, changed spending patterns, and given residents the satisfaction of getting paid for what they enjoy doing. The latest twist is the establishment of a health fund among local providers paid for in HOURS.

        The next plan is a pilot program to make a major grant of Ithaca HOURS to the municipal government to supplement the incomes of human service employees. The government would then accept Ithaca HOURS for property tax payments. "The HOURS would go to employees, who could spend them at any merchant or landlord," Glover explains. "They would in turn accept local money because they could use it to pay property taxes."

Source: All content | 28 Sep 2010 | 2:05 am UTC

Ithaca Hours creator, community organizer Paul Glover, had received a grant to study the Ithaca economy and concluded that, since there wasn't enough money to fix the system, Ithaca should print its own money. His premise was simple: the local economy was failing. People were making money locally and spending it in malls and corporate chain stores. But if you put a town's name on it and backed it with people instead of banks, you could ensure the money would never leave, just re-circulate, only comforting the wallets of those lucky enough to share the Ithaca area code. 

The plan worked and Ithaca's unemployment rate has remained a full two percentage points better than the national average for the last 20 years. Since his move to Philadelphia five years ago, Glover has become something of a sage for Pennsylvania communities in need of an economic boost, giving lectures on the local economy and explaining the magic of local currency. Now, the concept that started as a crayon sketch while coloring with his girlfriend's nieces, has three PA communities looking to cash in, putting a new face on old money.

"The basic ingredient for a local currency is that a dollar system is not distributing the money effectively in the community," says Glover. "What are dollars backed by? They have been backed by gold, silver, rusting industry and a $12 trillion national debt that will never be repaid. In local communities, we regard dollars as funny money. Whereas dollars will come to town, shake a few hands and then be gone, this is money with a boundary around it."

"The economy will not rebound until consumers start spending again," says Ardmore Initiative Executive Director Christine Vilardo. "We wanted to do something that would keep that spending local."

A sale or discount wasn't going to do it. This was a community-wide problem, so the solution had to be holistic. Planners at the Ardmore Initiative saw the downturn as an opportunity to bring people back to Ardmore. After looking at Glover's work and similar programs, they created Downtown Dollars, a form of currency that would create a discount at smaller retailers in the Ardmore business district. Invoking the feeling of traveling to a country with a favorable exchange rate, Downtown Dollars are exchanged for double the cash value, creating a district-wide half-off sale. This way, instead of just one store reaping the benefits, shoppers were free to search for bargains at less-visited establishments.

Backed by an initial $5,000 grant from the Ardmore Initiative, Downtown Dollars hit the streets in May and sold out in a matter of hours. People waited in line in the rain to collect the steep neighborhood discounts. Since then, AI has put another $2,500 on the front end, and, with the help of local banker and chair member John Durso, were able to secure $10,000 of additional funding from four community banks. This will allow Downtown Dollars to return in November, where AI hopes to once again draw consumers just in time for the winter shopping season.

"This was never intended to be a long term solution, just a short term solution to what we hope is a temporary economic situation," says Vilardo. "We have seen the environment start to change, people are starting to shop and spend money again. And this program makes people aware of just how many stores and places to shop we really do have in Ardmore."

In the time that it took Ardmore to create and distribute their local currency, a similar effort in the Lehigh Valley had all but fallen apart. Using Ithaca as a model, retired teacher and environmental activist Gwen Colgrove had created a local currency group called Lehigh Valley Dough in 2009. The group invited Glover to speak at a forum on the economy in the Lehigh Valley and, with a few fellow activists, Colgrove enlisted a team to help compile a list of businesses to target. But after returning from a six-month voyage to India, she found her team missing in action and an inbox full of e-mails from excited business owners. Now, Colgrove is back on the case, searching for a full-time office manager for the project and lobbying community organizations for support.

This isn't the first time the Lehigh Valley launched its own currency program. In the mid-1990s, an hours program was put in place to battle high unemployment, enrolling over 100 area businesses to accept the 1-to-1 local currency. But with no one leading the charge, the system quickly fizzled out. So when Colgrove called Glover this time, his advice was simple: hire full-time people and it will work.

"When one starts a local currency, one is starting a community institution," says Glover. "The game of monopoly is over in a few hours but the challenge of anti-monopoly never ends. Any community that wants to start it needs to hire one person to network to the community."

Colgrove may be the right person for the job. "Our monetary system only benefits the originator, it doesn't build community and it doesn't solve many of the problems average communities face," she says. "And yet that is rewarded most with the pay system we have embraced now. But part of the idea of having a local community is to foster the common wealth and keep the basics local."

As for Glover, now that he has found a new home and a few new devotees, he is looking for one thing: trouble. In a plan to combine his two greatest achievements–his currency and the Ithaca Health Alliance free clinic he founded in 1997–Glover recently created a form of low-cost medical insurance that would create a health-conscious currency, allowing over a half a million uninsured Southeastern Pennsylvanians to pay just $100 per year for basic medical services.

Partnering with Dr. Patch Adams, a well-known free clinician and the subject of the 1998 Robin Williams film, Glover hopes to open PhilaHealthia, a free clinic where patients can purchase Medicash, a currency with a new boundary: health. Businesses promoting a healthy lifestyle would accept Philadelphia Medicash, as would PhilaHealthia. Along with promoting the empowerment of a local currency, Glover says, the Medicash would incentivise healthier living.

"This currency underscores a transfer of economic power from Wall Street to Main Street," says Glover. "And it allows people to further explore the healthy options in their local community while being insured."

Only this time, he has not been received with the same warm accolades. The Pennsylvania Insurance Department has issued a Cease and Desist order to PhilaHealthia, saying it requires an insurance license to avoid violating state laws. This license, Glover contends, requires exorbitant cost and years of red tape.

"Their laws are a cage for us to die in so we are going to do it anyway," says Glover. "We have started an underground movement of uninsured people who pool money into what is now a glorified broken bone fund. But without state approval, we are limited to an underground movement. And we will be inviting the state insurance department to come to Philadelphia and address the uninsured and tell us why we must die rather than collaborate with one another."

When asked if he had any fear of reprisal, Glover had one response: bring it on.

"I hope to get in as much trouble as I can," Glover says. "People gain dignity through taking power over finance. Large social changes to redress injustice require revolution. And I don't expect that change to come easily."
 

John Steele is a freelance writer and blogger in Philadelphia. He enjoys music snobbery, trash television and laughing at hipsters.

Links:

http://ardmoreinitiative.org/page.asp?page=downtowndollars

http://www.healthdemocracy.org/philahealthia.html

Source: All content | 28 Sep 2010 | 2:34 pm UTC

As a result of more requests from time bank members to be able to log in and manage their own accounts, we have now developed a “beta” system which allows time bank members to log onto time online and check their hours and details and also to put in requests.  

Earlier this year we launched a facility so that non-members can search by post code or town for their nearest time bank online and then see on a map exactly where it is, what services it offers including an electronic form to make contact with the broker.   

We have now taken this a step further so that members who are already signed up with the time bank can securely log in, search the services that people are asking for (locally and nationally) as well as log the hours they’ve done, print off a statement or request that someone else does something for them. We also see this as an opportunity for members to create their own profile with photos and an area for them to discuss local events, resources, share links (not necessarily related to the time bank) with each other, join together to run campaigns or just connect with other like minded people. Basically it’s up to the individual how much he or she gets involved – no personal contact details would be given out via the site unless the person decides to allow it.   

We have reached out further than just computers, to connect with people who have mobile phones so that when the broker receives a request about a service (via whatever media) – he/she can then spread the word quickly via SMS to try to find a “match”.

Ideal for time-critical services, emergencies or simply just keeping up with the culture of speed. The entire assignment can be set up via SMS. The bulk-sending of text messages can also be used to promote local events, remind people of their time bank balances, and to generally prompt people to interact with the time bank.  

Finally, if you don’t have access to the internet then don’t worry. If you have Sky or Virgin TV you can use your TV to learn more about Timebanking and we are piloting the use of digital TV to help time brokers promote events, give people 24/7 free access to their local time bank, enable exchanges and many other ways in which we can use DiTV to promote social action.   

Timebanking UK is at the forefront of electronic community currency work and have a vision of incorporating time banks with initiatives like ‘talk about local’ to provide local hubs all plugged into a national network – A truly Big Society.
 
www.timebanking.org
info@timebanks.co.uk

Source: All content | 28 Sep 2010 | 2:48 pm UTC

Mendo Moola is a local, self-help, complementary currency that stays home with us here in Mendocino County, issued by individual, locally-owned businesses, and circulated only within Mendocino County.

Mendo Moola Proposed Rules:

1. Mendo Moola™ (MM) as a Local Currency is being issued in wooden coins by merchants with a store front that stocks inventory. It is then backed by the full faith and credit of the merchant’s inventory and cash flow, and by the health of the community’s local trade.

2. MM is guaranteed by the issuing merchant to always be redeemed for regular money upon request by either customers or other businesses… although using MM to purchase products is preferred.

3. MM will only be issued by the issuing merchant into circulation as change, direct exchange for cash (not sold), or as “gift certificates”.

4. MM will not be initially issued into circulation by being “spent” by the issuing merchant for products or services, i.e. merchants will not use their own stored currency to purchase products themselves to introduce it into circulation. Rather, it will only be put into circulation by Rule 3. Rules 3 and 4 are to protect local currencies from inflating. MM accepted in payment can be used for any purpose once it has come back to the issuing merchant.

5. When accepted as payment, MM will be treated as cash in payment of a taxable or nontaxable product or service.

6. Merchants may treat their own branded MM on their books as Gift Certificates. Production of local currencies may be expensed as an Advertising Expense. Check with a CPA on these issues.

Circulation: Authorized MM can be put into circulation by exchanging $5 for a MM coin (not purchasing it as a product) at Mulligan Books and Ukiah Brewing Company, or accepting MM in change when purchasing books or food, and then using it to purchase at participating businesses and restaurants, or giving it to someone to be used like a gift certificate, or paying a babysitter or landscaper with it. It can also be accepted as change from participating merchants to be used again at another locally-owned business. Don’t “bogart” that coin, my friend. Keep it moving. We build local jobs and common wealth by using local currencies again and again.

Authorization: Mendo Moola™ is Trademarked by Mulligan Books and is authorized for use by a local merchants group. Initial success will hopefully lead to a paper currency backed by local merchants.

Anyone can issue their own local branded currency backed by their products and/or services and ask other businesses to accept it. However, Mendo Moola branded currency can only be issued as authorized and listed on this website.The first local business to issue its own Mendo Moola currency is Mulligan Books in downtown Ukiah using $5 wood coins as change for purchases, and as gift certificates.

Every time money changes hands within a community, it boosts the community’s overall income and level of economic activity, and fuels the creation of jobs. The more times money changes hands within the community before heading elsewhere, the better off the community is. And spending money at a locally-owned business has a greater multiplier effect because they are more likely to respend their dollars locally.

By using Mendo Moola in trade — face-to-face, hand-to-hand — we are using money that never leaves our community as it does when using U.S. dollars and Credit Cards, thus facilitating additional exchanges in the local economy and making it possible to match unmet needs with unused resources. And unlike plastic and checks, the privacy of transactions remains private. The more it changes hands and the faster it circulates, the more local jobs, local businesses, and common wealth are created. $5 in Mendo Moola that changes hands 10 times in a month, is worth $50 in goods and services to the local economy. That’s money being smart!

These are first steps taken by locally-owned businesses that hopefully lead to producing our own paper money.

We encourage locally-owned farms and businesses to accept in payment, and give change, in Mendo Moola. Local currencies work best with continued use in local transactions between locally-owned businesses and neighbors. Ask local shops to accept it, ask for it in change, give it as gifts, and spend it first when you have it.

Source: All content | 28 Sep 2010 | 7:21 pm UTC

This is a story about how an economist and his buddies tricked the people of Brazil into saving the country from rampant inflation. They had a crazy, unlikely plan, and it worked.

Source: All content | 7 Oct 2010 | 12:23 pm UTC

Only the mainstream media and government economists seem not to believe that the Western economy is crumbling before our very eyes. Every economic measure, each more desperate than the last, seems only to enrich to banking and other corporations. Almost no-one is talking about de-growth, and from the mainstream media there is virtually discussion about the design of money, or comprehension about who owns all the debt.

Solving the problem of money is a prerequisite for solving the problem of climate change.  Hence it is, even more deserving of our attention than climate change. As long as money is issued as interest-bearing debt, there will never be enough of it to repay the debt with interest. It is this built-in scarcity which drives human societies to convert the commons and natural resources to money. It is the interest burden of the money in circulation which is tipping countries into austerity and climate impotence.

Some sterling efforts are being made to change the money system from the top down. It is absolutely necessary to show the bankers the errors of their ways, and to educate elected representatives about the nuts and bolts of economics. Great strides are being made in South America to bring those countries out from under the hegemony of the dollar. Chinese money is interest free, Indonesia is returning to gold-money. But top down change is hard. We cannot rely on governments and central bankers to make good decisions, especially with their inclination to spend now and pay later. Just as the tobacco industry twisted the science, and our governments frogmarched us into war on the back of a sloppy public relations campaign, those who profit from debt-money will use all means at their disposal to ignore, deflect, distract, disparage and if necessary, destroy belief systems which do not reify their particular self-serving economic models.

We have waited nearly 20 years for our governments to take the lead on climate change, and regulating the light bulbs was a great start. But democracy doesn't work any more, we have to think about bottom-up change. Instead of influencing a few, hard-to-access people, we have to influence a 'critical mass' of everybody, each with their own understanding of the world. 

Popular mythology around the Millenium, 2012, and the Age of Aquarius, has been expecting an unlikely sounding 'global shift in human consciousness'. The exhausting pace of technology, the screaming from the climatologists, and the economic nausea have certainly shifted my consciousness. And not only me – I am surrounded by examples of innovation and increasing social volatility.

Societies have two basic options.  The default, passive choice is to head for hell in a handbasket – rulership by an elite clique, utter environmental depletion, and a new serfdom, bound by chains of debt. But some groups or even whole countries might escape this fate. The alternatives and how to achieve them are staring us in the face – its just a matter of realising them.

Every time we pay or charge bills in debt-money we reinforce the absolutely failed notion that banking corporations are more trustworthy than ordinary people. Changing our relationship to this debt-money does involve a radical shift in consciousness.  We cannot save ourselves this time, we can only save each other through community. The good news is that for now, the internet is on our side. Ordinary people have the tools to organise as never before. Debt money has failed to direct resources to where they are most needed. This magazine is about communities transforming their relationship to money, and taking on an attitude of abundance and cooperation.

While there has long been a distinct thread of monetary discussion in the localisation movement, it has had very little impact so far. Money is like the blood that oxygenates society, and individual organs cannot easily opt-out. And while there are many fierce advocates for improving money, institutional support is barely detectable, and most establishment thinkers discount CCs without even understanding them.

True, the movement has a poor track record. Its activists usually have little experience of government, business, media, project management, administration, fundraising, or PR.  Strong headed individuals abound, focusing intensely on implementing their own ideas, uncompromising and unable to muster enough support to realise their plans. Sometimes it seems as if everyone wants to be a luminary and no-one wants to be illuminated. There are those who say we have strength in diversity, and that diversity is critical for a resilience; I agree completely, but I am calling for unity in diversity; listening, sharing, appreciating. We have so much in common: we understand that money and debt are instruments of control but we seek to determine own values and choices.

This new economics requires much experimentation, and each experiment involves the livelihoods of whole communities. There is no need to repeat mistakes, no need to take orders from above, we need only work with the awareness of being part of a greater Whole.

So I would like humbly to offer my suggestions to the movement, about how individuals can work to get us to the next level.

• Set up RSS and use it to track all the news sources and blogs that you consider relevant. This will help to keep your work relevant!
• Be aware of, and support the wider movement (like this mag!!) This is probably very efficient use of resources, even if it can't be measured.
• Redeem yourself, literally, by paying off your debts; put all your extra money back into circulation so that others can use it to pay off their debts. Instead of money, shares and pensions, hold tangible assets such as property, food, or metals. Or at least go with a community bank or credit union.
• Reduce the amount of hours you work for money. Then you have more time to re-use, reduce, recycle; share your stuff, make stuff instead of buying. Value things differently – without reference to the national currency. Join your local LETS or Time Bank. Organise things!
• Grow your community. A typical LETS with 100 people in a town does not make a useful economy. Show movies, invite discussions, display at events, practice loving your neighbours. A complementary currency scheme can be an excuse for socialising, but it can also be a collection of more deeply like-minded people.
• One person projects often fail because their protagonists don't understand how many skills are needed to nurse a project from conception to demonstrated impact.
• If you can't get support for your project, swallow your pride for five years, and put your weight behind something with more chance. There is no shortcut to leadership. Many of those bidding to lead communities have personality disorders and can destroy everything if they are not actively prevented!
• People with energy and skills should decide who they think is doing the most valuable work, and seek to augment that. Specialise in what you do best, and support all who need your skills. Making change is much more about working with people than merely implementing technical solutions. This is what I have learned as a software engineer.

This magazine is offered as a channel for communication. Through communication, we can become coherent. 

This magazine would be better if we had more volunteers with skills.

Please put your projects on our map so that locals and visitors can find you. Share your stories and insights with the rest of us.

Tell us about your community and projects

• what works, what doesn't work, and why
• your partnerships, strategies and choices
• how you engage with local government
• what the future holds
• what you need from the rest of the movement

Then print the mag; read it; and share it!

Source: All content | 10 Oct 2010 | 9:00 am UTC

Stephen Zarlenga, author of The Lost Science of Money – The Mythology of Money – the Story of Power and co-founder of the American Monetary Institute , noted that the severe nature of the monetary problem cannot be denied or hidden anymore. Modern economists, in general, have been disgraced, as they have justified forms of usury to empower those misusing the world’s money systems in favor of utility over morality. He quoted Henry George, who wrote

“[economics]…a science which…seems but to justify injustice, to canonize selfishness by throwing around it the halo of utility…”

The vast majority of people can see that the financially powerful are taking advantage of the weak. The real battle has been over whether the creation of money will be private or public, and how to define money. Zarlenga has concluded from his study that

“money is an abstract social power – an institution of the law, becoming money because government receives it in taxes, and having value because of people working in a supportive legal and social structure producing values for life.”

Without monetary reform there cannot be democracy. The main parts of the American Monetary Act would nationalize the Federal Reserve and incorporate it into the Treasury Department, prohibit private banks from creating money, and allow the government to create money by spending it on infrastructure, including healthcare and education and a one-time citizens’ dividend. (His opening remarks are posted here.)

New Zealander Jamie Walton detailed the minimum planks of the American Monetary Act that would be necessary to put time on the side of the people, acknowledging that many more reforms would be needed before the Act could even get passed by Congress. He emphasized that monetary reform was the key to all the other things that we seek–recovery, stability, prosperity, sustainability, justice, peace, security, and freedom. (Yamaguchi’s sophisticated model shows how this reform would theoretically work demonstrating that it can pay off the national debt without inflation).

Congressman Dennis Kucinich participated via video praising Zarlenga and the AMI’s work and stating that he hoped to introduce a bill incorporating the American Monetary Act’s main proposals into Congress this November.

Monetary experts Robert Poteat, Professor Nic Tideman, and Dick Distelhorst made eloquent, powerful cases for the need for monetary reform as soon as possible, emphasizing the moral imperative of money being used to serve people rather than to rob the many for the benefit of the few. David Kelley also spoke about how to counter the lies, blasting the Orwellian language and rhetoric that so often paralyzes the public. “We need to understand profoundly the depth and magnitude of the looting that is going on–identify it, name it, stop it.”

I spoke at the conference on “Strategy for the Monetary Reform Movement,” trying to identify where we are historically and point to the most effective steps to take. Every speaker seemed to shine a light on some aspect or facet of the unique time we are living in, as well as the larger patterns, to help us identify leverage points to turn the system from its destructive path to the direction of justice, truth, morality, and life.

Greg Coleridge described his work with the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy (POCLAD). He spent a considerable amount of time researching the roots of our problems, eventually identifying the corporate form and its history. Subsequently POCLAD traveled around the country, educating people about the need to rein in corporate personhood, whose power is perhaps the greatest threat to humanity today. He mentioned (as I had) the Populist Party and how they worked, and succeeded to some degree, to rein in the corporations over a hundred years ago, and how the real battle that we find ourselves in is the corporate colonization of our minds, the struggle between people power and corporate power. In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling that allowed corporations to spend an unlimited amount of money on elections, they launched MoveToAmend.orgto end corporate rule and legalize democracy!

Professor Michael Hudson, author of Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire, in his talk, also mentioned that the transference of wealth taking place today rivals the corporate giveaways to the railroads in the 1800s and described it in biological terms. He said that parasites not only numb their hosts but can actually affect their brains so that their hosts think that the parasite is part of them, and even steer their hosts towards food so that the parasites can feed themselves. The financial parasites are clearly devouring the productive capacity of the Earth at tremendous human and environmental cost, and they couldn’t do so without controlling the public mind or the media. Professor Hudson also spoke about the looting of the Savings and Loans in the 1980s which began the most dramatic period of the criminalization of the financial industry. A supporter of the AMI’s proposed reforms, he advised us to broaden our focus to include the fiscal reforms that must accompany monetary reform; the land issue and money issues are impossible to separate.

Both Professor Keen and Professor Yamaguchi had separately developed complex computer models to show the dysfunctionality of the current debt-based system, as well as to demonstrate where reforms could be introduced to remedy the situation. Professor Keen’s main point was that credit itself was not bad, depending on what it was created for. When introduced into the system for productive purposes, it is not harmful, but when introduced to fuel speculation, it can be disastrous and serves to act as the devouring parasite. He suggested adding other measures to prohibit parasitic speculation. Professor Yamaguchi’s model was more complex than Professor Keen’s. He showed how the system would work if the AMI’s monetary reforms were introduced; he provided his software to everyone for free to try out and get our feedback. 

Steven Walsh, who has been studying colonial script, facilitated the group discussion for several hours to draw out our collective wisdom in identifying goals, obstacles, blocks, language, and processes we need to think about if we are to succeed in winning over the public, implementing monetary reform, and realizing our higher goals. Ben Dyson described his accomplishments and efforts in the U.K. to convert “enemies” into allies and gain public support to enact similar legislative reforms under the banner of “Positive Money” and a win/win situation for everyone.

Tommy Gregory of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the National Agricultural Statistics Service and organic farmer Douglas Wolfe examined agricultural issues and how money, parity, and policy decisions affect farmers, the crops they grow, and consequently human health. The monetary issue can’t really be separated from land and tax issues, since money, land, military force or taxes can be used to force people from the land or enslave and rob them. Today, there has never been greater inequities, or a concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few. William Bergman described, in brief, his experiences at the Federal Reserve Bank in Chicago, and how he viewed the bailout, the winners and the losers.

Steven Keen also wrote a report on this conference and posted it at his website www.debtdeflation.com with links to videos of his presentation, as well as Professor Hudson and Professor Yamaguchi’s talks.

Source: All content | 12 Oct 2010 | 1:49 pm UTC

Die nachhaltige Triodos Bank stellt in Ihrem Blog-Beitrag “Wir fordern zu neuem Denken über Bankwesen auf” 6 Thesen und Forderungen für eine “neue Bank” auf. Hier die 6 Forderungen.

1. Die Bank konzentriert sich wieder auf ihre Kernaufgabe, für die sie durch die Gesellschaft beauftragt worden ist: Einlagen einsammeln und hiermit Kredite vergeben.

Alle weiteren Aufgaben, die viele Banken heute betreiben, speziell riskante Investments, müssen von diesem Kerngeschäft abgespalten werden. Selbst dann gilt jedoch: Keine Spekulation. Derivative Produkte sind aufzugeben, solange sie nicht unmittelbar der Finanzierung der Realwirtschaft dienen. Der Eigenhandel ist einzustellen.

2. Die Bank ist transparent. Dem Kunden und anderen Interessensgruppen ist zu jeder Zeit klar, was die Bank finanziert bzw. in was sie investiert, wie sie ihre Erträge und Rendite erwirtschaftet, welche Risiken sie hierbei eingeht und wie sie diese managt.

3. Die Bank ist mittelständisch. Dies geht einher mit einer thematischen (Bsp. Nachhaltigkeit)  bzw. geographischen Spezialisierung.

Denn Größe ist kein Selbstzweck. Deshalb sollte gelten: Umso größer eine Bank, umso mehr Eigenkapital muss sie vorweisen. Mit Größe der Bilanzsumme sollten insgesamt die Eigenkapitalanforderungen steigen.

4. Die Bank handelt nicht nur im Interesse ihrer Anteilseigner, aber auch im Interesse anderer Anspruchsgruppen, insbesondere Kunden und Mitarbeiter.

Die Bank ist sich ihres gesellschaftlichen Auftrages bewusst. Ihr Ziel ist nicht die kurzfristige Profitmaximierung, sondern die Maximierung der Nachhaltigkeit als Einklang von Mensch, Umwelt und Wirtschaft.

5. Die Bank hat klare Ausschlusskriterien, was sie aus ethisch-ökologischen Gründen nicht finanziert. Diese werden veröffentlicht und die Bank lässt sich hieran messen. Die Bank sollte in ihrer Finanzierungs- und Investitionstätigkeit auch nachhaltige Unternehmen und Projekte einschließen.

Risiken müssen minimiert und kontrolliert werden. Denn es ist die oberste Pflicht der Bank, ihre kontinuierliche Rolle als Finanzierer der Realwirtschaft nicht unnötig zu gefährden.

6. Die Bank wird von Bankern geführt, die sich ihrer wichtigen gesellschaftlichen Rolle bewusst sind und diese auch erfüllen können. Sie denken in Beziehungen, nicht in Transaktionen. Sie denken langfristig, nicht kurzfristig und machen ihre Handlungen transparent.

 

Die Punkte sind wichtig und richtig. Gerade der 1. Punkt, nämlich die Rückbesinnung auf die Kernaufgabe “Vergabe von Krediten”, ist der Dreh- und Angelpunkt. (Weshalb Einlagen einsammeln eine Kernaufgabe sein soll, ist mir dabei allerdings nicht bewusst – aber das ist möglicherweise der Tatsache geschuldet, dass die Authorin von einer Bank ist und Banken nach Eigenkapital suchen).

Um die Wirksamkeit der aufgeführten Punkte sicherzustellen, fehlt ein entscheidender Gedanke. Die Situation ist nämlich vergleichbar mit einem Kind, das mit der Mutter vereinbart, was es im Spielzimmer alles machen darf, und was nicht. Zum Beispiel ist das Bemalen der Wände verboten. Solange die Mutter dabei ist, wird sich das Kind sicher daran erinnern, die Wände nicht zu bemalen. Aber wenn die Mutter zum Telefon geht und z.B. 1 Stunde mit einer Freundin telefoniert, dann könnte das Kind doch auf die Idee kommen, in einer schlecht einsichtigen Ecke die Wände zu bemalen. Weil die Kontrolle fehlt. Das Verhalten ist nur allzu menschlich.

Deshalb sollte die “neue Bank” unbedingt auch Punkt 7 erfüllen:

7. Das Funktionieren des Bankwesens in der Volkswirtschaft ist elementar wichtig. Es liegt deshalb im vitalen Interesse des Staates, diesen Bereich stark zu reglementieren und stark zu kontrollieren. Es wird deshalb eine strenge Regulierung und eine strenge Kontrolle des Finanzsektors direkt durch den Staat eingeführt.

Denn eines ist klar: ein Kind, das gesehen hat wie schön es ist Wände zu bemalen, wird eher dazu neigen, die Wände nochmals zu bemalen. Dieses Kind braucht für eine Übergangszeit eine recht häufige Aufsicht durch die Mutter. So müssen die Banken für die nächsten Jahre ebenfalls sehr stark regulierte und kontrolliert werden – es muss wieder das Bewusstsein des “banking is boring” entstehen. Dann werden die “Zocker-Naturen” die Branche auch wieder meiden und es wird eine Normalisierung einkehren.

Source: Grünes Geld News | 2 Dec 2011 | 9:11 am UTC

CC Central

connecting community currencies

John Rogers

Complementary currencies, community currencies, local currencies, transition currencies, local money – a bunch of names for a worldwide explosion of New Money while Old Money burns.

I've been designing, running and taking part in various community currencies for the last 17 years. In that time I've heard a lot of theories and seen a lot of practice. I've met participants from rich and poor communities around the world; I've been equally impressed and depressed at both the potential and the actual practice of community currencies. Like the great baseball coach Yogi Berra said: “In theory there's no difference between theory and practice; in practice, there is!”

I believe we need a lot less ideology around the subject of community currencies and more methodology.

In this regular column I'm going to think out loud about the thousands of experiments with community currencies around the world and find out why so many systems crash, sometimes not long after they leave the garage with great fanfare. I will be questioning practice to see what's working and what could be improved. I'll be revisiting the theories to see how they work in practice and celebrating the successes.

And from the start I want to encourage you to send in your questions, thoughts, problems, challenges, yes even your theories about the practice of community currencies.

A community currency is like a bus that takes people where they want to go. You need an engine – the right mechanism for the kind of bus you are designing; you need a driver – a trained, skilled manager who makes sure people reach their destinations; you need a bus company to arrange the timetable and services and make sure health and safety are taken care of.

A bus has four wheels and there are four essential elements to a sustainable community currency: cost recovery; governance; management; marketing.

You might recover costs, do good marketing and manage the system well but if you don't think about how it is governed, how longterm decisions are made, how conflicts are resolved, your bus will crash.

You might have great governance, management and marketing but if you don't recover the system's own running costs, your bus will crash.

You might govern, manage and recover costs but if you don't market the system well, noone will use it and your bus will crash.

You may cover all costs, market brilliantly and have inclusive governance but if you don't manage the system properly, your bus will crash.

We'll take a trip through community currency land over the next few issues and find out how people are dealing with these issues to create systems that last.

Enjoy the ride!

Source: All content | 20 Oct 2010 | 9:35 pm UTC

Digna López Espinal was one of 300,000 farmers who lost their crops in the recent flooding in Honduras, and yet she is optimistic for the future. Although she lost half of the crops due for harvest, as a member of COMAL (The Alternative Community Marketing Network), Espinal is getting help to plant for the next season. It is part of COMAL's purpose to improve farmers' livelihoods.

From small beginnings COMAL has grown into a network of more than 40 smallscale farmers' organisations and the Espinal family is just one of 16,000 families who benefit. As well as helping flood-affected farmers replant, COMAL purchases their produce at a guaranteed price and sells it through a network of over 200 community stores across Honduras. It also helps to develop and market the produce, offers credit and loans to farmers, and has even created its own community-based currency.

While the network of community stores purchase and sell these goods, they also offer a lifeline for many. In some COMAL communities the most vulnerable farming families are supported by a social fund financed with money from the community shop.

Credit where it's due

COMAL's community currency – Solidarity Exchange Units (UDIS) – are designed to ensure that money circulates locally, preventing profit and investment being lost to outside markets. UDIS have the same value as national currency (Lempira) and are used as a form of payment within the community shops. The shops then use it to source products from COMAL, which pays farmers partly in UDIS, which can be used to purchase goods in the community shops. Using UDIS within the network enables COMAL to use Lempira to source goods from outside the network, and to buy in bulk at lower cost.

COMAL's community currency, the UDIS

CAFOD

UDIS are also used by COMAL when providing farmers with loans to access agricultural inputs and equipment. "We pay 20 per cent interest on a Lempira loan, whereas a UDIS loan is just 15 per cent," says Martinez. "This is much better than the banks, which charge 30 or 40 per cent." The UDIS loan is cheaper because it can only be spent in COMAL's community stores. This guarantees regular customers for the stores and benefits the farmers who supply them. Farmers pay back their loans with UDIS, Lempira, or by selling their produce to COMAL. The benefit of repaying debts in produce is that their goods can then be sold throughout the network of community shops, guaranteeing a market for farmers after they have invested in production, even if the price of their crops crashes.

The purpose of COMAL, according to Trinidad Sánchez, its director, is to build what he calls "economic solidarity". "COMAL was born out of the idea that we, the poor, can do business and include the practices of moral principles and values," he says. "There is no justice if there isn't food for everyone."

Added value

Farmers in many parts of Central America have benefited from the COMAL network

CAFOD

One member organisation in Honduras, COMUCAP (The Coordinator of Rural Women in La Paz), provided a group with training and loans in response to Hurricane Mitch, which devastated crops in 1998. The shampoo and soap they now produce from Aloe vera has enabled them to gain access to lucrative markets in Switzerland and Germany. Group member, Maria Garcia describes how her life has changed: "Before this project we just managed to eat to survive. Now we have more. Our house is made of wood and stone. We see our children will have a better life than we had."

COMAL is also working with similar organisations in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala, helping to develop a Central America-wide network. Sarah Smith-Pearse, communications officer at CAFOD (Catholic Agency for Overseas Development), which supports COMAL, praises the organisation's progressive attitude: "COMAL gives voice and power to those who are usually at the margins, and stands as a beacon of what is possible when people work together."

UPDATE

This article was written in 2009 before the Military coup. Since then it was widely reported on the internet that the offices of COMAL were raided by the army. Olivia from the new Agriculturalist was able to give us this update.

COMAL's offices were raided in November 2009, just before the elections.   Last year there was a military coup in Honduras and the post-coup elections were very controversial.  COMAL expressed criticism of the role of the army, as part of a wider resistance movement.  In this context, their offices were raided, computers removed for scrutiny of information and their guard beaten up.   All of this done with the intention of intimidating the COMAL staff.   About six months ago, an armed group with links to a local military unit, broke into the house of the director of COMAL and terrorised his family, resulting in them having to seek refuge in the USA.  COMAL’s director, Trinidad Sanchez, has chosen to stay in Honduras and continue working.  The organisation is very much alive and in action.  We have just had an email from CAFOD’s Central American office proposing that Trinidad does a speaking tour in January, in Britain, as he will be in Europe for other meetings. Anyone wanting to invite him to speak can mail him jtsanchez@redcomal.org.hn

Source: All content | 27 Oct 2010 | 11:54 pm UTC

Modeling their currency project primarily after the Sonoma Go Local project in Northern California, Santa Cruz’s New Earth Exchange is set to go. A presentation by Derek Huntington of Sonoma Go Local last week attracted 75 people interested in boosting and transforming their local economy.

Think Local First, a partnering organization, is laying the foundation for the project, by promoting buying local through “Shop Local Week”, a website promoting local businesses, and gift certificates donated by local banks and raffled off that must be spent at local businesses within 24 hours, turning over for a total of 30 days.

The next stage is a paper currency that acts as a reward coupon earned by shopping at member local businesses and redeemed only at other member businesses. Subsequently, the Santa Cruz project will import the Sonoma Go Local rewards card system, point of sale devices included. The rewards card allows businesses to set their reward rates or amounts individually. Here’s how it works. I go into buy a book from a member local business. I get a 10% rebate on a $10 book, equaling $1. I go to the local grocery store and buy my groceries, and $1 is automatically deducted from my bill. Whatever reward is left is automatically rolled over to the next transaction and then must be deducted. Though it is called a reward system, it can function just like a local currency, while simultaneously attracting US dollars to local businesses strapped for cash as well. The rewards points can also be used to pay employees who willingly enroll or as bonuses.

The next two steps are key: business to business credit clearing and local business investment mechanisms. Both of these allow local businesses access to resources they don’t have enough of in the conventional economy. Credit clearing allows businesses to barter amongst each other and get a better deal using their underutilized resources to get what they need and help out other businesses. Creating more local business capacity in which the currency can flow is at least as important as the currency itself. Credit clearing may also be used to distribute the burden of the rewards system more equitably, making sure one business doesn’t end up backing most of the rewards.

The investment structure dreamed up by Derek Huntington, though not entirely clear, would ideally move local money away from foreign investment and into local businesses where the results can be seen and felt and investments may actually be more secure. Part of this initiative aims to help start cooperative businesses (Sonoma Go Local is itself a coop of local businesses). Investment also helps support the development of import replacement businesses that can fill in missing pieces of the local supply chain, giving businesses useful options for spending their local currency and helping the currency flow without frustrating bottlenecks.

The program will be funded by individual and business memberships. Membership fees may be temporarily waived and paid back as people use the system, deducted from their accounts over time. The pitch to businesses is that they will simply get more customers as consciousness is raised and rewards shift shopping behavior away from Amazon, Walmart and Safeway and into local business where it can circulate to support new jobs, expanded business capacity, taxes to support local government services, and so on. Studies indicate that money spent at local businesses create 3 times the wealth in the community that shopping at chain stores does. With the grand plan the Go Local project has dreamed up, this factor could increase significantly.

While the Sonoma still needs to prove that their plan will work, they are nonetheless very inspiring. I wish them luck and look forward to a Go Local craze.

Source: All content | 28 Oct 2010 | 1:38 am UTC

-Be willing to change direction. Dont get stuck on one particular idea of exactly what the currency should look like. Your target community may push for changes and you should be willing to listen and respond or find a new target. Learn from your mistakes.

-Find a good match for your currency project. The target community must actually need currency to provide a solution to a problem, like local governments going into bankruptcy. It is often helpful that this community is already a community with some existing network of relationships and trust, like a local business network, a group of parents that need low cost childcare and already share babysitting or senior centers.

-Utilize unused capacity. Until the dollar crashes, community currencies need to open a flow of untapped resources in new ways that the dollar has not been able to do. However, these systems may serve as models for life support when the dollar does crash.

-Some ways currencies can provide usefulness that the dollar doesnt is to: make people feel good, reward good behavior and the creation of real value, build community resiliency, provide needed information that the transfer of numbers does not convey such as reputation.

-Take small steps first, dont try to take over the whole economy at once. It wont work. You need to get people used to the idea of using these systems at a low risk level and then increase scope as the system proves itself and trust builds. Think training wheels.

-Make something easy to use, fun and understandable by the general public like rewards/loyalty programs, unlike mutual credit. Even if it is mutual credit, you can pitch it as something more familiar, popular and up to date. Utilize the idea of a game to draw people in and get them hooked on using it.

-If you are not a good marketer or salesperson, find a partner who can fill this role. Often currency designers are not the best salespeople, even for free projects.

Source: All content | 28 Oct 2010 | 4:56 pm UTC

 

Photo by Earl

The reason our financial system has routinely gotten into trouble, with periodic waves of depression like the one we’re battling now, may be due to a flawed perception not just of the roles of banking and credit but of the nature of money itself. In our economic adolescence, we have regarded money as a “thing”—something independent of the relationship it facilitates. But today there is no gold or silver backing our money. Instead, it’s created by bankswhen they make loans (that includes Federal Reserve Notes or dollar bills, which are created by the Federal Reserve, a privately-owned banking corporation, and lent into the economy). Virtually all money today originates as credit, or debt, which is simply a legal agreement to pay in the future.

Money as Relationship

In an illuminating dissertation called “Toward a General Theory of Credit and Money” in The Review of Austrian Economics, Mostafa Moini, Professor of Economics at Oklahoma City University, argues that money has never actually been a “commodity” or “thing.” It has always been merely a “relation,” a legal agreement, a credit/debit arrangement, an acknowledgment of a debt owed and a promise to repay.

The concept of money-as-a-commodity can be traced back to the use of precious metal coins. Gold is widely claimed to be the oldest and most stable currency known, but this is not actually true. Money did not begin with gold coins and evolve into a sophisticated accounting system. It began as an accounting system and evolved into the use of precious metal coins. Money as a “unit of account” (a tally of sums paid and owed) predated money as a “store of value” (a commodity or thing) by two millennia; the Sumerian and Egyptian civilizations using these accounting-entry payment systems lasted not just hundreds of years (as with some civilizations using gold) but thousands of years. Their bank-like ancient payment systems were public systems—operated by the government the way that courts, libraries, and post offices are operated as public services today.

In the payment system of ancient Sumeria, goods were given a value in terms of weight and were measured in these units against each other. The unit of weight was the “shekel,” something that was not originally a coin but a standardized measure. She was the word for barley, suggesting the original unit of measure was a weight of grain. This was valued against other commodities by weight: So many shekels of wheat equaled so many cows equaled so many shekels of silver, etc. Prices of major commodities were fixed by the government; Hammurabi, Babylonian king and lawmaker, has detailed tables of these. Interest was also fixed and invariable, making economic life very predictable.

Grain was stored in granaries, which served as a form of “bank.” But grain was perishable, so silver eventually became the standard tally representing sums owed. A farmer could go to market and exchange his perishable goods for a weight of silver, and come back at his leisure to redeem this market credit in other goods as needed. But it was still simply a tally of a debt owed and a right to make good on it later. Eventually, silver tallies became wooden tallies became paper tallies became electronic tallies.

The Credit Revolution

The problem with gold coins was that they could not expand to meet the needs of trade. The revolutionary advance of medieval bankers was that they succeeded in creating a flexible money supply, one that could keep pace with a vigorously expanding mercantile trade. They did this through the use of credit, something they created by allowing overdrafts in the accounts of their depositors. Under what came to be called “fractional reserve” banking, the bankers would issue paper receipts called banknotes for more gold than they actually had. Their shipping clients would sail away with their wares and return with silver or gold, settling accounts and allowing the bankers’ books to balance. The credit thus created was in high demand in the rapidly expanding economy; but because it was based on the presumption that money was a “thing” (gold), the bankers had to engage in a shell game that periodically got them into trouble. They were gambling that their customers would not all come for their gold at the same time; but when they miscalculated, or when people got suspicious for some reason, there would be a run on the banks, the financial system would collapse, and the economy would sink into depression.

Today, paper money is no longer redeemable in gold, but money is still perceived as a “thing” that has to “be there” before credit can be advanced. Banks still engage in money creation by advancing bank credit, which becomes a deposit in the borrower’s account, which becomes checkbook money. In order for their outgoing checks to clear, however, the banks have to borrow from a pool of money deposited by their customers. If they don’t have enough deposits, they have to borrow from the money market or other banks.

As British author Ann Pettifor observes: "the banking system… has failed in its primary purpose: to act as a machine for lending into the real economy. Instead the banking system has been turned on its head, and become a borrowing machine."

The banks suck up cheap money and return it as more expensive money, if they return it at all. The banks control the money spigots and can deny credit to small players, who wind up defaulting on their loans, allowing the big players with access to cheap credit to buy up the underlying assets very cheaply.

 

The bank run scene from It's a Wonderful Life

That’s one systemic flaw in the current scheme. Another is that the borrowed money backing the bank’s loans usually comes from shorter-term loans. Like Jimmy Stewart’s beleaguered savings and loan in It’s a Wonderful Life, the banks are “borrowing short to lend long,” and if the money market suddenly dries up, the banks will be in trouble. That is what happened in September 2008: According to Rep. Paul Kanjorski, speaking on C-Span in February 2009, there was a $550 billion run on the money markets.

Securitization: “Monetizing” Loans Not with Gold But with Homes

The money markets are part of the “shadow banking system,” where large institutional investors park their funds. The shadow banking system allows banks to get around the capital and reserve requirements now imposed on depository institutions by moving loans off their books.

Large institutional investors use the shadow banking system because the conventional banking system guarantees deposits only up to $250,000, and large institutional investors have much more than that to move around on a daily basis. The money market is very liquid, and what protects it in place of FDIC insurance is that it is “securitized,” or backed by securities of some sort. Often, the collateral consists of mortgage-backed securities (MBS), the securitized units into which American real estate has been sliced and packaged, sausage-fashion.

Like with the gold that was lent many times over in the 17th century, the same home may be pledged as “security” for several different investor groups at the same time. This is all done behind an electronic curtain called MERS (an acronym for Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc.), which has allowed houses to be shuffled around among multiple, rapidly changing owners while circumventing local recording laws.

As in the 17th century, however, the scheme has run into trouble when more than one investor group has tried to foreclose at the same time. And the securitization model has now crashed against the hard rock of hundreds of years of state real estate law, which has certain requirements that the banks have not met—and cannot meet, if they are to comply with the tax laws for mortgage-backed securities. (For more on this, see here.)

The bankers have engaged in what amounts to a massive fraud, not necessarily because they started out with criminal intent (although that cannot be ruled out), but because they have been required to in order to come up with the commodities (in this case real estate) to back their loans. It is the way our system is set up: The banks are not really creating credit and advancing it to us, counting on our future productivity to pay it off, the way they once did under the deceptive but functional façade of fractional reserve lending. Instead, they are vacuuming up our money and lending it back to us at higher rates. In the shadow banking system, they are sucking up our real estate and lending it back to our pension funds and mutual funds at compound interest. The result is a mathematically impossible pyramid scheme, which is inherently prone to systemic failure.

The Public Credit Solution

The flaws in the current scheme are now being exposed in the major media, and it may well be coming down. The question then is what to replace it with. What is the next logical phase in our economic evolution?

Credit needs to come first. We as a community can create our own credit, without having to engage in the sort of impossible pyramid scheme in which we’re always borrowing from Peter to pay Paul at compound interest. We can avoid the pitfalls of privately-issued credit with a public credit system, a system banking on the future productivity of its members, guaranteed not by “things” shuffled around furtively in a shell game vulnerable to exposure, but by the community itself.

The simplest public credit model is the electronic community currency system. Consider, for example, one called “Friendly Favors.” The participating Internet community does not have to begin with a fund of capital or reserves, as is now required of private banking institutions. Nor do members borrow from a pool of pre-existing money on which they pay interest to the pool’s owners. They create their own credit, simply by debiting their own accounts and crediting someone else’s. If Jane bakes cookies for Sue, Sue credits Jane’s account with 5 “favors” and debits her own with 5. They have “created” money in the same way that banks do, but the result is not inflationary. Jane’s plus-5 is balanced against Sue’s minus-5, and when Sue pays her debt by doing something for someone else, it all nets out. It is a zero-sum game.

Community currency systems can be very functional on a small scale, but because they do not trade in the national currency, they tend to be too limited for large-scale businesses and projects. If they were to grow substantially larger, they could run up against the sort of exchange rate problems afflicting small countries. They are basically barter systems, not really designed for advancing credit on a major scale.

The functional equivalent of a community currency system can be achieved using the national currency, by forming a publicly owned bank. By turning banking into a public utility operated for the benefit of the community, the virtues of the expandable credit system of the medieval bankers can be retained, while avoiding the parasitic exploitation to which private banking schemes are prone. Profits generated by the community can be returned to the community.

A public bank that generates credit in the national currency could be established by a community or group of any size, but as long as we have capital and reserve requirements and other stringent banking laws, a state is the most feasible option. It can easily meet those requirements without jeopardizing the solvency of its collective owners.

For capital, a state bank could use some of the money stashed in a variety of public funds. This money need not be spent. It can just be shifted from the Wall Street investments where it is parked now into the state’s own bank. There is precedent establishing that a state-owned bank can be both a very sound and a very lucrative investment. The Bank of North Dakota, currently the nation’s only state-owned bank, is rated AA and recently returned a 26 percent profit to the state. A decentralized movement has been growing in the United States to explore and implement this option. [For more information, see public-banking.com.]

We have emerged from the financial crisis with new clarity: Money today is simply credit. When the credit is advanced by a bank, when the bank is owned by the community, and when the profits return to the community, the result can be a functional, efficient, and sustainable system of finance.

Ellen Brown wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Ellen is an attorney and the author of eleven books, including Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth About Our Money System and How We Can Break Free. Her websites are webofdebt.com, ellenbrown.com, and public-banking.com.

Source: All content | 28 Oct 2010 | 7:50 pm UTC

Eco-Pesa is a voucher for the national currency (Kenyan Shillings) which circulates around an informal settlement (slum) in Kongowea Location, Mombassa District, Kenya. It is worth one shilling, and is printed on paper with security features in denominations of 5, 10 and 20 Eco-Pesa.

Source: All content | 1 Nov 2010 | 7:33 am UTC

Source: All content | 4 Nov 2010 | 7:25 pm UTC

In Santiago de Chile at Pedro Aguirre Cerda District an Elementary/Middle School by the name of Karol Cardenal de Cracovia became a Kids Independent Republic in 1997.  An idea introduces from previous successful initiatives in Rural Schools from Colombia.  School Governments is pure innovation in education, it consists in dreaming inclusively (parents, kids and the school staff) a perfect world and bringing it to life by complementing the educational curriculum with a democracy where kids are the main actors in a School.  

    

Source: All content | 12 Nov 2010 | 5:24 pm UTC

In the wake of a global meltdown that exposed the fragility of our financial system, it's understandable that many people are suspicious of the stability of our centralized monetary systems.

"We have had 97 major banking crashes over the last 25 years, and we have 178 monetary crashes over that same time period," says Belgian currency expert Bernard Lietaer. "Would you not say that’s a sign of something being repeatedly unstable?"

As a result, Lietaer and others are advocating for "complementary" currency systems—alternative monetary devices that run parallel to centralized currencies. These can take the form of local currencies separate from the government, or even organized barter arrangements.

One example of such a currency, says Lietaer, is the Wirtschaftsring (Wir), which was established in 1934 and is used by 75,000 businesses in Switzerland alongside the Swiss franc. He says the Wir has played a crucial role in stabilizing Switzerland's economy: "When you have a recession, there are not enough Swiss francs around to buy things. The number of participants and the volume of transaction in Wir increases, spontaneously, because that's what’s available. People don't have to have a credit line with the banks in order to purchase things."

Lietaer says that larger complementary currencies can also play a social role. The Fureai Kippu is a Japanese communal currency that supports the elderly. One unit is equal to one hour of service to help an elderly person with tasks that are not covered by the national health care system in Japan. The Fureai Kippu parallels the national system on a local level, tracked as a savings account via two computerized clearinghouses. "If you were trying to do that with conventional money, it wouldn’t work. Japan would go bankrupt!" says Lietaer.

So, why haven't other countries taken a hint from the Swiss and Japanese? New York University media studies professor Douglas Rushkoff attributes dearth of open source currency to "centuries and centuries of programming." Our current system of centralized monetary instruments, explains Rushkoff, dates back to the Middle Ages, when peer-to-peer economies flourished. As local currencies thrived, so did the middle class—threatening Europe's aristocracy. Financial experts, hired by the rich to halt the threat, suggested that local currency be outlawed and replaced with a single form of money dubbed "coin of the realm."

"That’s the system that ended up getting passed down to us today," says Rushkoff. "It's part of a six or seven hundred year push for centralization of power." Now, he says, the emergence and prominence of the Internet can allow us to return to peer-to-peer exchanges. "People are starting to realize they can sell things to people through the 'net—they don’t have to work for a company to make money."

But both Rushkoff and Lietaer admit that governments are not keen on the idea that citizens issue their own coin. "I have never met anybody who has the privilege of monopoly who is okay to lose it," says Lietaer.

"If someone really did develop a robust and popular [complementary] currency, I think they’d get killed," says Rushkoff. "This is not an area that you play around with lightly. This is beyond organized crime. This is what people fight wars and stuff over. This is really big. So if in the States, for example, people started to use an organized currency—if it came into real use, beyond the local and hip way it happens in Portland or Ithaca, where hip people are using it for their coffee and pot—if it became robust enough that real people felt good about using it, they would shut it down in a minute. And that’s when you’d have to have a real struggle. That’s when you’d have to look constitutionally: are we allowed to transact? As far as I’m concerned, as long as people are paying taxes on the cash equivalent, then the government really can't complain."

However, Rushkoff says that he doesn’t know of anyone adamantly and publicly against complementary currency, rather, "most bankers and economists just laugh at it." But perhaps they should start paying attention. Rushkoff serves as "Chief Revolutionary Officer" of the site superfluid, a collaborative online system where people exchange services and work together on different projects. Participants credit and debit themselves for the work they perform.

Rushkoff says ultimately these types of alternate currencies are an extension of free market capitalism: "If you’re really going to be a free market capitalist, then you have to have free markets. Just as companies are allowed to compete with each other for providing goods and services, the only way you're going to have great currencies is if the currencies are allowed to compete with one another within one country, so that you can have different tools for different jobs."

Source: All content | 15 Nov 2010 | 8:02 pm UTC

Source: All content | 17 Nov 2010 | 3:09 am UTC

Actionables

Address the movement's weaknesses and build on its strengths by:

1.  Improving our data collection system to enable better academic analysis of the impact and viability of complementary currency projects
2. Drawing upon our diversity of initiatives and perspectives to support bigger picture thinking and develop larger-scale solutions
3. Gathering the movement's intelligence about leverage point projects and opportunities, and making them more visible to potential funders and supporters.

What are the questions you would most want to explore with fellow movers and shakers in the complementary currency movement?

History has shown that significant systemic changes in the monetary system occur only after the previous system has crashed or collapsed. What would be the most effective way to position the movement so that it can take advantage of the instabilities that are currently occurring? How do we prevent the automatic return to the old monopolistic system… which is what has happened following hundreds of crashes for the past 300 years?

Most complementary currency systems (such as LETS and Time Dollars) are by nature destined to remain small scale. Yet, we are going to need solutions on an enormous scale. How do we assess which currencies are best kept on a small scale but multiplied in numbers (e.g. 1000 systems of 500 people), and which models can be expanded in scope so that they can be directly applied on a very large scale, if needed? Which criteria should be used in making that assessment about the best approach to scaling?

How do we more effectively engage with the political arena? If you include government officials in a project, you run the risk than a future change of government could negatively impact the initiative under way. If you do not include them, you lose the potential support of a key stakeholder. What is the best way to navigate this territory? What questions should we ask policy makers to draw their attention to both blind spots and untapped opportunities in the monetary domain?

What recent developments in the field do you find most exciting?

One very exciting development is the C3 (Commercial Credit Circuit) which provides working capital to small and medium-size businesses. These businesses represent more than 90% of all private jobs in most areas, so solving working capital shortages has very positive implications for reducing unemployment. The C3 was developed by STRO over the last 10 years, and it is a brilliant design.

Currently, I feel that the most exciting developments are actually taking place in Latin America. The Central Bank of Brazil's endorsement of social purpose currencies as a legitimate and effective tool that does not disturb conventional policy is a significant breakthrough. In that same country, the multiplication of the Banco di Palma experiment is a practical and positive sign that progress is under way. Uruguay is now the first country to accept a complementary currency in payment of all taxes and fees, which will make the C3 currency available to everyone in the country. A similar but less known example of this positive development can be seen in Vorarlberg, a region of Austria where local complementary currencies are also accepted for local taxes. This will greatly help mainstream the use of such currencies.

And what do you see as key challenges, obstacles or blind spots which hinder the movement's success?

There are thousands of currency experiments under way but very little quality data is being gathered and made available for academics to study the results and thereby provide legitimacy for mainstream implementation. Most people develop currencies for social purposes without bothering to gather the data, and a number of other factors can also interfere with data analysis. For example, the loss of support for complementary currencies in Japan due to a change of government may result in lack of access to critical information about useful currency experiments that have not yet been documented publicly. There are indeed 40 different types of eco-money projects in Japan from which we could learn a great deal.

The unavailability of data slows down our ability to gain credibility over time. We need to ask ourselves what we can do about that. I believe that we should create a neutral electronic repository of transaction and result data from different experiments, and make them publicly available on the net for researchers and academics to use. Some parts of the field of micro-finance have followed such an approach with success.

Another great challenge we face is that too few people in the movement are explicitly recognizing and addressing the need for a diversified family of complementary currencies. The reason is that many designers and practitioners are focused on one type of complementary currency only. Although this specialization has served the growth and dissemination of each of these currencies, it can also create a tendency to relate to other types of currencies through a competitive rather than a complementary lense. Until we start taking a better look at how our respective pieces serve a larger puzzle, we don't have the scale of demonstration that would actually be convincing to everybody.

This said, the fragmentation of the movement is also paradoxically one of its strengths. This movement could not be stopped by chopping off a couple of heads. It has no visible or official leader, and this may be its best protection against those who are invested in the status quo.

Where do you see untapped resources and unmet needs within the field of complementary currencies? And do you have any suggestions about how to bridge them?

Well, ironically, it is conventional money which is critically missing to support many initiatives. There is a huge potential for Ph.D and Master level research of complementary currencies but the challenges are finding appropriate academics to supervise work in that area, and securing the funding for such research.

Besides financial support, what would help the acceleration of the monetary shifts that are needed?

My sad answer to this question is "more pain". The Dutch have 4.5% unemployment while the Spanish have 30%. Consequently, the Dutch don't feel there is a need to do anything about the current situation. The Spanish, on the other hand, are begging for something to be done. The problem is actually the same in both places, but it's a question of timing and scale.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the next stage in the break down of the financial system is the privatization of government-owned assets. The inventory in the US is 9.1 trillion dollars. That includes everything owned by the federal government, such as roads, tunnels, recreation facilities, universities, and buildings. The drive to privatization comes from political and social pain. When the potholes in the roads are big enough, and the government in unable to pay for their repair, they will then sell the highways at a fraction of their cost. Ironically, these desperate strategies will be producing more pain, and that will make people more interested in finding genuine solutions. I would personally much prefer to get to these new solutions without the pain.

In the meantime, conferences and gatherings such as the upcoming conference in Lyon are really helpful in fostering a better understanding of our respective pieces of the larger puzzle. The Community Currency Magazine and IJJCR both provide very valuable platforms for cross-fertilization of ideas and experiments.

What could bring about a tipping point in the shift from a monopoly of bank debt money toward a monetary ecology? And is the idea of a “tipping point” the best way of thinking about that change?

The most likely candidate for a tipping point scenario would be a dollar crash, because that would force everyone worldwide to rethink the existing system. We are now looking at a possible end game. We are running out of possible ways to return to business as usual in the aftermath of such a crash. The financial sector can no longer hope that the government will be able to step in again because even by the financial sector's own criteria, governments are no longer creditworthy. In the 1930s, the government learned that it could not allow the banking system to sink because it brought the whole economy down with it. What our governments are painfully learning now is that they literally cannot afford to save the banking system again.

People in the sustainability movement seem to be divided between those who feel we need to organize ourselves more efficiently (the way the right has done in the united states), and those who suggest we need to trust that our diversity is organizing us (or rather leading us to self-organize) in more resilient ways. Where do you stand on this question?

I do believe that if the movement was seriously funded, it would professionalize the field. This is basically how the right wing folks have transformed America. 5 billionaires have created a major shift toward the right over the last 25 years in America and in the world. They created new think tanks, career paths, lobbying mechanisms, medias etc. It took a bit of time but they have shifted the paradigm…albeit in the wrong direction. They are walking toward a cul de sac, but they have done it nevertheless, and privately. They have shifted the entire system, successfully, SO They have proven it can be done on a large scale.

This said, I have personally come to the point where I hope that we are being coordinated by some larger force, some wider wisdom guiding us all. Well, I really hope that we are being guided (he smiles), and that a shift is trying to happen! Humanity urgently needs a different way forward. A growing number of people are aware of that. There will come a time when mainstream people finally throw in the towel and open up to new solutions. People  are aware that the system is badly sick but feel that there are no alternatives yet. This is why the collection data to demonstrate the effects of different experiments is so important.

The best “strategy” to support this evolution is probably not based on the model of a military campaign or the introduction of the euro where you try to plan for every step of the way. That strategy was necessary then for that particular shift, but it is not what is needed now to support this new type of shift. What we need to do now is try to encourage diversity, rather than promote one model. And we need to experiment so we can discover what best supports efficiency and resilience at the level of the whole.

A lot of valuable community-building initiatives in this movement (including the publication of this magazine) are done by dedicated people, as a labor of love, but would often highly benefit from actual financial support. if you were given $10,000 to $50,000 to invest in strengthening the currency movement, how would you invest these funds?

The way I would allocate funds is informed by my own bias about the key importance of academic research, but I trust that there are many other good answers to this question besides mine, and I look forward to reading about them. Here are three different things I would very much like to see funded, although funding all three would clearly require a larger budget than the one you just allotted me!

I would want to fund:

• a coordinator to create linkages between the cc movement and the academic world to fast forward effective data collection and analysis of models that will help legitimize the results.
• scholarships for Ph.D research on complementary currencies. I think we need to dedicate more time to exploring how to create synergy between different types of monetary solutions.
• a mainstream movie about monetary ecology and about movement-level possibilities.

It would also be really worthwhile for our movement to have a web platform where we could propose and comment on our suggested ‘acupuncture points worth funding. This would be a very helpful resource for funders who are interested in supporting this movement. With the advent of crowd sourcing solutions, some of the most affordable projects could perhaps even be funded by grassroots philanthropists rather than larger ones. The challenge which our movement faces is that the people with the most financial resources tend to be the ones who have the least incentives to forward the types of monetary changes we are recommending.

Any final comments?

Yes, I am really looking forward to reading my friends and colleagues’ answers to these questions. It is clear to me that our greatest strength is in our diversity of perspectives, and we have a lot to learn from our different ways of approaching the types of questions you have just asked me. The next generation of currency designers and practitioners has a lot to offer when it comes to out-of-the-box thinking.

Source: All content | 9 Jan 2011 | 1:33 pm UTC

Throughout the last 25 years of our existence – the only 25 years that nef has existed – we have advocated the idea of multiple currencies.  Open money pioneer Michael Linton spoke at our first conferences.  So did the green dollar pioneer David Weston.  We have been supporting the Brixton pound experiment, just as we have been cheering on the Berkshares project by our transatlantic partners at the New Economics Institute.

What is fascinating about the complementary currency movement is that it is genuinely worldwide.  There is a great deal of activity in North America, as you would expect, but also in Latin America, Japan, Africa and Indonesia.  The other is how it attracts people from across the political spectrum.  It is an idea that attracts radical localists, leftists, nationalists, free traders (Friedrich Hayek wrote the classic Denationalisation of Money) and liberals.

So it is worth pointing out that those of us who have been prophesying a revolution in multiple currencies – providing multiple different yardsticks of value for different aspects of our lives – have been proved right by the decision of the US state of Virginia to give themselves the power to issue their own currency

Closer reading of this unexpected document also suggests some reasons for scepticism.  The magic words 'gold or silver or both' as the backing for this currency, to be introduced if the US dollar is overwhelmed by hyperinflation or depression, is clearly the work of ultra-conservatives in the state's legislature.  So we applaud the idea and the precedent, but warn that a currency based on precious metals is likely to be 'sound' at the expense of being useful.  It will be scarce, exclusive and delusory in its dependence on what Keynes famously dismissed as a 'barbarous relic'.

That does not rule out gold or silver based currencies.  Far from it.  They will be useful as stores of value.  For for an effective medium of exchange, all we can do is to learn the lesson – it is possible for human communities to provide themselves with the monetary tools they need.

The way to create new kinds of money that are both 'sound' and useful is to link their value to commodities, preferably local agricultural produce or local renewable energy.

Read the original resolution:
http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?111+ful+HJ557+pdf

Source: All content | 20 Jan 2011 | 3:03 pm UTC

Market in Espinal where the túmin community currency is used.
Credit: Courtesy of Intercultural University of Veracruz

It is equivalent to one Mexican peso, and each vendor was initially given 500 units, which they are using to buy and sell goods and services.

The túmin was launched in November by Juan Castro, a professor at the public Intercultural University of Veracruz, and members of a development research centre and a human rights network in Espinal, 400 km southeast of the Mexican capital.

"We created it to strengthen the local economy, so that people will buy locally and not go outside of their community to spend their money," Castro told IPS. "It's gaining acceptance; more and more people are interested in participating."

The túmin is the latest experiment in Mexico in parallel currency systems, which began to be used at least two decades ago in this Latin American country, although none of them has really taken off.

"We haven't been able to grow as we would like to," said Luís Lópezllera, director of Promotion of Popular Development, a local NGO. "We have run up against mistrust and irresponsibility. It's really hard to get people to believe that credit lies in people, not in the authorities," he told IPS.

Lópezllera was one of the driving forces behind the Red Tláloc, a network dedicated to the solidarity economy that emerged in 1996, in the wake of the financial crisis that two years earlier had devastated the savings of millions of Mexicans and spread to other countries in a contagious phenomenon dubbed the "tequila effect".

The network created a directory to enable those offering or looking for goods and services to contact each other and do business using the Tláloc currency, which takes its name from the Aztec god of rain and is equivalent to one hour of community work.

The parties involved in the transaction agree on what proportions will be paid for in Tlálocs or Mexican pesos. The hour of community work is valued at four dollars — the official minimum daily wage in Mexico.

The current downward trend of the euro and the dollar, and the consequent impacts on national currencies, provide an extra incentive for adopting an alternative local unit of exchange that is independent of the ups and downs of outside currencies.

"These currencies have potential in Mexico," Yves Cabannes, a professor of development planning at University College London, told IPS. "The crisis could foment the use of local currencies, which could also generate access to financial resources, from the local sphere."

Cabannes, a French national, has studied the evolution of community currencies in depth. One emblematic case is that of the Banco Palmas, a community bank founded in 1998 in Conjunto Palmeiras, a "favela" or shanty town of 30,000 people on the outskirts of the city of Fortaleza, in Brazil's impoverished northeast region.

Banco Palmas started out distributing credit cards in the favela, and now issues palmas, a social currency that is accepted by some 240 businesses.

The bank manages a credit portfolio worth the equivalent of 1.5 million dollars.

A network of some 50 community banks operates in Brazil, and the central bank, the Banco do Brasil, recognises a similar number of alternative currencies.

In Venezuela, meanwhile, community currencies have the backing of the government of Hugo Chávez and are governed and protected by a 2006 law on community banks.

In Mexico, where the peso has weakened against the dollar, community currencies offer an option for shoring up the buying power of consumers, unlike the peso, according to the experts who spoke to IPS.

But they also stress that the potential of alternative currencies has not been exploited in this country. The community currencies created in several Mexican states have not really taken root, and have failed to gain the official recognition of Mexico's central bank.

"The problem is how to create alternative currencies that actually contribute to the generation of wealth by communities, without becoming an instrument of power that awakens greed and prompts the authorities or businesses to seize upon them," says academic Laura Collin.

In her study "Experiencias en torno al dinero alternativo, fortalezas y debilidades" on the strengths and weaknesses of alternative currencies, the professor at the Colegio de Tlaxcala, a public university, also warns of the danger that a currency which is a social symbol could be "exposed to becoming part of the same speculative economic logic of the national currency."

"We are small oases trying to educate people to accept a healthy currency," Lópezllera said. "We are trying to spread a 'positive virus', where real credit exists, unlike in the international system, where no one knows where the money is."

In the Tláloc network, which is limited to the greater Mexico City area, participants register, receive training, and offer products and services, grouped by categories. Every year they organise fairs to bring participants together. The next edition will be held in March.

"Alternative currencies avoid fluctuations or depreciations. In time, they gain credibility. Circulation must be steady and must not be interrupted," said Castro.

The Centre for Intercultural Research for Development and the United for Human Rights Network are also involved in the Túmin community currency initiative.

Cabannes pointed out that for the year 2007, consumption in the Conjunto Palmeiras favela totalled 30 million dollars, in the Banco Palmas project alone. "People aren't poor because they don't have money, but because they don't spend it in their neighbourhoods," he said.

Source: All content | 23 Jan 2011 | 1:58 am UTC

Does anything energize like good synergy? I doubt it. When you share a grand vision with a group of like minded people and work hard together to achieve it, there's nothing quite as fulfilling.

This past weekend, our colleagues from Kimberley and Fernie came to Nelson to plan the rollout of Columbia Community Dollars in our region. Michael Linton and two other Community Way enthusiasts also drove to Nelson from the Comox Valley to attend. Lucky us! Michael created the Community Way local currency model and the internationally renowned LETSystem before it, so his and their guidance is invaluable to us. After months of researching various models, we found the Community Way model the best by far.

Our challenge is communicating why this currency will work. People have strong and often unconscious emotions around money, and a monetary system feels like something neutral. We're so used to it, that it feels like the air we breathe. But it's a system that has been created by people, and it is far from neutral. Even with "buy local" campaigns, ordinary money only stays in communities about 1.5 times before it leaves. The money we're creating stays in our communities forever, perpetually enriching all who use it. Its creation depends on the generous impulse to give charitably, and businesses, community groups and people like us benefit from its use. And it doesn't generate debt or interest.

We care deeply about our communities, and have put in countless unpaid hours getting this going. We are passionate about this, and feel almost like an organic whole revolving around a wildly inspiring solution to some of our social, environmental and economic problems. We hadn't all met face to face before, even though we communicate weekly on Skype, so putting faces to names and voices and being together in person really strengthened our connection.

This synergy is a shared commitment to something bigger than us. It's a solution whose time has come. Our tagline: Change your money, change the world! We're honoured to be doing this, and hope you'll participate in this opportunity to strengthen the fabric of our society by putting money that has soul into circulation. Here's how you can: To find out more, please take a look at our website. Here are links for businesses and community groups who want to participate, and if you want to exchange federal dollars for community dollars you can do that here. We hope you'll join us on this worthy adventure! Stay tuned.

Heres the link to the full story with pics: http://redefiningbeauty.inthekoots.com/

Source: All content | 26 Jan 2011 | 2:04 am UTC

Today we associate money with the profane, and for good reason. If anything is sacred in this world, it is surely not money. Money seems to be the enemy of all our better instincts, as is clear every time the thought "I can't afford to" blocks an impulse toward kindness or generosity. Money seems to be the enemy of beauty, as the disparaging term "a sellout" demonstrates. Money seems to be the enemy of every worthy social and political reform, as corporate power steers legislation toward the aggrandizement of its own profits. Money seems to be destroying the earth, as we pillage the oceans, the forests, the soil, and every species to feed a greed that knows no end.

From at least the time that Jesus threw the moneychangers from the temple, we have sensed that there is something unholy about money. When a politician seeks money instead of the public good, we call him corrupt. Adjectives like "dirty" and "filthy" naturally describe money. Monks are supposed to have little to do with it: "You cannot serve God and Mammon."

At the same time, no one can deny that money has a mysterious, magical quality as well, the power to alter human behavior and coordinate human activity. From ancient times thinkers have marveled at the ability of a mere mark to confer this power upon a disk of metal or slip of paper. Unfortunately, looking at the world around us, it is hard to avoid concluding that the magic of money is an evil magic.

Obviously, if we are to make money into something sacred, nothing less than a wholesale revolution in money will suffice, a transformation of its essential nature. It is not merely our attitudes about money that must change, as some self-help gurus and "prosperity programming" teachers would have us believe; rather, we will create a new kind of money that embodies and reinforces our changed attitudes. Sacred Economics describes this new money and the new economy that will coalesce around it. It also explores the metamorphosis in human identity that is both a cause and a result of the transformation of money. The changed attitudes of which I speak go all the way to the core of what it is to be human: they include our understanding of the purpose of life, humanity's role on the planet, the relationship of the individual to the human and natural community; even what it is to be an individual, a self. This should not be surprising, since we experience money (and property) as an extension of our selves; hence the possessive pronoun "mine" to describe it, the same pronoun we use to identify our arms and heads. My money, my car, my hand, my liver. Consider as well the sense of violation we feel when we are robbed or "ripped off," as if part of our very selves had been taken.

A transformation from profanity to sacredness in money, something so deep a part of our identity, something so central to the workings of the world, would have profound effects indeed. But what does it mean for money, or anything else for that matter, to be sacred? It is in a crucial sense the opposite of what sacred has come to mean. For several thousand years, increasingly, the concepts of sacred, holy, and divine have referred to something separate from nature, the world, and the flesh. Three or four thousand years ago the gods began a migration from the lakes, forests, rivers, and mountains into the sky, becoming the imperial overlords of nature rather than its essence. As divinity separated from nature, so also it became unholy to involve oneself too deeply in the affairs of the world. The human being changed from a living soul to a mere receptacle of spirit, a profane envelope for a sacred soul, culminating in the Cartesian mote of consciousness observing the world but not participating in it, and the Newtonian watchmaker God doing the same. To be divine was to be supernatural, non-material. If God participated in the world at all, it was through miracles — divine intercessions violating or superseding nature's laws.

Yet, paradoxically, this separate, abstract thing called spirit is supposed to be what animates the world. Ask the religious person what has changed when a person dies, and she will say the soul has left the body. Ask her who makes the rain fall and the wind blow, and she will say it is God. To be sure, Galileo and Newton appeared to have removed God from these everyday workings of the world, explaining it instead as the clockwork of a vast machine of impersonal force and mass, but even they still needed the Clockmaker to wind it up in the beginning, to imbue the universe with the potential energy that has run it ever since. This conception is still with us today as the Big Bang, a primordial event that is the source of the "negative entropy" that allows movement and life. In any case, our culture's notion of spirit is that of something separate and non-worldly, that yet can miraculously intervene in material affairs, and that even animates and directs them in some mysterious way.

It is hugely ironic and hugely significant that the one thing on the planet most closely resembling the forgoing conception of the divine is money! It is an invisible, immortal force that surrounds and steers all things, omnipotent and limitless, an "invisible hand" that, it is said, makes the world go 'round. Yet, money today is an abstraction, at most symbols on a piece of paper, but usually mere bits in a computer. It exists in a realm far removed from materiality. In that realm, it is exempt from nature's most important laws, for it does not decay and return to the soil as all other things do, but is rather preserved, changeless, in its vaults and computer files, even growing with time thanks to interest. It bears the properties of eternal preservation and everlasting increase, both of which are profoundly unnatural. The natural substance that comes closest to these properties is gold, which does not rust, tarnish, or decay. Early on, gold was therefore used both as money and as a metaphor for the divine soul, that which is incorruptible and changeless.

Money's divine property of abstraction, of disconnection from the real world of things, reached its extreme in the early years of the 21st century as the financial economy lost its mooring in the real economy and took on a life of its own. The vast fortunes of Wall Street were unconnected to any material production, seeming to exist in a separate realm.

Looking down from Olympian heights, the financiers called themselves "masters of the universe," channeling the power of the god they served to bring fortune or ruin upon the masses, to literally move mountains, raze forests, change the course of rivers, cause the rise and fall of nations. But money soon proved to be a capricious god. As I write these words, it seems that the increasingly frantic rituals that the financial priesthood uses to placate the god money are in vain. Like the clergy of a dying religion, they exhort their followers to greater sacrifices while blaming their misfortunes either on sin (greedy bankers, irresponsible consumers) or on the mysterious whims of God (the financial markets). Soon, perhaps, we will blame the priests themselves.
What we call deflation, an earlier culture might have called, "God abandoning the world." Money is disappearing, and with it a third property of spirit, the animating force of the human realm. At this writing, all over the world machines stand idle. Factories have ground to a halt, construction equipment sits derelict in the yard. Yet all the human and material inputs to operate them still exist. There is still fuel, there are still raw materials, and there are still human beings in abundance who know how to operate the machines. It is rather something immaterial, that animating spirit, which has fled. What has fled is money. That is the only thing missing, so insubstantial (in the form of electrons in computers) that it can hardly be said to exist at all, yet so powerful that without it, human productivity grinds to a halt. It is as if God had forsaken the world. Even beyond the mechanical realm, we can see the demotivating effects of lack of money. Consider the stereotype of the unemployed man, nearly broke, slouched in front of the TV in his undershirt, drinking a beer, hardly able to rise from his chair. Money, it seems, animates people as well as machines. Without it we are dispirited.

We do not realize that our concept of the divine has attracted to it a god that fits that concept, and given it sovereignty over the earth. By divorcing the soul from the flesh, spirit from matter, and God from nature, we have installed a ruling power that is soulless, alienating, ungodly and unnatural. So when I speak of making money sacred, I am not invoking a supernatural agency to infuse sacredness into the inert, mundane objects of nature. I am rather reaching back to an earlier time, a time before the divorce of matter and spirit, when sacredness was endemic to all things.
My understanding of sacredness is the truth of the unity or the connectedness of all things, and the feeling is that of participating in something far greater than oneself, yet which also is oneself. In ecology, this is the principle of interdependence: that all beings depend for their survival on the web of other beings that surrounds them, ultimately extending out to encompass the entire planet. The extinction of any species diminishes our own wholeness, our own health, our own selves: something of our very being is lost.

This book will draw from ecology to help describe a sacred economy. For example, in the planetary ecosystem there is no such thing as waste: the waste of one creature is the food of another, creating a sacred gift circle. For an economy to be sacred, it must be the same.

Source: All content | 26 Jan 2011 | 7:21 pm UTC

I’ve really enjoyed the last three books to come out of the Transition Books stable, so I was pleased to see the latest instalment was out: Local Money – how to make it happen in your community. It’s another big square book, following Local Food, and it’s got the same practical, inspiring, can-do approach. This time, it’s all about creating local money networks.

The Transition Towns movement is all about resilience – preparing towns for the challenges of climate change and peak oil. What’s money got to do with it, you may well ask, but money is a valuable tool in relocalisation. Our current money system doesn’t serve us very well. It is beyond our control, in the hands of bankers and politicians and people we might hesitate to trust. It flows in vast quantities to people who don’t seem to do very much to earn it, while others work hard for very little. It is endlessly available for some tasks, and in short supply for other very necessary things. Most of all, it has an unpleasant habit of vanishing out of the places where we live and ending up in London and New York. Local money is a way of re-imagining money as the tool it should be, rather than the master it often becomes.

Since money is just an agreed mechanism of exchange, there are many different kinds of money, and endless possibilities for re-creating it. Local Money begins with an introduction to money and a history of alternative currencies, and then dedicates a chapter each to a series of experiments with money. Time banking is one, a currency based on hours of work, and a great way to value all labour equally. Local Exchange Trading Schemes are an less formal way for people to trade skills that were successful in the past. North then explains the four Transition currencies so far, and ends with some tantalizing glimpses of the future of money, including feed-in tariff based bonds, mobile phone money, and tradeable energy quotas.

Among the more interesting systems that the book explores are Germany’s regional currencies, which operate alongside the Euro. Reading at a time when the Euro is in considerable danger, I bet Germany is glad it put the regional alternatives in place. “Monoculture of money,” says Peter North, “just like a monoculture of crops, is not resilient.” I’m not sure why I hadn’t heard about it before, but Germany has “a rich ecosystem of currencies”, as North puts it. Each one serves a different purpose, and this is perhaps the closest to the healthy and resilient model that the Transition Towns are after.

Totnes, Lewes, Stroud and Brixton are the four Transition currencies. They each have a slightly different philosophy, Stroud being the most radical – it is democratic money, owned by a co-op. The main aim of these currencies is to build the local economy and encourage more local supply chains. It’s a little early to tell whether it’s working or not, and North hints that they are “perhaps mere glimpses of what could be” in future. This is the really practical bit if you’re ready to have a go at creating your own money – lots of advice about getting buy-in from businesses, how much to print, why you should think long and hard about the name of your currency, tax implications, and so on.

There are some real strengths to Local Money. Peter North knows that everything in the book is an experiment, and that there’s no one formula. It’s an iterative process, and the book is great at breaking down historical examples to see what worked and what didn’t. It’s honest too, acknowledging the failures and limitations of what has been tried so far as well as the successes. If you’re ready to embark on the rather exciting journey of local money in your town, this is the most helpful book I’ve come across so far.

However, if you’re not that far along, the book is less useful. The previous Transition book, Local Food, had all kinds of different projects of varying levels of complexity. Whatever stage your town was at, there were inspiring ideas to get started. Local Money starts further along the road, with actual currency, when there are lots of smaller ways to build resilience in the local economy. I’d have loved to have read about local loyalty cards, such as the Wedge Card in London, or the 3/50 Project that invites people to pledge to spend money in three favourite local businesses. Both of these are a whole lot simpler, quicker, and less risky than launching a fully fledged alternative currency. But perhaps that’s for another book, a Local Economies title perhaps.

There’s also a lot more that could have been included. Local currencies aren’t the only way to generate local money, and it would have been great to hear more about zero interest banks (see Jak), peer to peer lending, shared equity mortgages, local banking and credit unions, local bonds, microfinance, or the ‘moneyless’ credit clearance schemes that Thomas Greco champions. Some of these get a passing mention, but they could all be considered valid options for making local economies more resilient and deserve more attention.

In other words, Local Money is great on currencies, but could have been much broader in scope. The Transition currencies are wonderful experiments and this book will get you well on your way to launching your own, but there is so much more to try.

Source: All content | 31 Jan 2011 | 6:24 am UTC

Source: All content | 2 Feb 2011 | 10:35 am UTC

Lewisham is the unlikely homeland of time banking, a revolutionary idea based on mutual self-help.

Rushey Green Time Bank, founded in 1998, was one of the first time banks to be set up in the country and has become a benchmark for others across the UK.

Time banks are based on equality and the principle of co-production, where service users also provide skills to the group, rather than being passive recipients. Time, not money, is the currency exchanged between individuals. One hour of your time earns you one time credit.

By creating a system in which people share their skills, a community is built, linking people together in a social, not economic sphere. The bold idea was devised by civil rights lawyer and activist, Dr Edgar Cahn, when he was at the LSE in the 1980s.

Rushey Green Time Bank was set up in 1998 and was based at the Rushey Green Group Practice, a GP surgery in Catford.  Since then it has grown at a phenomenal rate and now has around 235 members, with around 100 members who participate on a regular basis.

Charmaine Jacobs joined the time bank in 2006. She is now the broker, a job which involves keeping accounts and matching people who want help with people who can help them.

According to Time Banking UK there are currently 92 active time banks and 108 developing time banks in the country.

Not all of them have been successful and the area has seen a number of projects come and go over the years.  Jacobs attributes the sustained success of Rushey Green Time Bank to its strong sense of community and links to the GP surgery.

The ethos of time banking, with its focus on empowering local people and communities, resonates with David Cameron’s mantra of the moment on the ‘Big Society’. He wants to build a society that will: “Take power away from the politician and give it to the people.” So are we going to see time banks popping up across London?

Not according to Gill Stoker, an Open University tutor in her mid-50s, who is setting up another Time Bank in Blackheath. “Time banks invented the big society. David Cameron latched onto the idea a bit late in the day.”

Andrea Hughes has no desire to be part of the coalition government’s plans to shake up British society.

“I have a very socialist outlook so I don’t want my Time Bank to be subverted by the government’s agenda. We’re not going to fill the gaps that government cuts are causing and we are not in the business of propping up council services.”

Time banks in the area are unclear as to how their function will change or evolve in the future, and none have received any extra funding to put into place the government’s vision of volunteer run, self- sufficient communities.

Charmaine Jacobs said, “I’ve been to a few meetings about the government’s plans but it’s all very unclear what they plan to do.”

“All I can say is that time banks are the big society. ”

Source: All content | 7 Feb 2011 | 9:25 pm UTC

Last week I was involved in some Cabinet Office-sponsored discussions about a time banking project being introduced to a local authority area. The idea is to introduce a system to incentivise people to provide low level, good neighbour type support. It would involve helping people to connect with each other and then turning people’s support into credits, which they could use to access council services or leisure activities. In the example that was worked through in the proposal, a young person (‘Jonny’) helps out an older woman with her shopping. The lady has paper credits to give him in return and there is a rating system which lets people know how highly Jonny is regarded by the people he helps. Jonny takes his credits to his local youth club and they are exchanged for something with value (bowling in this case).

This is all very Big Society. Incentivising larger numbers of people to help out older and isolated people at low cost is a very attractive idea in a time of stiff budget cuts.

Timebanking is an elegant idea that should be everywhere, but somehow isn’t. Why?

One challenge for timebanking and the use of complementary currencies is the paradox that, by valuing something that someone does for mainly altruistic reasons, you risk devaluing it. When we help someone out, we want to feel good about having done so. Money is a very poor substitute for this feeling and can actively undermine it. In the ‘70s, Carer’s Allowance was introduced as a benefit for unpaid family carers. It has only ever been a small amount: its purpose was not to replace carers’ lost income or to compensate them for all the hardship that an intensive long-term caring role can bring, but specifically to provide recognition and a sense of being valued. Surveys of unpaid family carers consistently show that the low value of Carer’s Allowance is one of the aspects of caring that makes people most angry. Carers translate the £50 odd quid a week into an hourly rate and feel massively undervalued. Many carers argue that we should increase the allowance until it represents a decent hourly rate. This will never happen: the cost would be up to £80bn a year. But if it did happen, what would it do to our relationships with our family and friends? And would carers, who often sacrifice much more than money to a caring role, feel properly valued because of it?

At a carers’ conference in Ireland, carers were just as angry about the equivalent carers’ benefit, which was twice as much as the UK rate. In fact, when the amount you get paid for helping someone increases, you might feel better about your finances, but less like you’ve been recognised as doing good. GPs, who do a demanding and essential job which helps others, appear in surveys to feel more and more unhappy and undervalued, despite being paid increasingly vast amounts.

So to my mind, the risk with the time banking proposal I was reading, was that Jonny was essentially going to get paid for his help, but via a complicated route with a high transaction cost. The risk being that Jonny can think of easier ways to earn enough to go bowling and that the transaction will feel to him similar to being paid, just not being paid very much. Whilst the local bowling alley might be persuaded to give the council a discount for bulk-buying bowling sessions, that discount is unlikely to be more than the cost of setting up the systems needed to match Jonny with the elderly lady, supply her with credits to give to Jonny, negotiate the offers behind the credits and turn Jonny’s credits back, essentially, into cash. A council with money in their budgets to be able to fund something like this, might just be better off paying Jonny and cutting out the transaction costs.

When I’ve talked to people who are involved in a time banking system, they have been in relatively affluent areas of London with high concentrations of like-minded people with interesting things to offer. Bike maintenance has been traded for language tuition and so on.

To make time banking universal, and useful for people who need help but can’t mend your bike in return, credits which are put into the system need to be worth more than money, but cost less than money to produce. This means they have to offer rewards on which you cannot put a cash value or that are not easily available through another route. Rewards that enhance the feel-good feeling rather than undermine it. This could be about people’s help being celebrated at invite-only events, or people getting more of a say in relevant local decisions (which would be controversial with those who pay taxes but have little free time), or about boosting someone’s CV. Discounts of the kind offered by store loyalty cards could help, providing the businesses in question can be persuaded to participate for the publicity, rather than at a commercial rate. That kind of deal would require a nationally recognised complementary currency of course, something which this avowedly hyper-localist government may be reluctant to do.

It is possible to combine paid and unpaid elements of care: Shared Lives is a good example of this working. Shared Lives carers are paid. They don’t get very much and in some cases can feel exploited, but I’ve never met a more motivated group of people. They never clock off and give far more support and care than a professional contracted by the hour could. One Shared Lives carer told me she thought the money wasn’t enough but wouldn’t want it increased, because that was what, in her view, had ‘ruined’ foster caring: people started getting into it just for the money, she felt, whereas you’d have to be very poor at maths to get into Shared Lives for purely financial reasons. Lots of Shared Lives carers feel that the respite they are provided with is not enough, but there are also lots who have to be cajoled into taking their full allowance.

Whenever you introduce an incentive into the care system (or any system) you almost inevitably also introduce a perverse incentive. Time banking and complementary currencies surely have a role to play in motivating some people to do more voluntary activity, but the test will be whether they can do so without demotivating others.

Source: All content | 11 Feb 2011 | 7:39 pm UTC

In my book The Future of Money* I argue that the money system could be a possible mechanism for achieving a socially just, democratically administered, sufficiency economy – an economy that can meet people's material needs to the minimum necessary to enable a high quality of life for all. A major proviso is that even radical reform of the money system will not eliminate private profit-oriented ownership and control of economic resources, but it could provide a stepping stone to a more ecologically sustainable and socially just society. While money can be a source of greed, alienation and exploitation it is also a symbol of social trust between people. 'Sound money' is a product of society, not of market forces. When we say people trust in money they are trusting in the organisations, society and authorities that create and circulate it, other people, traders, the banks and the state. What has also become clear in the recent financial crisis, is that the only mechanism that stands behind the current money system is the state as representing the collective economic resilience of the population.

Classical economics tells us that money emerged spontaneously out of barter markets when a precious commodity (gold/silver) was adopted as a medium of exchange. This became embedded in coin and represented by paper. This has been discredited by the fact that banking and accounting emerged thousands of years before precious metal coinage and coin value rarely equated to precious metal content. The origin of money is much more social. Money in all its forms has been issued or administered by fiat, that is, issued and guaranteed by an authority, such as a powerful leader, an office-holder or a religious organisation. Historically, states or other monetary authorities have used their power to establish the circulation of money as accounting records or as physical tokens such as clay tablets, tally sticks or coin by 'buying' goods and services. Why should people give up their labour, goods or resources for a worthless accounting record, tablet, stick or coin? Because the 'money' must be returned as tax. Even people not directly subject to state 'purchase' are also required to pay taxes, so the money-tokens must circulate widely in the economy. Taxation must also not reclaim all the 'money' otherwise there would be no mechanism for general circulation. The state must therefore always be in deficit, an important lesson for today's advocates of a balanced budget.

In modern economies, the state's historic monetary role has been virtually obliterated. Money has been privatised through the issue of money through banks as debt, so much so that states have to borrow money themselves.

The modern banking system brings together private banking in relation to trade and the currency-creating powers of the state. Early commercial bankers issued their own credit notes, but as money issue and banks became more regulated, the money the banks issued was declared legal tender, that is universally recognised money authorised by the state. It is this combination of the public nature of money (national tender) and the privatisation of its issue and circulation that has created a money system based on private profit and public responsibility. As banks are issuing new money designated in the national currency, they are issuing what is, or should be, a national resource. Certainly they are issuing money that carries a public liability as is clear from the recent financial crisis. Even when money was deposited within another banking system (as in the case of the Icelandic banks), default became the responsibility of the British state. Equally, the Icelandic people, through the state, were forced to take on financial liabilities that were created by their private sector banks. If conventional economics and neoliberal ideology tells us that money is a private matter, the stampede of people towards a government guarantee of bank deposits in the event of default tells us otherwise.

Like states, banks issue money by fiat, out of fresh air. Although it is widely assumed that banks use savers' deposits to make loans, albeit on an expanded fractional reserve basis, this does not explain where the savers got their money from in the first place. As with state money, bank money must be issued before it is saved. The first loan must come before the first deposit. Far from money representing prior market activities as the barter theorists claimed, it is the prior issuing of bank credit that is essential to bringing profit-seeking activities into being. Issuing money as debt also demands constant growth and expansion of the economy. Capitalism would collapse if everyone paid their debts, or if no further debts were taken out. Anyone who takes on debt is therefore creating new money. Those who take on debt are also making vital choices about the direction of the economy and, as the financial crisis reveals, those choices can rebound on society as a whole.

The money system is a national resource that should not be appropriated for private profit. This is important because the ability to issue money in a society creates the ability to define what is to be seen as valuable (in money terms). Letting the market harness the allocation of money has prevented the recognition of value created by the environment, non-market activities and public investment. Allocating money to citizens as of right or to public investment would give a completely different message about what is important in society. Instead of money circulating through the market to create 'wealth' which is then taxed (under much protest) for public use, public benefit would be the basis for the allocation of money. Administration via a public money system would avoid both the rigidity of a command and control economy and the speculative exploitation, waste and inequality of a capitalist market.

Security of money allocation for consumption and production would remove much of the need to undertake unnecessary work and enable people to be confident of a sufficiency of material goods with more emphasis on the quality of life. Overall priorities would also put public welfare first (hospitals, education, transport) which would make people feel more secure about their future. This would mean they did not have such a need to accumulate money savings. The problem with aiming to achieve future security in money terms is that there is no way people can know what their money will buy in the future. While sufficiency can be calculated in real terms (how much bread will I need?), there is no basis for sufficiency in money terms (what will bread cost in thirty years' time?). Returning the money system to the public would be an invaluable step towards creating a socially just and ecologically sustainable sufficiency economy.

*Mellor, Mary (2010) The Future of Money From Financial Crisis to Public Resource Pluto Press

Source: All content | 15 Feb 2011 | 2:12 pm UTC

In a recent Washington Post article titled "Europe's ominous reckoning", economist Robert Samuelson correctly argued that "Ireland's economic crisis is … not about Ireland." What he seems to not recognize is that "Europe's ominous reckoning" is not about Europe.

The reckoning will be global because the money and banking regime is global — and deeply flawed.

Discussions about possible solutions to the debt crisis tend to degenerate into ideological bickering because ideologies provides an inadequate framework in which to understand the nature of the problem and discover real effective solutions. Fiscal conservatives want to cut social spending so as to avoid raising taxes on the rich and privileged class. Political liberals have largely caved in to the same interests because they think that supporting the privileged class's agenda is their only hope of gaining power. They will pay lip service to a social agenda and throw a few crumbs to the masses in an attempt to get elected, but they will ultimately advance the same elitist agenda, as have Presidents Clinton and Obama. Progressives argue that budgets can be balanced by cutting the military budget and raising taxes on the rich, but they remain impotent because political power has been so thoroughly centralized that popular progressive agendas have not a prayer of being implemented. Even if they were, they would simply make matters worse because under the present money and banking regime, a balanced government budget is not possible. How can the debate move beyond ideologies, and common ground be found?

Samuelson, like almost all conventionally trained economists, blames the woes of Ireland, and every other country, on failures in policy. He says, "Most European economies suffer from the ill effects of some combination of easy money, unsustainable social spending and big budget deficits," but he fails to address the deeper questions of why? Why has money been easy? Why is social spending unsustainable? Why have budget deficits been too big?

It is not only a problem of European economies, it is a problem for virtually all national economies. As Samuelson points out, even the most prosperous countries have accumulated enormous debts. The governments of Germany and France, for example, have, respectively, gross debts of 76 percent and 86 percent of GDP (GDP is a measure of total economic output). The debt of the United States government is projected to exceed 100% of GDP within the next couple of years. And this picture does not even include the debts of lower levels of government — states, counties, and municipalities — or all of the private sector debt that burdens companies and individuals.

If the world has become so prosperous and productive, why all this debt, and why does it continue to grow ever more rapidly?

It is not a matter of policy, i.e., how we operate a flawed system. The problem is structural and systemic. The system is designed to create debt, and ever more of it. Like a pernicious cancer, debt is a parasite that is killing us, and in the end a parasite will die along with its host. How much of our well-being shall we sacrifice to keep feeding this cancer? Are we willing to starve ourselves and our children, to endure cuts in spending for education and public services, to sacrifice our hard-won freedoms, in order to sustain a system that despoils the earth, destroys the social fabric,  and creates ever greater economic inequities?

A few have been calling for "debt forgiveness," a remedy analogous to cancer surgery. That may be a good start, but even that does no go far enough. We can excise the cancer, but if we do not recognize and eliminate its fundamental cause it will simply grow back. We can restart the game of Monopoly, but the outcome of the next round will be very much like that of the previous round unless we change the rules — or choose to play a different game.

The fact is, there is a debt imperative that is built into the global system of money and banking, and debt is eating us alive. As I wrote in my first book more than 20 years ago, our money system, based as it is on banks' lending money into circulation at compound interest, requires debt to grow with the passage of time. Virtually all of the money today is created when banks make "loans." The compounding of interest on these loans means that debt must grow as time goes on, not slowly, but at an accelerating rate. Ever greater amounts of money must be borrowed into circulation for this system to continue. When the private sector debt can no longer be expanded, government assumes the role of "borrower of last resort." That is why government budget deficits have become chronic and continue to grow. In the latest cycle of Bubble and Bust, governments are rescuing the banks by taking "toxic" debt off their hands and giving them government bonds in return. In this way, the system can be sustained a little bit longer, but at costs that have yet to be tallied.

The current global predicament is the late-stage symptom of this fundamental flaw. Every political currency collectivizes credit. It is our credit that supports each national currency. We have allowed the banks to control our credit and we pay them interest for the "privilege" of accessing some of it as bank "loans."

What must be done? The answer is simple, but few have been willing to hear it: interest must be eliminated from the money system to put an end to the growth imperative. To modern economists, such a proposition is heresy, foolish even, unthinkable! Interest to them is an essential inducement to save and invest and a necessary means of regulating credit and the economy. Nonsense, I say, a gross error and delusion fostered by incessant propaganda, media hype, and financial mumbo-jumbo. In an economy that is free from inflation, preservation of one's capital is sufficient motivation for saving, and return on productive investments can be had in the form of ownership shares (so called equity investment) instead of interest on debt. Such equity investments share both the rewards and the risks inherent in a productive enterprise, making the relationship between the user of funds and the provider of funds more harmonious and fair. As for regulating credit, we don't need interest to do that; we can merely decide to withhold or offer credit, to whom, for what purpose, and in what amounts.

We need to learn to play a different game. We need to organize an entirely new structure of money, banking, and finance, one that is interest-free, decentralized, and controlled, not by banks or central governments, but by businesses and individuals that associate and organize themselves into cashless trading networks. This is a way to reclaim "the credit commons" from monopoly control and create healthy community economies.

In brief, any group of traders can organize to allocate their own collective credit amongst themselves, interest-free. This is merely an extension of the common business practice of selling on open account — "I'll ship you the goods now and you can pay me later," except it is organized, not on a bilateral basis, but within a community of many buyers and sellers. Done on a large enough scale that includes a sufficiently broad range of goods and services spanning all levels of the supply chain from retail, to wholesale, to manufacturing, to basic commodities, such systems can avoid the dysfunctions inherent in conventional money and banking and open the way to more harmonious and mutually beneficial trading relationships that enable the emergence of sustainable economies and promote the common good.

This approach is no pie-in-the-sky pipedream, it is proven and well established. Known as mutual credit clearing, it is a process that is used by scores of commercial "barter" companies around the world to provide cashless trading for their business members. In this process, the things you sell pay for the things you buy without using money as an intermediate exchange medium. It's as simple as that. According to the International Reciprocal Trade Association (IRTA), a major trade association for the industry, "IRTA Member companies using the "Modern Trade and Barter" process, made it possible for over 400,000 companies World Wide to utilizetheir excess business capacities and underperforming assets, to earn anestimated $12 billion dollars in previously lost and wasted revenues."

Perhaps the best example of a credit clearing exchange that has been successful over a long period of time is the WIR Economic Circle Cooperative. Founded in Switzerland as a self-help organization in 1934 in the midst of the Great Depression, WIR provided a means for its business members to trade with one another despite the shortage of official money in circulation. Over three quarters of a century, in good time and bad, WIR has continued to thrive. Its more than 60,000 members throughout Switzerland trade about $2 billion worth of goods and services annually.

Yes, it is possible to transcend the dysfunctional money and banking system and to take back our power from bankers and politicians who use it to abuse and exploit us. We do it, not by petitioning politicians who are already bought and paid for by an ever more powerful elite group, but by using the power that is already ours to use the resources we have to support each other's productivity and to give credit where credit is due.

 For more, read Greco's book "The End of Money and the Future of Civilization"

Source: All content | 24 Feb 2011 | 8:02 pm UTC

The SuperFluid is a collaboration platform waiting for its users to figure out how to use it.  The primary differentiator it offers is a unique alternative currency called Quid.  Each user starts off with 200 Quid which they can then spend  on services offered by other SuperFluid users.   In order to earn additional Quid users must list their own services and thereby deliver value to members of the community.

Quid are transacted just like dollars or any other traditional currency, but are created through a unique mechanism.  Traditional fiat currencies are created through the issuance of debt – when a bank loans someone money the borrower then has money in the amount of the loan and the bank has an IOU that did not exist previously.  That IOU, when added to a banks reserves, essentially creates new money.  Therefore in a fiat currency system the total money supply is a function of debt issuance; when borrowing activity increases the money supply expands.  Quid by contrast are created when new users join the platform such that a strict ratio is maintained between the number of users and the supply of Quid.  On the SuperFluid blog CTO Branimir Vasilic writes:

As the number of members grows so does the amount of Quids. Even though the amount of currency grows, this process in not inflationary since the amount of Quids per member stays the same (the “temperature” of the currency, stays the same, see [1]). Simply put, having another member with the same initial balance as every other member does not make them have more purchasing power than anyone else. There is no reason for other members to adjust prices simply because another member has joined and can purchase their offerings.

While this constant relationship between number of users and supply of Quid keeps value stable, the usefulness of Quid varies relative to liquidity.  When users offer and exchange services more readily then the viability of Quid as a means of procuring value increases.  This is where the challenge lies.  Most users I suspect are not quite sure how to use Quid and will learn gradually through experimentation to distinguish those services best acquired via Quid from those more readily purchased using traditional currency.  The SuperFluid team clearly understands this challenge; CEO Nathan Solomon wrote through email:

We want it to be freestanding, and “sloppy;” meaning that the collaborative and community motivation is more important than the precise value of the currency transacted.

I know this may come off sounding a bit odd, but if there were any existing system to which I’d compare superfluid, it would be the currency system within World of Warcraft. Inside of WoW, collaboration is core to success in the community, and the gold, earned through play and collaboration, is a fairly sloppy, highly liquid measure of ability to transact and share, not really wealth. -The guild system too, is significant and similar to our “community” system.  WoW success is tied indirectly but appropriately to social status, and the game maintains a fairly significant potlatch element, that mirrors elements of our intended social environment.

In other words, the goal is to facilitate value exchange rather than financial accumulation.  This goal is reflected in the design of the platform.  For example, borrowing is limited to 600 Quid which forces users to continue to offer their own value rather than simply consuming.  In fact, Nathan tried to discourage the idea that the superfluid is primarily a currency platform and instead positioned it as a collaboration platform:

…as we’ve begun to be more successful with superfluid, we see that people value and focus on collaboration and community in superfluid much more than on the currency. Our currency is intended to maintain a basic level of fairness, but people don’t seem very focused on the exact Quid-value of offerings in the system. In fact, talking about currency a lot seems to make folks a tad nauseous. The more we minimize discussion of Quids and maximize discussion of collaboration using them, the happier our audience seems to be.

My take:

I procrastinated on this post for a long time because the SuperFluid is such a unique offering…I couldn’t figure out how to approach it.  Recently, while browsing the various listings a light bulb went on and I realized that the SuperFluid provides an opportune platform for professional experimentation and apprenticeship.

Many of the listings on the peer to peer platform have an experimental feel to them…and this makes perfect sense.  The SuperFluid provides an ideal middle ground where users developing a new skill can market their services and gain compensation in the form of Quid without creating quite the same expectation of professionalism as a traditional monetary contract would imply.  Likewise, users who need help with a specific project but who do not require expensive professional services can acquire these services using Quid.  This middle market provides exactly what the SuperFluid team intends – a venue where services can be exchanged liberally without undue emphasis on price.

It is less clear how these sorts of exchanges will integrate with traditional forms of collaboration.  Collaborative projects are generally thought of as being mutually owned by the collaborators.  This ownership might be strictly defined as is the case when start-ups allocate equity shares, or it might be informal and implied.  In either case collaborators earn returns by increasing the value of the project.  Introducing payments from one collaborator to another would seem to negate the recipients role as a collaborator, instead shifting his role to that of service provider.

I wonder if the collaboration platform might function more intuitively if Quid could be contributed to collaborative projects or communities themselves.  Users who wish to become “stakeholders” in a given community could invest a given quantity of Quid and these investments would essentially capitalize the project.  The stakeholders in that project would then have pooled funds that could be used to acquire services from other SuperFluid users.

Conclusion:

I am excited to see how the SuperFluid platform and community evolves.  Given the unique characteristics of Quid, users will likely create innovative usage cases that cannot be anticipated ahead of time.  I would encourage readers of this post to go create an account and start experimenting.  Create a listing for some skill you have been casually pursuing and see if anyone takes up on it…then request some services from another user.  If any readers have already explored the SuperFluid please share your thoughts in the comments…

Source: All content | 24 Feb 2011 | 9:11 pm UTC

In theory I agree that an elevator pitch helps us focus on the “essence” of a thing, but my experience has been that there really is no single elevator pitch for cc. I now see this experience itself as a clue to the essence of community currency.

• When I’m talking with free-market business people my elevator pitch is about allowing the power of competition and the marketplace to work on the currency system itself.
• When I’m talking with environmentalists, my elevator pitch is about cc as a tool for solving the problem of the economic externalities of pollution and environmental degradation.
• When I’m talking with social and political activists my elevator pitch is about how the structure of money is fundamentally causal of the problems unequal distribution of wealth.
• When I’m talking with mathematicians my pitch is about how money is an axiom and current economics is the theorems that results from that axiom, but a different axiom (i.e. community currency) is possible that leads to whole new theorems, just like non-Euclidean geometry resulted from changing the parallel postulate.
• When I’m talking with engineers and information-theory folks my elevator pitch is about Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety and questions of the insufficient information carrying capacity of the monetary system to handle the control problems posed by the modern economy.
• When I’m talking with computer geeks my elevator pitch is about cc as a peer-to-peer distributed information system and about “pushing the intelligence to the edges” as in Reed’s Law.
• When I’m talking with peace activists my elevator pitch is about how the structure of money is what allows governments to finance wars (it’s not the taxes which just pay for them after the fact).
• When I’m talking with people focused on spirituality, my elevator pitch is about how cc can be a tool for changing the economy itself into a means for increasing mindfulness, self-consciousness and community interrelatedness.
• When I’m talking with the plain old “concerned-citizen,” my elevator pitch is about their experience of degraded community and how money that leaves the community is central to the problem and how money that “goes-round” is the solution to that problem.
• When I’m talking with people who are interested in questions of trust my elevator pitch is about the value of moving from an economy of external trust to internal trust, and I used the analogy of the bicycle: Bicycles are more maneuverable and useful than tricycles because we move from trusting the tricycle not to fall over because of the stability of its three wheels, to trusting ourselves to not let the bike fall over because of the stability of our steering. Similarly this process of moving the locus of control from outside of communities to inside them can be applied to money. (This pitch works well with spiritual people too, and oddly, a variant of this pitch works great with engineers who understand how adding “instability” into a system is the paradoxically key ingredient to it’s greater stability when the system is coupled with humans. It’s one of the key things the Wright brothers figured out in designing airplanes.)

The experience of developing all these very different pitches has led me to a new pitch (it’s not an “ultimate elevator pitch”, it’s just the one I use with people who already know something about cc) namely, that essence of community currencies is meta-currency. That modern money was one step in the evolution of the more general human process of wealth-acknowledgment, and that the next step in wealth-acknowledgment is the building of a meta-currency platform that allows us to create currencies at will, which will activate all forms of wealth, not just tradable wealth. Whereas money provided liquidity to value, a meta-currency platform will provide liquidity to currency itself. Within this framework, all the other pitches are embraced.

Source: All content | 24 Feb 2011 | 9:23 pm UTC

It’s easy to talk about how handheld, networked computers (that’s what our cell phones are, after all) promote the decentralization of content creation, file exchange and even culture — but what about the stuff that’s so centralized we stop thinking about it as even up for discussion? That’s right: I’m talking about money.

Handheld wireless technology stands ready to enable what’s known as the “complementary currency” movement in ways so powerful that the dominance of national currencies such as the dollar and the euro may soon be called into question.

This is not as preposterous a scenario as it sounds. After all, it’s only been since the Renaissance that nation-states have been powerful enough to corner the money market. Before then, most municipalities developed their own currencies, often basing them on very different principles than the ones we use to justify our currencies today.

For example, many earlier currencies were based on commodities. A person would bring grain to the store (not the shop, but the grain storage facility), and receive a note in exchange listing how much grain it represented. This note was a tender, and could be traded for other goods and services, whether or not the person accepting that note really needed grain or not.

Unlike most currencies today, these commodity-based currencies usually devalued over time. After all, the storage guy needed to be paid, and there was always some grain lost to rats and rain. This cost was passed on to whoever was holding the money, making money something you didn’t hold on to. Uninvested money was money lost. That’s why so much capital went into preventative maintenance on windmills, and the construction of all those giant cathedrals.

Money today, on the other hand, is issued by what’s known as “fiat.” This means it is literally created out of nothing. Our money is all borrowed from the central bank, and must be paid back, with interest. If you get, say, a $100,000 loan, you must pay back $200,000 or more, over time. Where do you get that extra money? By competing for it. The ground rules for a certain kind of competitive marketplace are dictated by this relationship to currency.

Over time, many communities have seen fit to challenge the monopoly of single currency systems by developing their own. This works particularly well during periods of recession or depression, when centralized currency is hard to come by but people are still ready to do work and anxious to get the food and services they need. Complementary currencies, such as Ithaca Hours, allow communities to set a value on the goods and services they supply one another, and then exchange an agreed upon number of local currency units. Such systems have allowed, for example, people in cash-poor Japan to provide health care for their relatives in distant cities by doing chores for people in their own.

Who gets left out of this system? Why, the central bank, of course, as well as the tax man. But it does allow communities to provide for themselves, even over great distances, as long as the credits and debits can be properly recorded and managed — and trusted.

Instead of printing money, most local currencies of today rely on centralized bookkeeping. While a physical accounting book might work for a small town – it still requires everyone to come in to the accounting office and register what they’ve bought or sold. The Internet has served a number of other communities as a more modern way to enter and verify transactions, and then tally everyone’s accounts. The LETSystem is a free system for doing just that.

But going home to the computer to record transactions online is still something of a burden, and requires a bit of trust.

That’s where cell phones come in. What if we could use our cell phones to confirm transactions with one another as simply as pressing a button? We don’t even need to shake hands with each other, only with the central server, which can confirm that both parties have agreed. As Paul Hartzog put it in an email, “enabling the back-end for a truly decentralized marketplace with buyers, sellers, traders, and sharers is the open-source ‘killer app’ of the next century.”

Killer app of the century? He may not be overstating the case. After all, if people can conduct transactions efficiently with alternative currencies, then they may look for those that have lower premiums than the US dollar.

Cheaper money, anyone?

Source: All content | 25 Feb 2011 | 12:41 am UTC

Presentation

Most projects to create new digital currencies fail because they rely on real money or on material wealth. This project aims to create a free new digital currency based exclusively on the digital world.

Three basic rules : 1) Universal Digital Currency (UDC) enables you to buy and sell digital goods, not real goods. 2) Universal Digital Currency (UDC) cannot be converted in real money and vice versa. 3) Each member of Universal Digital System (UDS) community receives a monthly Universal Digital Income (UDI) of 100 UDC.

Let us imagine that you become a digital world citizen. Just register in the Universal Digital System community to get UDC account and receive monthly income of 100 UDC. Now you can buy any digital goods you want : pictures, drawings, videos, songs, poetry, software tools, programs, software, lessons, letter templates, books… which are sold by their authors/creators/producers/owners at UDC pricing.

For example, you buy a picture for 10 UDC or an accounting lesson (text or video) for 50 UDC. Your balance account is debited while the seller balance is credited for 10 or 50 UDC.

Even if you don't produce and sell any digital goods, your monthly income gives you the capacity to buy digital goods. Of course, if you are a smart digital goods producer and lucky seller, your account would grow faster and you will be able to buy more digital goods. The more you produce and sell, the more you earn and the more you can buy digital goods. But everyone earns his/her Universal Digital Income of 100 UDC each month, whether producing digital goods or not. Thus no one is excluded from the system.

We just need to create a global web site responsible for creating and managing users' UDC accounts with users' strong authentication. This step will prime the pump.

Become a "Follower" ! If you have more time, your may contribute. It is easy. Just take a look at the « ToDo List » page in "links" area and then post a message or send me an email to "pascal@joocool.com".

The goals

1. Everyone should be able to buy digital goods.
2. All digital goods producers deserve a fair remuneration.
3. Promote the production and consumption of digital goods (art, culture, education, science, …).
4. Contribute to a fair digital world.

The main principles

1. Universal Digital Currency is not issued by a State, a political party, a central bank, a commercial bank, a company, a corporation, an association or a group of individuals, it belongs to the people's world community.
2. Universal Digital Currency value is not based on material wealth (gold, silver, gemstones, …), on raw materials (oil, gas, wheat, …), on monetary funds, on financial trust, on bank deposits, on bank credits, on economic indices. UDC value is based on people's honesty, knowledge, know-how, skill and goodwill.
3. Universal Digital Currency is a voluntary agreement between members of UDS community on the principles and transparent rules governing the transactions it symbolizes.
4. Universal Digital System (UDS) is governed by democratic principles. Its members decide the rules and evolution of the system in accordance with the goals and main principles.
5. The written goals, basic principles and rules form the Constitution of UDS. UDS Constitution expresses the will of world citizens in the digital currency domain and is the cornerstone of UDC issuance.
6. Once proclaimed, the Constitution cannot be changed unless minimum 75 % of voters decide so. All UDS members are voters (1 voter = 1 vote).
7. Each UDS member can promote himself as a member of the Constitutional Council, responsible for compliance with the Constitution. Each constitutional councillor can personally ensure that current UDS respects the Constitution and has the power and duty to denounce drifts or deviations.
8. Open Web is the key to achieve UDS.

The rules

1. Universal Digital Currency (UDC) enables you to buy digital goods, not real goods.
2. Universal Digital Currency (UDC) cannot be converted in real money and vice versa. UDC cannot be converted in other digital currencies and vice versa. So speculation is worthless.
3. Each member of Universal Digital System (UDS) community, i.e. each registered individual, receives a monthly Universal Digital Income (UDI) of 100 UDC.
4. Everyone can join (individual above the age limit). No corporation can join.
5. Registration is free.
6. No middleman or distributor : digital products are sold directly and exclusively from author/creator/producer/owner to consumer.
7. Resale of purchased digital products is prohibited.
8. No fees, no commission and no tax are applied to transactions.
9. Loans, borrowings and interest rate are prohibited.
10. UDC account is strictly personal. It is not salable or assignable or transferable to anyone. UDC account retires when its owner retires.
11. UDC account is necessarily positive or zero, it cannot be negative.
12. UDC units cannot be redeemed for anything else (other currencies, precious metals like gold or silver or material wealth).

The problem and its solution

Today, all individual digital goods authors/creators/producers have to cope with this alternative : 1) "Selling" their products for free. 2) Being paid by consumers' generosity in real money (shareware…). 3) Selling their products alone at real money pricing. 4) Selling their products to a company or a distributor at real money pricing 5) Creating a small company to sell their products.

Each choice listed above has its corresponding drawback : 1) It is commendable but not very motivating. This limits the production. 2) Practical problems : how to pay a small amount as an individual to another remote individual, availability of good monetary currency. Very few donations. 3) Unlikely to be known, found and paid with real money for a personal work published in a personal shop. 4) Beginning a difficult and long path to business, with great effort though unlikely to be published and rewarded. 5) Business creation is an extraordinary challenge but it remains risky. It is the choice of a minority.

That is why UDS propose this new choice : 1) Selling your products alone within Universal Digital System at UDC pricing. 2) Uploading your products to a Universal Digital Shop (UDShop) in order to sell your products at UDC pricing. UDShops are not resellers, they are consignment shops.

More explanations

1) Selling principles

UDC is a monetary unit. A digital goods author/creator/producer/owner sets the price for his/her product using UDC. For example, I can sell my drawings for 5 UDC each and my newsletter for 10 UDC. All pricing is expressed in UDC unit. The deed of sale grants use rights and enjoyment to buyer without transfer of ownership.

No middleman or distributor : digital products are sold directly and exclusively from author/creator/producer/owner to consumer. One individual sells a digital product to another individual that consumes this product. Uploading digital products to electronic store is an act of consignment shop. Resale is prohibited.

Each digital product has an associated author/creator/producer/owner. A database registers the digital product (product code, name, description, …) with the identifier of the author/creator/producer/owner. Thus, at a sale, the system automatically knows the ID of the seller whose account will be credited.

When a digital product is a joint effort, the IDs of all authors/creators/producers are attached to the product code. A coefficient can be assigned to each. Thus, for a product created jointly by A, B and C with coefficients A-5, B-3 and C-2 and that is sold 10 UDC, the system credits the account for A 5-UDC, for B 3-UDC and for C 2-UDC, while debits the buyer's account for 10 UDC.

2) List of digital goods

With UDC units, you can buy and sell only digital goods, no real goods. Here is the list of digital goods you can purchase and sell, in alphabetical order.

List of digital goods (version 0.6) : action plans, assembly sheets, blueprints, e-books, course materials, drawings, e-newspapers, fonts, game programs, glossaries, instructions, lessons, lists (items by category), magazines, manuals, manufacturing records, movies, musical opus/works, newsletters, photographs, pictures, poetry, programs, recipes, ringtones, short films, short stories, software, software tools, songs, sounds, technical sheets, templates (contract, legal status, letter, …), tip sheets, training materials, videogames, videos, widgets.

This list must be completed. List open to your suggestions.

A digital product is not a commodity like any other. It has a fundamental characteristic: its manufacturing cost per unit is zero. Like a hardware product, the cost of design and production exists. But once completed, its cost of re-production is zero, unlike the process of mass production of a material product. That is why an individual has the capacity to serve an important market with its digital production without raw materials, workshops and factories.

Some digital products are frozen, that is to say they will not change once made, like a poem, a picture or a movie. But others like programs, software, books, courses, etc. can evolve. Regular updates can improve the benefit of consumers.

Each digital product can be identified by a unique value. This "fingerprint" or hash is the result of a one-way hash function. This can be likened to the barcode of the products we buy in stores. With this unique and universal product code, our system can not make any mistakes on the product.

3) Personal account and merchant account

All UDC accounts are identical and there is no distinction between a merchant account and a personal account. UDC accounts are dedicated exclusively to individuals. It is not a matter of wether you produce and sell digital goods or not. UDC accounts are always free to open. Each member of the Universal Digital System community is allowed to get his/her 100 UDC income per month.

4) Access to UDC account

Cell phones and smartphones are good means to authenticate yourself and then access to your account balance and transaction details.

Few reasons : 1) Expensive but already paid by citizen/consumer (or his/her company). 2) Always available by the user (like his/her keys). 3) Carefully watched by the user and perceive like a valuable personnal belonging and not easily shared with others. 4) Able to perform authentication in many ways Mobile Internet, GSM mode by SMS or even in unconnected mode (in that case the Java midlet acts like a token). 5) Open to welcome authentication software modules : newer generations include additionnal SD memory card devices. 6) Strong authentication by OTP (One Time Password) : challenge-response protocol using personal code book (matrix) and associated secret code. 7) Improved security by dual channel usage : telecommunication on top of Web.

A registered UDS member can also authenticate himself/herself to the system with its USB key plugged to a computer/netbook connected to Internet. In this case, a browser is enough. It is a Java applet, automatically downloaded and executed in browser, that allows users to authenticate with a simple USB key or hard drive (which will store a personal matrix) and entering a personal unbreakable code. So, using a mobile device is not mandatory.

All UDC account services are delivered as Web Services on the server side.

5) Privacy

Universal Digital System (UDS) is not based on anonymity like it could be for digital coin systems. When a digital product is bought, UDS must know who buys and who sells in order to debit the buyer and credit the seller. Once operation is achieved, no log is kept by UDS in order to protect people's privacy. Account operation details (income-credit, purchase-debit, sale-credit) are written inside this account and are only visible for the account owner, after strong authentication. No commercial database is created about buyers and sellers. No information is collected, stored and used by UDS for advertising purposes.

6) What we believe

We believe that everyone is worthwhile to receive income in order to consume cultural and educational products or something digital that is useful for life. This income is given on an equal basis to everyone. The counterpart to UDC monetary creation is the addition of people's personal values. Our belief is that the total value of humanity increases each time one of us "consumes" a cultural or educational product.

We think that creating a digital product corresponds to added value and wealth creation. Its price is the counterpart.

We think that « toute peine mérite salaire » and that an author/creator/producer must earn an income from his/her work and knowledge/know-how/talent. The UDC project aims to promote recognition and valorisation of "wealth" (expressed numerically) backed by people.

7) Authors, creators and producers

What can be got easily and for free is always worth less to us. Our system will promote ease of access to digital assets, while promoting digital creation and production. We believe it is possible to create an intermediate place between free and business, two irreconcilable worlds that oppose today.

Those who graciously put their creations and work available to others deserve our gratitude. But mostly, all these efforts are made by people who also have a real job properly paid by real money. This allows them to be the "volunteers" of the digital world. They dedicate a part of their leisure time and a monetary award, whether real or digital, is secondary. We welcome their presence in the digital world and salute their selflessness.

Others are self-employed, poor workers, unemployed, homemakers or students. Any extra work done for free in the digital world at the expense of their main activity is a real shortfall. This scenario is also true in the art world where the happy few eat a big cake while others, many more, eat only crumbs.

Of course our system does not reward these people with "hard currency" money. However, it allows them to obtain tangible recognition, dignity as an author/designer/worker, and also thrive in the digital world through the UDC won and spent to acquire other digital goods.

Universal Digital System overall pattern

9) Universal Digital Currency issuance

Universal Digital Currency does not intend to replace real money, it is a complementary currency. UDC issuing procedure is a mix between central distribution and backed currency.

UDC is distributed by a central office to everybody or, to be more precise, to everybody who register. It is that simple. « This is the way major currency reforms are typically introduced when a radical departure is necessary. » [Bernard Lietaer]

Until 1944, it was theoretically possible to redeem gold from the bank against the bank notes that have been formerly given. Today, you can withdraw cash from your bank account but you only exchange account digits against paper money. In Universal Digital System, you do not make any deposit on your account at the beginning. It is automatically credited by Universal Digital Income. So there is nothing to be redeemed since you have not made any deposit. But UDC is nevertheless a backed currency for it is directly and legally redeemable for digital goods or services. « The strongest currencies are typically those that are fully "backed" by a good or service. [...] Currencies that are fully backed by a good or service that is in broad demand have logically an easier time to gain credibility. » [Bernard Lietaer]

« The problem of over-issuing is the biggest risk run by currencies that are created by central issue. It is important with this model to cautiously control the quantity of currency issued, otherwise its depreciation and risk of loss of credibility is a predictable outcome. » [Bernard Lietaer] That is why the income amount given to registered people is modest and spread evenly over time. That is why the full part of used UDC (to buy) is backed by digital goods.

10) Regulation of UDC monetary creation

During initial phase, registration of new members in UDS community will feed the system with money creation, but according to a strict parity with members' number. Fine tuning of Universal Digital Income paid monthly to all can therefore control overall system. Wise and prudent management over time of Universal Digital Income avoids both glut and scarcity of UDC money.

UDS assumes a universal dividend money system (Universal Digital Income). So each individuals, present and future community member, will create the same relative amount of money (Money created / Monetary Mass / Individual) during a long time period.

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