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.

11) Universal Digital Income (UDI)

Currently we find that average income in real money is different from one country to another. Is it inevitable? Should we also pay different Universal Digital Incomes across countries?

Price difference for same goods in different countries due to : * geographical distance between production location and consumption place (packaging and transport cost), * mass production mode (artisanal or factory automation), * relationship between supply and demand (which is rare and very sought is expensive), * individual and social consciousness of value/benefice of such goods by buyers.

The advantage of digital world is that production place is irrelevant because anyone can instantly transmit files anywhere in the world thanks to Internet. There is no reason why price should be different from one region to another or from one country to another. Digital product, after its initial production, has the distinction of being re-produced "for free" every time it will be consumed again. So in digital world, mass production mode does not matter because everyone can mass produce by simple file copy. Similarly, scarcity is no longer a relevant criterion. Finally, a digital product for sale in a UDShop has only one "world" price that applies to consumers worldwide. It is the producer who sets the price. This award no longer depends on individual and social value/benefice consciousness of buyers, which varies according to regions and countries.

As a result, there is no reason why Universal Digital Income should be different from one region to another, or from one country to another, since digital purchasing power is exactly the same. Thus everyone will receive the same UDI equally.

12) UDC life cycle

Issuance : Who gets to create it ? When, why and how ? Transaction : Are transactions of the currency allowed ? Are transactions taxable ? Who can transact ? How ? Any limits ? Conversion/Co-function : Can it be converted to other currencies ? What is its relationship to other currencies ? Retirement/Redemption : How does the currency expire or retire ? Is it redeemed for something else ? [newcurrencyfrontiers.com]

1) Issuance

Who gets to create it ? UDC belongs to the people's world community (principle n° 1). UDS Constitution is the cornerstone of UDC issuance (principle n° 5).

When ? Once UDS Constitution is proclaimed (principle n° 6). Each time a new member registers to UDS (rule n° 3).

Why ? UDS members members decide the rules and evolution of the system in accordance with the goals and main principles (principle n° 4).

How ? Monthly Universal Digital Income/Dividend (UDI) (rule n° 3).

2) Transaction

Are transactions of the currency allowed ? No (rule n° 9).

Are transactions taxable ? No (rule n° 8).

Who can transact ? Only individuals (rule n° 4).

How ? Individuals buy directly from other seller individuals (digital goods producers) using UDC units (rules n° 6, 7).

Any limits ? The balance of each individual account (rule n° 11).

3) Conversion/Co-function

Can it be converted to other currencies ? No (rule n° 2).

What is its relationship to other currencies ? None (rules n° 2, 12).

4) Retirement/Redemption

How does the currency expire or retire ? (rule n° 10).

Is it redeemed for something else ? No (rule n° 12).

Universal Digital System is a breakthrough, fostering wealth flow without any kind of exclusion, keeping currency issuing under control while making UDCstrong and credible.

Source: All content | 25 Feb 2011 | 3:56 pm UTC

During the transition period 1989-1998, Hungary's centrally-planned economy became a free- market economy. State-owned companies, for the most part, ceased trading. The Hungarian economy declined, numbers in work fell drastically and reliance on imports increased. These trends are still gaining pace. Local retailers felt the effects, and multinational retail chains started to gain market share.

From the year 1993 Hungarian companies started to use meal and vacation vouchers to supplement wages. Profits to voucher issuers come from being able to use the value of the vouchers as a capital resource during the average time between issue and redemption by holders. The French companies, Sodexho Pass, Accor Services, and the Chèque Déjeuner completely covered the Hungarian market by 2006.

One of the most renowned restaurant owners in the city, Tamás Perkovátz created the Kékfrank in 2007 as a hot food voucher that could be used in his own restaurant and in other restaurants. Later cold food, gift vouchers, and school vouchers, were introduced as a single-use complementary currency under the name of HAMI. His goal was for  vouchers to be accepted in only Hungarian-owned shops and restaurants. They were accepted in 60 to 70 municipalities and in Sopron at around 180 places. Capital resources were created, and turnover rose.

The appearance of a new form of enterprise, the European Cooperative Society (SCE) helped support the Kékfrank.  The aim of the European Parliament and Council was to promote cross-border cooperation by creating a form of enterprise that can appear as one legal entity throughout the European Union.

The law through which the 2007/64/EC European Union directive (EC, 2007) – Payment Service Directive was adopted into Hungarian law also supported the creation of the Kékfrank. This legislation is important for two reasons: Firstly it introduced a new form of enterprise, an institution offering payment services, Secondly it defined the payment instruments and services, that is, issuance and acceptance of complementary currencies, and payments by telecom, digital or IT devices.

According to the local monetary policy regarding this currency, to discourage redemption of the Kékfrank, 2% + VAT redemption tax is charged at the act of redemption. Future objectives are electronic, bank-card payments besides paper-based transactions and the start of Kékfrank-lending. The structure focused on the final consumer will have to transform in future into a network of supply chains. 

To sum up, the base for the launch of the Kékfrank was an already established system of vouchers. To develop this system, support was obtained from local and national business leaders. The first Hungarian SCE was founded, a long licensing procedure was carried out, and media announcements were made. But the real test is coming only now: Members of the SCE should use the new currency for their transactions as intensively as possible, allowing as little as possible to leak out of the Sopron region via exchange into forints in order to maximise the local stimulus effect. Then a defiant saying of Kristóf Lackner, a celebrated former mayor of Sopron, “Mergitur non submergitur” (“Adrift but not sinking”), can at last come true.

Kékfrank Facts:

• The “HA-MI Összefogunk/If-We Unite Limited Liability European Cooperative Society” (that is the SCE supporting Kékfrank) was founded by 123 members, entrepreneurs and individuals, through purchase of 385 shares, each worth 100 euros. Thus, the SCE was founded with 38,500 euro authorised capital, on 29th November 2009.
• Several Sopron decision-making groups are strategic partners in the initiative
• To become a member of the SCE, the recommendation of a member, the purchase of minimum 1 (maximum 40) shares of 100 euros each, the acceptance of the statutes, and the approval of 5 members of the board of directors is needed.
• The main goal of the SCE is to stimulate the local economy in Sopron and its region with the help of the Kékfrank complementary currency, in a cross- border setting, through the firms of its members, encouraging the purchase of locally produced goods and services.
• The paper version of the Kékfrank complementary currency (abbreviated Kfr) was printed by the Hungarian Banknote Printing Shareholding Company, and the first official exchange took place on the 7th May, 2010.
• The currency, like the forint, has 6 different denominations: 500Kfr, 1000Kfr, 2000Kfr, 5000Kfr, 10 000Kfr and 20 000Kfr, but no coins exist, if these are needed, the Hungarian forint can be used.
• Kékfrank notes have 7 security features, including watermark, individual serial number and ultra-violet ink.
• Kékfrank is 100% backed by forints, it can be acquired with forint (1 Ft = 1Kfr) in the branches of Rajka and Region Credit Union at two locations in Sopron. The paid-in forint amount pays interest at the level of the base rate of the Central Bank of Hungary, for the benefit of the acquirer and the community.
• The Kékfrank can be circulated freely, it has no expiry date.
• Since Kékfrank deposits cannot earn interest, it is expected to circulate faster than the interest-paying forint. 

Source: All content | 5 Mar 2011 | 1:47 pm UTC

With the EFF’s announcement that they would being accepting BitCoin donations, the alternative money community began to take a larger interest. I certainly did, and found that there are good and bad things about this form of money.  In the end, BitCoins create a perverse incentive to consume energy to “create money.” Here is why.

What is a bitcoin and how do you create one? A BitCoin is created whenever a user’s computer churns though a SHA-256 hash repeatedly from a hash until it results in a number less than a given number. Statistically, hash functions are supposed to have very unpredictable content–that is what makes them secure. Whenever a BitCoin client churns through a hash starting from a given number issued to the network, it burns CPU time (and thus energy).  The probability of getting a hash to be “less than” a given 256-bit number is quite low. Successfully determining how many SHA-256 rounds it takes for a particular nonce to hash to a number lower than some value is called the “proof of work.” If while your computer receives a new “block” from the network (meaning another computer successfully won some BitCoins), your computer must start over with a new nonce.

How much energy does it require to mine the average BitCoin? With my “older computer,” the hash rate averages around 2000 khps on a microprocessor going full-bore consuming about 65W.  The current difficulty shows that a new BitCoin can be mined by a computer at this speed on average every 113 days. So, 113 days × 24 hours = 2712 hours. 2712 hours × 65W = 176280 Wh or 176.28 KWh. The average cost of a KWh in the United States is 10.45 cents. So we’re looking at spending $18.42 to create 50 BTC (at the moment).  So the electrical cost is about $0.36/BTC.  BitCoins are trading now already at values below this, so I can only assume that they’re being sold at a loss or others may be externalizing the costs of electricity and not taking this into account.  If you were to pay your electric bill in BTC, you would have a positive feedback loop (always a bad thing) that consumes more energy to earn money to pay back the power company. It doesn’t matter how efficient your processors are—you’re spending more money to make money.

Now I understand the motive to why BitCoin is like this: it is to prevent run-away inflation– the number of BitCoins that will ever be available to the world is limited to X million.  If BitCoins are lost due to corruption or data loss, they can never be recovered. (Clue in the Greifer who writes a trojan horse that seeks out to destroy unprotected wallet.dat files!) While the BitCoin FAQ claims that it is a misconception to say that BitCoins gain their value via the electricity used to generate them, as there is no other way to feasibly generate a BitCoin other than the mass consumption of electricity, I don’t agree with this assertion. Once a BitCoin is generated, you still have the problem of a market that still must determine their “value”–does it cost you 25 BTC for a sandwich or 2.5 BTC for a sandwich?  With an absolute fixed quantity of BTC to be created (until about the year 2140) and a specification that says that BTC can be subdivided down to the 0.00000001ths (not that any client supports this at this time, most mandate the limit of hundreths of a BTC are the smallest subdivisions) we have a currency that will devalue itself almost as easily as the Zimbabwean dollar, except by using progressively smaller and smaller subdivisions of a BTC.  Should we be using BitCoin 10-decades from now, we’ll still reminisce how it used to be that 10 BTC would have bought you a nice meal, and so on.

So what use is BitCoin? BitCoin is driving a lot of people to think about the problems of creating transactions that cannot be interfered with by third parties, without fees, etc. The “Timestamp Server” concept and distribution of publicly “spent” transactions (to prevent double-spending) is still a valid concept. Anonymity in transactions is still something desirable, but I don’t believe that you can achieve it via near-anonymous digital signatures online.

In the end, the artificial creation of the limited number of possible BitCoins via this “proof of work” (doing millions of SHA-256 hashes over and over) is madness. All you really need is to have “proof of limitation” without the politics—was the market restrained from creating too much money too fast?  BitCoin’s use of a procedural solution is the wrong track when all you need do is define a constraint via a formula and apply it as needed over time, instead of everyone continuously spinning a hash function and wasting electricity.  Keep the transactions public, cryptographically sign them, and audit them with a money model and you’ll be able to keep much of what is good about BitCoin. And of course, use a “commodity” the people can intuitively understand, something like… time. 

Source: All content | 6 Mar 2011 | 3:56 am UTC

If anyone had any doubts about the huge role that Time Banking can play in holding a community together, turn to the experience of the people of Lyttelton.

Lyttelton was at the epicentre of the recent devastating earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, and is Christchurch’s port town (3000). Its harbour sits on the inside of an extinct volcano linked to the ocean. It is beautiful.

On 4th September 2010 a 7.1 earthquake caused much damage –  in both the city and port. It felt miraculous as there was no loss of life.

Although we were still experiencing aftershocks, we were starting to move forward. Then the February 22nd shock rocked us. It was a 6.3 quake, but closer to the built-up area and shallower. The results are huge. And this time there was significant loss of life.

For the Time Bank, the first major earthquake was like a trial run. We learnt much from it and took those learnings into the second.

This was the situation when the 4th September earthquake struck. With not so much damage in Lyttelton compared with Christchurch city, all Civil Defence personnel were deployed into the city. But there were needs in Lyttelton all the same. The volunteer fire brigade, ambulance and Health Centre asked the Time Bank to start co-ordinating volunteers, and we did. Teams of people helped take down dangerous chimneys, called up older people in the community to check if all was OK, and provided a drop in centre for people to simply touch base with other humans.

This worked well, and our Time Bank membership levels increased markedly – at a guess 12-15%.

However, a small amount of ill feeling emerged between the Civil Defence team and the Time Bank as the media talked about how great the Time Bank was. We started healing those links, looking closely at how the whole community works together in such a situation. By the time the second, more devastating earthquake hit, people were already thinking about how things might be done differently. The first earthquake was like a wake up call to get our systems improved.

I am writing this just as we are moving out of the emergency phase of the 2nd earthquake. This time aroundwe did everything so much better, with a seamless link between the official emergency services and Time Bank. Time Bank has also acted as a conduit so people can find out what is happening and where. There have been bulletins coming out from the Time Bank sometimes 4 times a day!

Some highlights of a Time Bank that exist in normal times but are significant in times of disaster include:

• You know what skills you have available in the community
• You have rapid ways of accessing them
• People are already practised in using such a connecting system – it kicks in fast
• There is a strong human element, it builds a sense of community where compassion and love become the norm
• It allows all people to be involved
• Above all, it creates hope

Readers can look at our website www.lyttelton.net.nz  to find out more.

CAPTION FOR PHOTO 1

Julie Lee the Lyttelton Time Bank co-ordinator hard at it at the first point of contact at the Emergency Centre

CAPTION FOR PHOTO 2

In the midst of it all life continues. A group of Time Bankers – not trading, just living the ethos of TBing making hand stitched heart brooches. 100s of these hearts have been made by the initiators and all the people that sit down, stitch, and make hearts for themselves and others. Ministers of the Crown, sports celebraties, Lyttelton people and crumbled Lyttelton buildings all wear our hearts visibly. The Time Banking system is influencing the psyche of the whole community.

Source: All content | 10 Mar 2011 | 3:46 pm UTC

Renata Lemos-Morais: You have recently produced and directed a short documentary about Creative Currencies in Latin America. Could you tell us a bit about its process and its findings?

Gilson Schwartz: The “Creative Currencies” project is a work-in-progress platform dates back to 2003 when I led an experimental project supported by the Presidency of Brazil. We issued paper currency in a small, touristic village in the Northeast Region which stimulated local cultural projects. But it was only in 2009 that the Central Bank of Brazil acknowledged “social currencies” as a legitimate economic agenda – there is now genuine interest among public officials in different areas and public funding for social currencies is on the rise in Brazil.

However, after eight years of price stability and social inclusion we are still at a very early stage of research and practice and Brazil stands out as a major opportunity for social experimentation. It is yet to be seen, however, whether these developments are just one more stage of “bankarization”, that is to say, an extension of regular banking services or actually a new form of social and symbolic self-determination at the local level. So far, the Central Bank of Brazil is open to new forms of credit and local finance as long as they are strictly territorial and very close to barter among the poor.

In other words, whether the process of monetary creation could be made to fit an open source paradigm is yet to be seen. Community banking and social currencies might as well end up as just another channel for access to and use of banking services. The “Creative Currencies” project aims to induce more discussion about the fundamental iconomic issues concealed in the process of money and wealth creation.

RLM: What new potential is there in applying digital technologies to currency creation?

GS: Globalization is a result of the virtualization of money, that is, the overcoming of illusions such as the “gold standard”. Money is an icon created by institutions out of political and financial interests. The “dollar standard” is an outstanding evidence of this phenomenon and the digitalization of global financial flows accelerated this immateriality and the creation of the Euro was yet another evidence of the political foundations of currencies.

There is no reason to doubt that the financial industry can be transformed like many others by Peer-to-Peer (P2P) infrastructures. Once people realize that P2P networks can weave new monetary and credit operations, there is room for grassroots emancipation out of the established owners of monetary institutions.

So far, however, there has been a privatization of monetary management and there is not a clear path or model for the emergent (P2P) property democratization that is inherent to the internet.

RLM: How are social networks transforming the ways in which we exchange value? Do you believe that online influence and reputation might be translated into a new kind of currency?

GS: The foundation for social currencies as envisaged by solidarity economics is the territory. Authorities are willing to concede local monetary creation as long as it is restricted to poor neighborhoods, as a proxy to barter. In this relevant but limited context, reputation, personal knowledge and informal ties form the matrix of local or “proximity” finance which are expected to keep credit and leverage to a sustainable level. Anything beyond that should and would lead to an integration of local finance into the established banking system.

However, inasmuch as the internet promotes virtual territories and reputation is now subject to all sorts of digital manipulation and stardom becomes an everyday cultural process among teenagers and elders alike, the territorial “foundation” is substituted for more complex patterns of solidarity, cooperation and exchange that reach beyond the physical territory. Digital assets embody knowledge, technology, cultural and educational values that are exchanged at a global scale beyond the control of democratic States.

Hacktivism is unstoppable and so is monetary hacktivism. Banking and telecom sectors already battle for the control of these emerging markets and have so far contained these processes. If open source hardware and grassroots social movements combine to challenge these proprietary battles, then social networks may evolve into new forms of social capital.

RLM: What are some of the social experiments that you think are revolutionizing the way in which value is exchanged?

GS: There is a broad evolution of economic systems towards the valuation of intangible assets such as knowledge, reputation and sustainability. There are many examples of local as well as global events that call the traditional systems of exchange into question, from carbon credits to educational bonuses, digital barter frameworks and locally based solidarity and fair trade networks. These emerging examples, no matter how different in nature or scale, represent a challenge to the traditional value creation schemes and theories which are based on supply and demand.

This is not to say that utility and labour or scarcity are to be totally dismissed, but there is now an emerging perception that value is also a function of behavioral codes, symbolic patterns and the energy of institutional frameworks. When you discuss the property rights of public goods such as the environment or basic social rights (of minorities or localities), then a new paradigm seems to emerge. 

RLM: Monetary value was originally connected to the scarcity of precious metals, such as gold. Do you believe it is possible to reverse this logic into a logic of abundance?

GS: The gold standard was a fiction itself, the 'scarcity' is always produced by institutions that regulate confidence and access to credit. The key issue is not to fabricate abundance, but to question the institutions which produce scarcity out of any standard, gold or whatever.

Schwartz is Assistant Professor at the School of Communication and Arts of the University of São Paulo, a former Chief Economist at BankBoston, Brazil and Advisor to the President of the National Social and Economic Development Bank (BNDES).

Source: All content | 15 Mar 2011 | 5:22 pm UTC

The FBI, which apparently has no major criminals to pursue, is now busting those who are preparing for the dollar's imminent destruction. Bernard von NotHaus, head of the National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve and Internal Revenue Code, commonly known as NORFED and also known as Liberty Services (his website can, or rather could, be seen here, which since 1998 has been issuing silver coins as a replacement for the relentlessly devaluating US currency, was convicted today by a federal jury of making, possessing, and selling his own coins. " Following an eight-day trial and less than two hours of deliberation, von NotHaus, the founder and monetary architect of a currency known as the Liberty Dollar, was found guilty by a jury in Statesville, North Carolina, of making coins resembling and similar to United States coins; of issuing, passing, selling, and possessing Liberty Dollar coins; of issuing and passing Liberty Dollar coins intended for use as current money and of conspiracy against the United States." . The devious scheme for which von NotHaus faces up to 15 years jail time: "NORFED’s purpose was to mix Liberty Dollars into the current money of the United States. NORFED intended for the Liberty Dollar to be used as current money in order to limit reliance on, and to compete with, United States currency." In other words make the US currency less credible. We are confident the Chairsatan will take this shining example of what happens to "counterfeiters" of US currency to heart, and promply proceed to release another cool trillion in green 75% cotton/25% linen products, forcing US jails to promptly fill up with millions of subversive elements who no longer wish to interact with the former reserve currency.

From the FBI

Defendant Convicted of Minting His Own Currency

STATESVILLE, NC—Bernard von NotHaus, 67, was convicted today by a federal jury of making, possessing, and selling his own coins, announced Anne M. Tompkins, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina. Following an eight-day trial and less than two hours of deliberation, von NotHaus, the founder and monetary architect of a currency known as the Liberty Dollar, was found guilty by a jury in Statesville, North Carolina, of making coins resembling and similar to United States coins; of issuing, passing, selling, and possessing Liberty Dollar coins; of issuing and passing Liberty Dollar coins intended for use as current money; and of conspiracy against the United States. The guilty verdict concluded an investigation which began in 2005 and involved the minting of Liberty Dollar coins with a current value of approximately $7 million. Joining the U.S. Attorney Anne M. Tompkins in making today’s announcement are Edward J. Montooth, Acting Special Agent in Charge of the FBI, Charlotte Division; Russell F. Nelson, Special Agent in Charge of the United States Secret Service, Charlotte Division; and Sheriff Van Duncan of the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office.

According to the evidence introduced during the trial, von NotHaus was the founder of an organization called the National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve and Internal Revenue Code, commonly known as NORFED and also known as Liberty Services. Von NotHaus was the president of NORFED and the executive director of Liberty Dollar Services, Inc. until on or about September 30, 2008.

Von NotHaus designed the Liberty Dollar currency in 1998 and the Liberty coins were marked with the dollar sign ($); the words dollar, USA, Liberty, Trust in God (instead of In God We Trust); and other features associated with legitimate U.S. coinage. Since 1998, NORFED has been issuing, disseminating, and placing into circulation the Liberty Dollar in all its forms throughout the United States and Puerto Rico. NORFED’s purpose was to mix Liberty Dollars into the current money of the United States. NORFED intended for the Liberty Dollar to be used as current money in order to limit reliance on, and to compete with, United States currency.

In coordination with the Department of Justice, on September 14, 2006, the United States Mint issued a press release and warning to American citizens that the Liberty Dollar was “not legal tender.” The U.S. Mint press release and public service announcement stated that the Department of Justice had determined that the use of Liberty Dollars as circulating money was a federal crime.

Article I, section 8, clause 5 of the United States Constitution delegates to Congress the power to coin money and to regulate the value thereof. This power was delegated to Congress in order to establish and preserve a uniform standard of value and to insure a singular monetary system for all purchases and debts in the United States, public and private. Along with the power to coin money, Congress has the concurrent power to restrain the circulation of money which is not issued under its own authority in order to protect and preserve the constitutional currency for the benefit of all citizens of the nation. It is a violation of federal law for individuals, such as von NotHaus, or organizations, such as NORFED, to create private coin or currency systems to compete with the official coinage and currency of the United States.

Von NotHaus, who remains free on bond, faces a sentence of up to 15 years’ imprisonment on count two of the indictment and a fine of not more than $250,000. Von NotHaus faces a prison sentence of five years and fines of $250,000 on both counts one and three. In addition, the United States is seeking the forfeiture of approximately 16,000 pounds of Liberty Dollar coins and precious metals, currently valued at nearly $7 million. The forfeiture trial, which began today before United States District Court Judge Richard Voorhees, will resume on April 4, 2011 in the federal courthouse in Statesville. Judge Voorhees has not yet set a date for the sentencing of von NotHaus.

“Attempts to undermine the legitimate currency of this country are simply a unique form of domestic terrorism,” U.S. Attorney Tompkins said in announcing the verdict. “While these forms of anti-government activities do not involve violence, they are every bit as insidious and represent a clear and present danger to the economic stability of this country,” she added. “We are determined to meet these threats through infiltration, disruption, and dismantling of organizations which seek to challenge the legitimacy of our democratic form of government.”

The case was investigated by the FBI, Buncombe County Sheriff’s Department, and the U.S. Secret Service, in cooperation with and invaluable assistance of the United States Mint. The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Jill Westmoreland Rose and Craig D. Randall, and the forfeiture trial is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Tom Ascik and Ben Bain Creed.

From Brandon Smith, alt-market.com

If the IRS or anyone else wants to “infiltrate” barter markets or gold and silver organizations and attempt to record every chicken egg or gallon of milk traded, then I welcome them to try. Please, expend all your precious energies in a futile attempt to chill barter economies or sound money movements. We would like nothing better. Why? Because you cannot stop barter networks from forming. They are inevitable. Every culture in history which has seen a severe economic implosion has reverted to barter, trade, gold, and silver to counter the resulting poverty and lack of mainstream commerce. The need for survival will far outweigh the populace’s fear of government reprisal. That is simply the nature of man. The only difference in respect to the Liberty Movement is that we are working to preempt collapse with supporting networks of commodity trade and community barter. We are not working to “undermine” the current economy, we are simply preparing for its eventual fall, and allowing for the safety of cities and states across the country. Why is this considered devious behavior? Why would the government react with such vitriol, not towards Liberty Dollar, but to the very concept of alternative currencies and economies? Because it is something they cannot control…

Source: All content | 20 Mar 2011 | 4:51 am UTC

Well, those devious gold bugs and sound money advocates are at it again! They had the audacity to produce economic analysis that consistently outshines and embarrasses mainstream Keynesian pundits. They had the nerve to expose the seedy underpinnings of the private Federal Reserve. They even had the gall to bring the long established short manipulations of metals markets by global banks like JP Morgan and HSBC into the light of day, where anyone whose head was not buried in the dark recesses of their own colon could see and say “My god! There really is an organized cabal against gold and silver!” But if you thought all that was outrageous, these people, who promote the insane notion that our currency should actually be backed by tangible wealth and should be under the control of the voting public instead of some unaccountable parasitic corporate central bank, have now brought state legislators into the mix! The return to sound money has begun…

Source: All content | 20 Mar 2011 | 11:15 pm UTC

Maia Maia ERCS, a local Western Australian group, has created a new way for local communities to make their efforts to reduce carbon pollution, which are normally invisible, into a tangible form of ‘community money’.  The approach is similar to simple loyalty programmes such as frequent flyer points.

Frustrated with the lack of government leadership in regulating dangerous carbon pollution, Maia Maia ERCS, launched the boya, a local currency issued on the basis of positive actions to prevent climate change.  The launch took place on 30 January at a workshop on Empowered Fundraising in Fremantle, WA. 

Boya are created as ‘rewards’ for group activities that result in the reduction in CO2 pollution through reducing power bills, planting trees, installing solar panels or other activities.  Once reductions are made, groups are able to apply to create their own boyas  underwritten by their actions. Maia Maia ERCS uses global standards to calculate the amount of carbon taken out of the atmosphere as a result of that action for the currency issue.

Each boya note contains the logo of the group issuing it, the amount of carbon pollution reduced, the activity undertaken to reduce it and who sponsored them in helping to cover their costs. The first issue of the boya was by the Gaia Foundation of Western Australia and the International Permaculture Service (IPS) which is working with farmers in Ghana, Africa to develop sustainable agriculture methods and who planted the trees used to back their boya.  The sponsor of the issue, whose logo also appears on the boya, was Edge 5, an environmental consultancy which helped set up IPS.

Sam Nelson, a co-founder of Maia Maia ERCS, believes the story of the group is the most powerful element of the boya. He explains, “As our stories continue to circulate with the boya they remind us that people are out there doing good things, something that is easy to overlook.  I believe it is this sharing of stories that will have the most impact in changing our society, rather than any economic value we may put on carbon.”

The boya is named after rock trading tokens used by local Nyungar people, which  is one of the oldest systems of money on the planet.  The name was suggested by local Elder Neville Collard.

There are currently four businesses signed up to accept the boya for various discount offers and a similar number of communities on the waiting list to issue their own boya.   Some are offering a dollar discount per boya whereas some, like the Organic Collective, an organic fruit and veg retailer in Fremantle, is offering a 10% discount for 10 boya.

Trading the boya can be likened to the use of frequent flyer points or other loyalty programs. A boya can be redeemed at participating businesses or traded among individuals but can then also be used by businesses to trade with other vendors. The boya is issued in the form of a note so that it can be carried around in people’s wallets and handbags and shared.  People and shops are putting their own value on the currency.  What ever it is worth to them to do something about global warming - the group foresees that over time a general price will be arrived at.  Through this trading the boya will enrich participating communities with a sense of pride that it's members are playing their part in protecting our common future

There are currently over 200 local currency systems in operation around Australia, but Maia Maia ERCS is the first such system to be based on emissions reductions. 

For more information or to register as a business or community visit www.maiamaia.org

Source: All content | 23 Mar 2011 | 5:31 pm UTC

What's the basic idea? Who is it for and what problem does it solve?

Source: All content | 23 Mar 2011 | 7:58 pm UTC

For print only – See attachment

Source: All content | 28 Mar 2011 | 11:54 am UTC

Source: All content | 29 Mar 2011 | 1:38 pm UTC

Some people tell me off for going on about the importance of Governance in getting community currencies to fly. They say a well-designed CC ‘should run itself’. That’s a nice theory, but I don’t know any CC that has stood the test of time without some form of governance at work ie someone making decisions.

You can ‘run’ an organisation as a Dictatorship – one person tells everyone else what to do – or as a Free For All – everyone does their own thing. Let’s assume neither of these extremes is desirable because we want to combine getting things done with valuing the contribution of each person to the success of the whole. Governance is about power and control, who gets a say in what, the stuff that makes humans fight each other. From the earliest stages of planning a CC through to a mature system, governance is necessary.

CCs can be run as businesses: in business barter networks all decision making is done by the private owners. They constantly seek feedback from their customers and adapt their systems to meet customers’ needs and to stay in business.

CCs can be run as voluntary organisations: a range of models are used, from informal associations to legally established charities. Some have annually elected officers, others have permanent boards. Success comes from a creative mix of different forms of leadership – solo, shared, rotating – with debate, consensus processes and good information flows.

New forms of governance are appearing alongside the traditional models all the time: collaborative governance, open source governance, participatory or direct democracy, sociocracy etc. The essential thing is to be clear about your goals and flexible about the means to get there, which may involve blood, sweat and tears!

So, who’s afraid of the G Word?

John Rogers offers training and consulting services to CCs through Value for People:
www.valueforpeople.co.uk

He will be co-leading the second On The Money course for CC designers at the Findhorn Community in Scotland from 3rd-7th September, 2011:
http://www.findhorncollege.org/programmes/onthemoney.php

Source: All content | 30 Mar 2011 | 11:40 am UTC

As you may have heard in the news (did you see the one on Fox News where protestors are pushing cops and there are palm trees in the background? That wasn't here during our peaceful protests but they pretended it was) Madison, Wisconsin has its own kind of emergency, this one stemming from a perceived 'fiscal crisis' and draconian power grabs and privatization efforts stemming from it and being repeated nationally and in states, cities and towns around the United States.

Source: All content | 31 Mar 2011 | 8:18 pm UTC

Source: All content | 2 Apr 2011 | 10:03 am UTC

Riace, a small town in southern Italy perhaps best known for the Riace bronzes, two splendidly well preserved life-size Greek bronze statues that were found in the Mediterranean sea off the coast there, is making history of a different kind these days.

The Mayor of Riace, Domenico Lucano, has found a way not only to integrate desperate refugees from a number of different countries, but to save the town's economy as well. According to a recent BBC report

"…immigrants are actively encouraged to come to Riace, where the mayor has created a special scheme for them.

Today more than 200 refugees from a dozen countries work and live side by side with locals.

Riace is just a few miles from the coast, perched on top of a hill above fields full of sheep and groves of orange trees.

It is a beautiful village of 1,700 people but for decades several houses have lain empty. The occupants left to build new lives elsewhere, in the north of Italy or travelling as far as New Zealand, Argentina and the US.

Mayor Lucano has put the new arrivals into some of these abandoned homes and turned others into craft workshops."

The Italian daily La Repubblica writes about the experiment of Riace and its successful integration of foreigners into the local social fabric. The article goes deeper into the social aspect of the experiment and it describes how integration is aided by a local currency, issued to the refugees.

Translation (not really quite verbatim): Sepp Hasslberger.

Riace: Mahatma Gandhi's image is printed on the 50-Euro notes, Martin Luther King's on the 20s, Che Guevara andPeppino Impastato share a place on the 10s, and the great heart of the local villages livens up the papers of 1, 2 and 5 Euro. It's the local money issued by the mayor of Riace, Domenico Lucano, to help the refugees. In this town, Eritreans, Ethiopians, Somalians, people from Ghana and Afghanistan, as well as Palestinians and Serbs are living peacefully with each other and with the Italian locals. Not only are the foreigners welcome here, they are actually wanted here to help the town stem the loss of population and save it from social decline.

Refugees in small towns. The situation here is different from other nearby towns, where things aren't as harmonious. With a population of only 1800, Riace has given a place to stay to 230 refugees and asylum seekers and it has done well with it. Providing a roof and sponsored work to these families of foreigners, the town has avoided having to close its schools for lack of students and it has given life to many of the houses that were abandoned by their former owners who emigrated to far away places like Canada, Australia and Argentine. The newcomers are sustained by laws that help refugees and asylum seekers.

The idea of a local currency. But the people repopulating the town arrive long before the money which the state has promised to help take care of them. "There is a delay of 6 or 7 months" says mayor Lucano. To bridge this bureaucratic delay, which doesn't consider the necessities of daily life, the first citizen decided to create his own money. He had the notes printed up with the images of social and political figures he liked and then gave the money to the refugees, who are using them to buy things in the town's local stores. The shop keepers collect those papers like meal vouchers and then later on, when the federal money has arrived, cash them in at the municipal treasury.

200 Euro a head to sustain life. "We are using this system to sustain the local economy" – says the Mayor – "and we're granting a certain autonomy to the beneficiaries. This is very important for human relations in town. Also, our expenditures become very transparent and easy to verify." The refugees have the right to receive 200 Euro a week for their expenditures. That means a family of four has 800 Euro to arrange their life and they don't have to pay rent. It's all paid in local money – it's almost like saying Riace is the dream island, a place where a house is found for those who don't have one, where living together is possible despite differences of language, culture and religion, and where – when there is no money – some is printed up instantly.

Wenders: Riace is the real Utopia. The hospitality projects have created work for the town's young, and what is happening in Riace has become well known the world over. Film maker Wim Wenders has turned the story into the first professional 3D documentary and has said in Berlin that "the real Utopia is not that the Berlin Wall came down – it is that which has been happening in some towns in Calabria, first of all in Riace."

A workable model – savings for the state. This one is a very important example because it demonstrates that, even before the "solidarity village" was constructed in Minea, the system of asylum in Italy was working, albeit with many limitations. The recipe was to integrate small groups of refugees and asylum seekers, distributing them all over the country, in agreement with the local communities. The major advantage of the system was that costs for the state were kept low.

Source: All content | 5 Apr 2011 | 9:03 pm UTC

Source: All content | 3 Jun 2011 | 11:32 am UTC

If you go around in Várpalota, in a town in Western Hungary with population 23 thousands, you may see 25 km away in the horizon the Lake Balaton and the Bakony Mountains. During socialist era it was a mining town with chemical industry, but the mines and the factories have been closed. Most of the citizens work now in the nearby cities. The socialistic industrial era’s child stepping in an elderly age is looking for a sustainable way of living.

Sz.: How did you start, from where did you get the idea?

M.: In 2006 I took part in the anti-governmental demonstrations on Kossuth tér. I also followed the events on Internet, and influenced by the speakers I went in quest for Hungary’s insolvency. Trying to find the answer I discovered Hungarian alternative financial homepages, and also the works from Gesell and Síklaky. These two were enlightening for me; I created my own homepage, which is nowadays still very frequently visited. In May 2009 I participated in the festival called KÖRFESZT about mutual helping systems which was organized by 25 NGOs. Here I got the idea to establish a LETS circle. First I tried to do it within the circle of my friends, all and sundry subsidised me. After that I put several ads in the local newspapers calling for reciprocal helping. Everybody who has responded got an invitation for 4th of December 2009 to the Civil House in Várpalota (http://www.palotaicivil.hu/). There we established our LETS Circle called Bakonyi CsereKör accepting the operational regulation and we defined our targets.

Sz.: What are your goals?

M.: We would like to revive the tradition of “kaláka” in our neighbourhood, which was a system of complex reciprocal informal agreements: where and when houses were built, crops were gathered thus the community was much less dependent to the mainstream monetary system. “You give me today and get something from me tomorrow.” Our money, the scores of our working, should be seen as a tool for our changing. Our belongings, utilities, clothes, etc. should serve us as long as possible, so instead of throwing things away we organize flea markets and free shops. We would like to strengthen the local economy of our city and its surroundings, so later on we will contribute to start a local community currency – with local entrepreneurs, farmers and the municipality.

Sz.: What are the characteristics of the members of the circle and the population of the area served by your system?

M.: Our target region is Várpalota (with 23 thousand inhabitants) and its countryside. Among 35 active members there are some outsiders, who have signed up through Internet, we suggest them to establish another circle in their hometown with our help. Most of the members live in suburbs, are aged between 40 and 70, and the 2/3 of the members are men. In many cases the husband and the wife enter together in the circle. We have a lot of senior citizens, but we miss the youth, the unemployed and those who live in poorer neighbourhoods with block of flats. By profession the range is very wide: from carpenter through artist to IT expert etc.

Sz.: How could you describe the functioning of the circle?

M.: The Bakonyi CsereKör is an unregistered organization; its members are civils and non-profit organisations. It allows, moreover incites memberships in other LETS circles. Everybody pays own tax. The organisational decisions are taken by a yearly elected four-person management group (on a one person – one vote basis). The communication and the accounting is done through Internet based on a google-groups mail list and there is also a meeting in each month. Our homepage is: www.bakonyicserekor.sokoldal.hu . Upon joining the circle, everyone has a balance of zero, later on it should be between minus 10 units and plus 20 units. In case of leaving the circle, the balance should be zero again. The memberships fee is quarterly 0,2 units. One work-hour is priced usually 1 unit, in special cases (depending on the contract) it can be 1,5 units. As a reference tool we have defined the value of unit in HUF too: 1 Unit is 1000 HUF. The transactions are realized through personal agreements.

Sz.: How are transactions realized between the members? How would you describe the turnover?

M.: Upon joining the circle we ask for a personalized demand/supply list, which should be refreshed each month. If somebody has a need, he chooses one member with a matching supply and contacts that member. After agreement and realization of the exchange the seller fills out a bill in 3 copies, stating the following: “X has given this and that to Y (or has worked doing this and that for Y), so we ask the accountant to add Z Units to the balance of X and subtract the same amount from the balance of Z. Dates and signatures.” From the three copies the buyer keeps one, one goes to the account office (no later than until the next monthly meeting), and the last one remains with the seller.

The yearly turnover reaches approximately 250 thousand HUF that is 1000 Euros. The typical transactions are: transportation, grass cutting, snow clearing, flower planting, maintenance and repair, selling used items, computer related help, tax sheet calculation, selling fruit tree saplings, etc. The majority (at least the two third) of the members interact regularly which each other.

Sz.: What problems do you face in the life of the circle? What would be a big help for you?

M.: So far we didn’t encounter any serious problems. We haven’t seen unfair attitude or free-rider behaviour. Hitherto only two exits happened. If somebody’s balance turns into negative, he/she tries to do everything to correct it: seeks opportunities for work within the circle.

We present the circle at different local events and on the tv-channels. István SZÁJVOLT, one of the founding members did a great PR job; we still receive two new members monthly on the average. To make our lives much more easier and to spread our activity we would like to have some legislation changes, such as changes related to tax issues and income calculation. Our members form a social network and help each other on a very low level, thus the transactions within the circle should be treated as a non-taxable.

Sz.: Mr. Mikheller, thanks for the information and let me share the latest news with you: from January of 2011 taxable entities in Hungary may decide to establish a Cooperative Community. The services provided within a Cooperative Community will be exempt from VAT. Now it is the community’s turn to manage the process of establishing this Cooperative Community.

Source: All content | 9 Jun 2011 | 11:51 am UTC

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

The comparability of local currencies with digital currency. Systems of intertrade and clearance between all these currencies, with standards of confederation to validate each currency´s integrity and vitality.

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

The variety and volume of innovation. We are in an experimental phase, we are meeting needs that national currencies fail to meet. The greatest excitement for me therefore is the great experimentation, and the basic needs these currencies are starting to meet.

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

Its all about networking: we must have professional networkers so that community currencies become an institution, not a hobby. We've seen so many currencies fail because the people starting them were excellent dedicated volunteers yet they were not able to give it total hands-on attention. Reliably paid Networkers provide constant promotion, facilitation and troubleshooting. This should be an honored profession, paid primarily via community donations of housing, food, health care, transit and recreation.

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?

Today there are so many more collaborative community systems: food coops and CSAs, cooperative healthcare, ecological housing, cooperative banking systems and so-forth. But food people normally only talk about food, the healthcare people only talk about health-care. So local currency is a tool to bring all such systems together and magnify their impact. When I started the health co-op in Ithaca, it didn't only pay for broken bones, stitches and the treatment of burns, but the members actually owned their own free clinic. And new members could join by paying with Ithaca HOURS. And finally the health co-op became a bank making interest-free HOUR loans.

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

Most broadly, we need cultural shifts that inspire creativity and local actions that replace passive consumerism and its culture of obedience to giant companies and big government. These institutions have stood like mommy and daddy promising security. And even when these are bad parents people resist rebellion.

But seemingly impossible changes have happened. The world is getting better and worse and the media hold a lot of power: they tell us the world is getting worse and we all have to be afraid. But imagine media that's dedicated to telling us the world is full of active and very creative people, who care and who are helping, who set examples and you can do it also. If they would tell the stories of the millions of positive initiatives, people would join the fun.

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?

For the short run, community currencies do not replace national money. They replace lack of national money. But eventually, as the failure of national and global institutions destroys the middle class, regional economies will eclipse them. Immense worldwide human suffering, and confinement of the spirit, suggests that the door is open wide for financial alternatives. By continuing to experiment and work hard, we will make that point tip.

There are those who feel we need to organize ourselves more efficiently (the way the Right has done in the United States), and those who suggest that there is strength in our natural diversity or that networked systems organize themselves. Where do you stand on this question?

I believe both are true. As people continue to experiment, the best of these examples will inform new and even better examples. And as we continue to learn from one another we will gradually develop more efficient systems of collaboration and our ability to connect real economies becomes more powerful.

A lot of valuable community-building initiatives in this movement 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?

We will need an online intertrade database that enables continual verifiable updates showing comparative strengths of each currency system, so that we can can honor one anthers' currencies in adjacent cities and neighborhoods. System managers would enter data about their currency: years of operation, individuals and retailers enrolled, how many of them provide food, total credits issued by month and year, equivalencies to national money, issued grants and loans, outstanding and repaid, and how much was issued to the system itself. These numbers would translate to color coded graphs. The mere existence of such a system would raise the profile and credibility of community money. And they'd help us learn from one another.

Still, our prime measures are qualitative. I collected 300 "success stories," asking Ithaca traders how they earned HOURS, how they spent them, why they liked them. Each system could post theirs via this master site as well.

I'd emphasize that every community should be able to raise a few thousand dollars from locals who want to stimulate local trade, expand community connections, meet unmet needs, gain control of interest rates and of investment, decrease dependence on the Empire and its fossil fuels.

With the financial meltdown in the US and the accelerated social polarization, is the CC movement ready to step up!

The movement is still a baby, though growing fast. Twenty-five years ago we had no movement, just a few examples, and could hardly ask questions like these, such as how to fill huge gaps in the world economy. Now we have experimented a lot, we have seen bold success and a lot of failure, and have learned.

Today, finally, it is useful to travel the world and ask questions like yours. It helps us to take a deep breath and to reflect. These questions play an important part at this stage of the development. But if the government would put the money they spend on one nuclear bomb or a space-shuttle on local currencies we could hire a lot of networkers who could knock on doors to create catalogs of local capability. And properly promoted these catalogs could become the living heart of a new economy.

1. Professionalize the management/networking of local currency systems
2. Connect different local collaborative community systems
3. Enable intertrading between all kinds of currencies

Source: All content | 10 Jun 2011 | 6:32 pm UTC

Source: All content | 11 Jun 2011 | 1:37 pm UTC

During the Great Depression, the esteemed Yale economist Irving Fisher came to a stark realization. In the midst of this grave economic crisis he observed that not only were the majority of Americans suffering as a consequence of poor monetary policies, but also in large part they were suffering needlessly. In the aftermath of Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929, millions were left unemployed and in severe financial hardship. Within three years, industrial production had dropped by almost 50%, and 5,000 banks in America alone had gone under.

Black Tuesday may have started on Wall Street but its impact was deeply felt globally. Whole industries came to a standstill and the consequent social distress gave rise to regressive political movements around the world that capitalized on the anger, fear and confusion of the times.

By 1933, Fisher had come to understand that millions were experiencing intensified financial pain because they did not have access to a sufficient money supply. Indeed, in retrospect, many prominent economists including current Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and economist Milton Friedman later agreed with Fisher’s on the ground observation that the Great Depression was severely exacerbated by a contracted money supply that was unduly restricted from expanding to the levels of demand.

In plain language, the US Federal Reserve was not printing enough money to meet the needs of the people. Their inability to increase the money supply was in large part due to regulations that bound them to backing their currency with gold and by reaching credit ceilings that were in place. The money supply then further contracted because of the declining confidence in the banking system. As a consequence, hoarding money became a widespread pandemic. This left people with things to sell and others with things to buy but an insufficient supply of money to effectively enable the exchanges. Therefore, more than one million Americans were reduced to the slow and difficult process of barter while tens of millions of others had insufficient and sporadic access to cash. The overall impact of hoarding was severely amplifying the financial pain throughout the country and the rest of the world.

The Miracle of Wörgl

With this grave problem in mind, Fisher wrote the book Stamp Scrip in the midst of the Great Depression to disseminate an effective solution as quickly as possible. It was basically an instruction manual for local towns and cities to create their own temporary local currency to compensate for the contracted money supply and the inability to increase it at the Federal level.

First, he instructed towns, municipalities and cities to issue notes (scrip) on their own, and to guarantee their value with the promise to pay it back in US currency within one year. This, he believed, would increase the confidence in the market and help ensure they could be used interchangeably with legal tender. By producing their own scrip, local municipalities could effectively act as surrogate printing presses for the Federal Reserve as they were constrained from creating new money on their own.

The ‘stamp’ in ‘stamp scrip’ was something far more novel and innovative a proposal for boosting the economy out of the Depression. Fisher designed the money to have 52 boxes on their reverse side. Each week on a Wednesday, the money holder would be required to buy a stamp to validate the value of the note for the following week. In Fisher’s design, for each $1, one had to pay 2¢ to buy the weekly stamp to keep it valid (or 2% weekly). This provided the money holder with significant new incentive for using their currency before the expiry date on Wednesday. This bold and creative idea came to America from Europe where it had successfully been implemented. The most notable of its applications came in the town of Wörgl, Austria.

In 1932, the town of Wörgl was suffering from a 35% unemployment rate. The town’s mayor had a long list of projects and only 40,000 Austrian schillings in the bank to pay for them. Rather than simply spend the money on what would amount to only a fraction of the work that needed to be done, he used the schillings to back the creation of local stamp scrip. The mayor then used the stamp scrip to begin paying for public projects and thereby introduced the currency into the town’s circulation. Yet, it was only after this money was spent that the dramatic effects began to take hold.56 In less than two years from the start of using the stamp scrip it became the first town in Austria to reach full employment. With the equivalent of a modest number of Austrian shillings in circulation, reports money expert Bernard Lietaer, “Water distribution was generalized throughout … the town was repaved, most houses were repaired and repainted, taxes were being paid early, and forests around the city were replanted.”

Clearly when a town begins to experience full employment during a depression and even voluntarily deciding to pay their taxes early, people will talk. In this short period of time the success of the town had garnered international attention and was branded the ‘miracle of Wörgl.’ Even the French Prime Minister, Édouard Dalladier, came for a special visit to evaluate the dramatic economic renaissance of a depressed community.

The Science behind the Miracle

While a part of this marked turnaround came from the town’s revenues in collecting stamp scrip fees, this was not the most significant force behind the dramatic revitalization. Of greater importance were the extraordinary contributions from its increasingly engaged citizens. These citizens were enabled to transform their community and do what was previously impossible and economically unfeasible when the average velocity of money throughout the town increased fourteen fold because of the stamp scrip’s monthly expiration date.

In other words, with the introduction of stamp scrip, money changed hands fourteen times more frequently in the same period of time than with the national currency, the Austrian shilling. The sudden increase in trade and activity of this magnitude represents a dramatic rise in economic activity and confidence that simply cannot be replicated by central governments through spending programs or tax cuts.

Between July 5, 1932 and November 21, 1933, an average of only 5,500 units of the stamp scrip were outstanding (its value was on par with the Austrian schilling). These units circulated throughout the community 415 times over 13.5 months. Each unit therefore changed hands on average approximately every single day. As a consequence only 5,500 schillings of stamp scrip in circulation produced the extraordinary equivalent of more than 2.5 million Austrian schillings in economic activity during this period (this is the equivalent of about 64 million Austrian schillings or US $7.5 million in 2001 terms). Net investment in productive assets also increased by more than 200% compared to the previous year prior to stamp scrip coming into circulation.

Fourteen times the number of economic transactions is an extraordinary leap in activity by anyone’s standards. In traditional economic thinking it is generally assumed that such an increase in the velocity of money can occur through innovative technical advances or during unfortunate times of hyperinflation when people cannot give their money away fast enough because of its falling value.

New technologies, ranging from faster transportation, to new economic tools, to new communication devices have enabled economies to increase the velocity of economic activity and the span and breadth of their trade. When money is able to move from one transaction to another at a faster rate, economic output can grow because the speed of business increases. Enhanced potential for greater wealth creation, efficiencies and societal interconnectivity also emerge.

The general exception to this case is the occurrence of hyperinflation, which emerges when the purchasing power of money rapidly devalues. This phenomenon tends to occur when the money supply far exceeds demand. For example, in the Weimar Republic in 1923, hyperinflation was so severe that prices doubled every two days. In other words by holding on to money for two days, the price of a loaf of bread would double. Holding onto it for four days, it would double again, and so on. In such dire circumstances it is in the money holder’s interest to spend the money as quickly as possible to avoid the devaluation, which can accelerate the velocity of money.

In the case of Wörgl, the town certainly did not experience the negative effects of hyperinflation when the velocity of money and economic activity skyrocketed. At first glance, one might hardly think that placing an expiry date on money would constitute a techno-economic advance. Nevertheless, the town succeeded in transforming massive unemployment and stagnation into full employment and community revitalization during the Great Depression. All of this came directly as a consequence of implementing stamp scrip. This achievement truly was a miracle, yet backed by the innovation of solid, grounded economic means.

The primary source of renewal and revitalization did not come from the town’s spending on public projects but from the creative enterprises and projects taken on by its citizens. Rather than rely on municipal governments or centralized powers, the people of Wörgl had created the means to take power into their own hands and directly get things done without the meddling of relatively arbitrary and inefficient centralized bureaucracies.

For better or worse, it would appear that the success of the stamp scrip and the subsequent emergence of decentralized power structures and economic activity have been broadly interpreted as a threat to the power and control of national governments and their central banks. By the time the German stamp scrip “Wara” had successfully spread throughout Germany in 1931, it had attracted the attention of the German Central Bank. Subsequently it was prohibited from further operations because of the Central Bank’s monopoly on currency creation. Thee process was similar in Austria. When 200 communities launched projects to copy Wörgl’s success, they were also blocked by the Austrian Central Bank. In 1934 after the town’s stamp scrip was banned Wörgl quickly fell from full employment back into a painful rate of 30% unemployment.

In the United States, Irving Fisher and his colleagues helped introduce the stamp scrip idea into 400 cities and thousands of smaller communities. To adopt even broader implementation Fisher brought the stamp scrip concept to the attention of the US Treasury Department. According to Lietaer, Dean Acheson, the Undersecretary of the Treasury at the time met with Fisher and subsequently sought out other expert opinions on whether stamp scrip would work. Lietaer relates that Acheson was advised, “…it would work but that it would imply strongly decentralized decision making, which he should check out with the President.” Soon thereafter, President Roosevelt prohibited any use of “emergency currency” and announced one of the most ambitious and controversial series of centralized government projects in American history: the New Deal.”

Source: All content | 15 Jun 2011 | 10:48 pm UTC

Kampf um die regionale Kaufkraft Vorarlberg Online – Das Nachrichten Portal (amp) „Zurück an den Start“ heißt es seit dem letzten Walgauforum im Schnifner Laurentiussaal in Sachen Regionalwährung. Der „Walgauer“ muss vorerst warten. „Ob schlussendlich der Weg eines Gutscheines oder tatsächlich eine Regionalwährung gewählt wird …

Source: Google News: regionalwährung OR regionalgeld OR regiogeld OR komplementärwährung OR Konsum-Gutschein OR Konsumgutschein OR Negativzins -Rubel | 28 Nov 2011 | 10:32 am UTC

Kampf um die regionale Kaufkraft Vorarlberg Online – Das Nachrichten Portal (amp) „Zurück an den Start“ heißt es seit dem letzten Walgauforum im Schnifner Laurentiussaal in Sachen Regionalwährung. Der „Walgauer“ muss vorerst warten. „Ob schlussendlich der Weg eines Gutscheines oder tatsächlich eine Regionalwährung gewählt wird …

Source: Google News: regionalwährung OR regionalgeld OR regiogeld OR komplementärwährung OR Konsum-Gutschein OR Konsumgutschein OR Negativzins -Rubel | 28 Nov 2011 | 10:32 am UTC

Mitteldeutsche Zeitung

Köthen bekommt eigenes Geld Mitteldeutsche Zeitung Da Regiogeld nur in einem kleinen geografischen Raum verwendet wird, bleibt die Kaufkraft demzufolge in dieser Region. Im Fall des Lutze-Talers bedeutet das: Mit der Währung kann nur in Köthen eingekauft werden und auch nur in Geschäften aus der Region … und weitere »

Source: Google News: regionalwährung OR regionalgeld OR regiogeld OR komplementärwährung OR Konsum-Gutschein OR Konsumgutschein OR Negativzins -Rubel | 28 Nov 2011 | 8:35 pm UTC

Kaufkraft an Region binden Mitteldeutsche Zeitung Regiogeld ist eine komplementäre Währung zum Euro, die nur in einer bestimmten Region verwendet wird. Mit der Einführung von Regiogeld wird das Ziel verfolgt, die Kaufkraft an eine Region zu binden und auf diese Weise hiesige Unternehmen zu fördern. … und weitere »

Source: Google News: regionalwährung OR regionalgeld OR regiogeld OR komplementärwährung OR Konsum-Gutschein OR Konsumgutschein OR Negativzins -Rubel | 28 Nov 2011 | 8:39 pm UTC

Liechtensteiner Vaterland

Regionalgeld statt Frankenleid Liechtensteiner Vaterland Mit Regionalgeld gegen die Frankenstärke: Eine Komplementärwährung wie der «Fürstliche Dollar» (FüDl) könnte eventuell auch in Liechtenstein den Konsum ankurbeln – der Franken wäre dabei weiterhin offizielle Währung. Illustration Tatjana Stojnic Mit …

Source: Google News: regionalwährung OR regionalgeld OR regiogeld OR komplementärwährung OR Konsum-Gutschein OR Konsumgutschein OR Negativzins -Rubel | 2 Dec 2011 | 11:02 pm UTC

Wirtschaftskrise: Parallelwährungen im Internet news.de Solche Komplementärwährung kann neben den bekannten Geldarten auch als Tauschmittel genutzt werden. Seit 2009 gibt es den Bitcoin, dessen Handhabe denkbar einfach ist: Als Mitglied in einem Netzwerk und im Besitz einer speziellen Software, …

Source: Google News: regionalwährung OR regionalgeld OR regiogeld OR komplementärwährung OR Konsum-Gutschein OR Konsumgutschein OR Negativzins -Rubel | 3 Dec 2011 | 8:52 am UTC

Regionalwährungen im Aufwind Passauer Neue Presse Das Regionalgeld aus dem Chiemgau ist nicht ohne künstlerischen Reiz. Die Scheine der Serie aus dem Jahrgang 2008 zeigen zum Beispiel Fische aus den heimatlichen Flüssen und Seen. − Foto: ede Das Regionalgeld aus dem Chiemgau ist nicht ohne …

Source: Google News: regionalwährung OR regionalgeld OR regiogeld OR komplementärwährung OR Konsum-Gutschein OR Konsumgutschein OR Negativzins -Rubel | 9 Dec 2011 | 3:35 pm UTC

suedkurier.de

Neue Generation des Regionalgelds suedkurier.de Marion Elling-Chong Luna freut sich über die neuen Gwinner-Geldscheine, die Regionalwährung, die die heimische Wirtschaft und Vereine unterstützt. Schwarzwald-Baar (ewk) Der „Gwinner“-Trägerverein hat neues Geld gedruckt. Schon jetzt im Dezember gibt …

Source: Google News: regionalwährung OR regionalgeld OR regiogeld OR komplementärwährung OR Konsum-Gutschein OR Konsumgutschein OR Negativzins -Rubel | 13 Dec 2011 | 4:23 am UTC

"Tschüssi Euro!" – die harte Lösung WirtschaftsBlatt.at Gerade in Zeiten pekuniärer Verunsicherung boomen Ersatzwährungen wie der Waldviertler der Waldgauer und andere geografisch limitierte Zahlungsmittel, die zum Ziel haben, die regionale Wirtschaft zu stimulieren oder über einen Negativzins die …

Source: Google News: regionalwährung OR regionalgeld OR regiogeld OR komplementärwährung OR Konsum-Gutschein OR Konsumgutschein OR Negativzins -Rubel | 15 Dec 2011 | 11:41 pm UTC

Source: Allgemeiner Feed des Rates für Nachhaltigkeit | 19 Dec 2011 | 10:11 am UTC

It seems that in the last 3 months, local monies have been squeezed out of the conversation, as all attention is directed towards the visibly crumbling global economy. We are seeing widening discussion about the role of gold, and the effects of printing money on prices and wealth distribution. We will see increasing calls for a return to the gold standard, and while this would prevent inflation it would not change the power base significantly or prevent corruption.

With the bailouts of European nations we are seeing national sovereignty sold up the food chain, beyond democratic reach, to financial institutions who are telling governments what to do.

The pursuit of local money is at the same time a pursuit of local sovereignty.

At the local level democracy can be meaningful, corruption is manageable, and supply chains are less energy intensive. While fiat money may be at the end of its supercycle, we cant expect governments and more importantly markets to wake up and design a more appropriate 21st globalised economy.

We need to be pulling back, managing our own affairs, but we can only do that outside the realm of commercial debt-money. N.B. Money (partially) backed by gold is still debt-money, though its limited in supply. We must not forget who controls it and what power they have over the users.

Im looking into easier ways to produce this mag, so expect some changes in format. Always looking for help….

Find us on facebook as Community Currency Magazine
and twitter as ccmagnet

Source: All content | 21 Jul 2011 | 4:43 pm UTC

As a monetary activist, I shun state-sanctioned-commercial-debt money (like the US dollar or Euro) as much as possible. Generally, individual actors making economic protests against state-sanctioned money are little more effective than fish protesting the water. That's because money and the economy are functions of community, and it is only in partnership with their communities that the politically disenfranchised ninety nine per cent can claim back their lives from wage slavery and the permanent shortage of employment. So I'm living by building software for community money; I depend on gifts and occaisionally sympathy to meet my basic needs. In monetary terms, I'm a beggar, but in spirit, I'm a superempowered, superconnected and self-determined individual!

Negative Outlook

While governments tell us to brace for austerity, they are not acknowledging the full extent or nature of the problem we face. While its true that bailing out the banks was very expensive, what most people don't realise is that the commercial debt-money system has catastrophic failure built-in, once resource extraction fails to keep pace with interest repayments on an expanding money supply. So while people are angry at governments for socialising losses of private corporations, they are not being educated that these debts will never be paid off, that big banks are now effectively able to demand as much interest on national, and personal debts, as we can bear, forever. Therefore, the national currencies themselves have become instruments of servitude and serfdom.

Remember that the banks extract their dues through interest payments on things like mortgages and overdrafts, through taxes spent on managing government debt, as well through derivative speculation and financial services such as pensions. To banks, the little people are but cells in the matrix generating wealth; money, interest, and the stock market are the mechanisms that transfer that value to where banks want it, to them.

So every time you pay pax, interest, bank charges, card fees, or enter into agreements such as for pensions, you are entering into relationship with a vampire squid, as Rolling Stone reporter Matt Taibbi called investment bank giant Goldman Sachs. And consider that most industry is run on credit, a significant portion of the cost of goods is in fact interest. Big banks have a hand in everyone's till. That's why the Age of Leisure expected since the industrial revolution never seems to arrive.

So is it part of the social contract that we each pay an unreasonable tithe to the banking industry?

Effectively, Yes.

And is it even possible to avoid such extractive relationships in a so-called free society?

It is just about legal, but not very convenient. I don't earn money, or own property, or a car. In addition I have no phone or bank accounts. Consequently I have to depend on gifts of food, shelter, hardware, cash and flights. This is precarious, but the more people turn from parasitic pyramidical structures, the more they must share and trust one another. 

A Range of Solutions

This sharing and trusting takes different forms depending how many people are involved. Here is my list from small, radical bottom up solutions to larger, more moderate top down solutions.

• informal sharing: Using reciprocal gifting and sharing of resources like accommodation, equipment, transport, and cooking and childcare, networks of individuals can improve their wellbeing and 'work' less. Taking it to the extreme however, in a commune, can be a lot of work, and many projects don't survive the intensity!

• Villages: Villages can formalise their sharing networks, engage in group-buying with the help of a premises for redistribution. They can consider medium scale projects with land ownership and energy generation. Once the community is too big for everyone to communicate directly, and trust, everyone else, software can be very useful, especially when it includes accounting tools. (This is what I am making).  Accounting helps to monitor where resources are coming from and going to, and to ensure that, on some scale, people are giving and getting in fair proportion. It also indicates where hard currency expenses could be internalised by investing in, say, a windmill, or bakery.

• Industries / Businesses: There are already well established ways for business to save money by using credit clearing with their peers instead of direct payments. Especially in the US there are many legal business to business (B2B) barter networks supporting trade and helping with taxes. By joining such networks, business can reduce their dependence on debt money, as well effectively paying in-kind when dealing with other local traders. Bigger industries sometimes use a technique called Counter trade for international trade, which protects them from currency fluctuations and reduces need for cash. See the International Reciprocal Trade Association to learn more about about business bartering. 

• Cities: At this level though the city government can take the courageous step of accepting a local currency for tax, and spending it, all of which adds up to less debt money in circulation and less vulnerability to central government redistribution. One town is Austria, Voralberg, is doing this! There's also room for 100% reserve saving/lending institution like the JAK bank or building societies. Note that such insitutions can never be as profitable as banks, which have the power to create as much money as they can lend.

• States / regions: In the US, the newly formed Public Banking Institute is working to form State owned banks similar to the Bank of North Dakota (BND). North Dakota is now the most solvent of all states due in large part to BND. The bank, I understand, still produces debt money, but the debt is owned by the state, not leveraged, funnelled into private hands and gambled in the derivatives market. 

• Countries: Most elected leaders and those in authority do not understand the nature of money. The few who talk sense, such as Ron Paul in US and Douglas Carswell in UK are excluded from the mainstream discussion. There are many possible ways for countries to move forward so decision making is hard, even for the opposition! National level options include public banking, returning to the gold standard, or defaulting on national debts and rebooting national currencies. Working at this level, one shouldn't expect great results in one lifetime.Banking is the most powerful lobby of all.

The so-called austerity measures will last until the 'too big to fail' banks are persuaded not to maximise their profits and political power, which won't be any time soon. The disaster being sold to us as the financial crisis is a grand narrative to convince us to accept the next order of magnitude of financial vampirism and disenfranchisement.   Whether through education, medicine, credit cards or mortgages, more and more people are falling into debt. Bankruptcy is not the relief it used to be. And debt is the ball and chain that forces us to work to get money, because the state only recognises debts denominated in money. We must disengage while we still can!  I say, we need to be trying all of the above.

Source: All content | 21 Jul 2011 | 5:17 pm UTC

Everyone knows that the current banking system is at the root of many of the economic evils we face as a Nation. The banks enslave people with interest and stifle business investment.

Yet Nationalists are not looking hard enough at alternatives like Credit Unions and, dare I say it, the Islamic banking system – which forbids the charging of interest on loans (usury). I’d like to kick off some debate with a very brief look at one alternative, the idea of local currency systems.

The first area to issue its own currency was Totnes in Devon. The Totnes Pound was launched in March 2007. According to the site of the Transition Town Totnes, here’s how it works:

‘Totnes Pounds enter circulation when people choose to exchange their sterling currency into Totnes pounds at one of four places around Totnes. At present the exchange rate is 1TP for £1.

‘Totnes Pounds can then be spent at participating businesses, of which there are currently around 70. Some of these are now offering discounts for certain purchases that are made in Totnes Pounds to encourage usage.

‘People can exchange their Sterling into Totnes Pounds at a number of issuing points around Totnes. People can also accept Totnes Pounds in change from participating shops. This does not create new pounds, but does help them to circulate and enables shoppers to show their loyalty to the local economy.

‘Every Totnes Pound in circulation is therefore backed by one pound of Sterling. This money is put into a bank account.

‘Totnes Pounds then circulate between consumers and businesses. Some businesses spend the Totnes Pounds that they receive with other local businesses. This strengthens the local economic multiplier, which means basically that money stays within the community rather than leaking out. If a business has an excess of Totnes Pounds they are able to exchange the surplus back for Sterling.

‘At the moment the project is managed by an unincorporated community association. However, the project team have been working with Co-ops UK to set up an Industrial and Provident society which will be the long term vehicle for managing the currency. This will ensure that the project is owned by the local community and run for its benefit.

‘Businesses that accumulate an excess of Totnes Pounds are able to exchange them back for sterling. However, we encourage them to think about how they can spend them themselves, to strengthen the local multiplier and build new relationships.

‘In the longer term we plan to diversify the asset which backs the currency. In future it might be possible to back it with land, energy or labour. At this point the currency will be able to play an even more significant role in building economic resilience.’

As well as the Totnes Pound in Devon, alternative or complementary currencies can also be found in Lewes in Sussex, Stroud in Gloucestershire and Brixton in South London.

All issue their own pound which only circulates in the local area. This means that more of the money spent in the local area stays in the local area. It builds local wealth. This helps businesses thrive in the face of recession and fierce competition from chain stores. This in turn saves jobs.

The economic, environmental and social aspects of these alternative currencies should be of great interest to Nationalists. Mutual aid in the form of provident societies, Credit Unions, friendly societies, Local Exchange Trading Systems and the like can take the edge off recession. If you support these ventures and get involved, we can start to build an alternative from the grassroots to our corrupt and damaging Banking system. If Stroud and Totnes can have a local currency, why not your town?

Source: All content | 21 Jul 2011 | 5:09 pm UTC

Source: All content | 1 Aug 2011 | 8:36 pm UTC

Last year, the Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke announced an increase in the amount that the Federal Reserve Banking system will charge for overnight banking. That decision, along with other factors, is causing members of our community to experience the affects of the declining purchasing power of the US dollar. For example, last year this time it cost the average Philadelphian $30 to fill up a 13.2-gallon gas tank. Today, it costs them $45 to fill up the same gas tank. The $100 spent at the grocery store last year, buys the average person less groceries this year.

As a result of these difficult times, the Equal Dollars Community Currency Central Banking Committee was motivated to meet and make the subsequent decision to separate the value of the Equal Dollars currency from the purchasing value of the U.S. dollar. This action will take place effective May 15, 2011.

We understand and respect the reasons why those who manage the U.S. dollar purchasing value believe that it is best if that currency reduces in its purchasing value year by year. We also understand and respect that there are many economic theories that justify that such a reduction in value is good. It affects costs of labor and creates a pressure on labor to seek employment so as to cover basic living needs, etc.

However, the Equal Dollars Committee re-affirmed its purpose – that creation of a complementary currency is aimed at providing a stable value for the exchange of labor and goods without interest charged for the use of currency nor interest paid on the accumulation of currency in accounts. We believe that in order to maintain that stable value over years of time we will need to re-establish the value of our local trading currency relative to the decreasing purchasing value of the U.S. Dollar.

The Equal Dollars Banking Committee determined the following:

1. We will reduce the Equal Dollar to .80/eighty cents on the U.S. Dollar.
2. Adjustments to member accounts balances will be made on May 27 by increasing those amounts by 20 percent.
3. We will reduce outstanding loan principle amounts by 20 percent on May 27.
4. At this time the recommended Equal Dollars hourly minimum compensation for labor will increase to 15 Equal Dollars.

We are not the first group that has issued and used a local currency for exchange that operates separately from the rules established by those governing the official currency in use.

Other communities around the world have determined that they need a way to exchange the value of their goods and services. Each of these communities then had to determine the rules that they will use to manage the exchanges they started. Our Equal Dollars system has recently grown substantially, with more than 1,000 individual members; 35 organizations and corporate members; 90K units of Equal Dollars out on loan and over 170K Equal Dollars in circulation.

The Equal Dollars Banking Committee decided it was timely for us to clarify issues relating to the communitys agreement on the minimum payment for an hour of labor, currently at 12 Equal Dollars for an hour by increasing it to 15 Equal Dollars. By shifting the Equal Dollar valuation to .80/eighty cents on the U.S. dollar, the increase will not increase the tax obligations.

Source: All content | 21 Jul 2011 | 5:29 pm UTC

Like so many others, we at Post Carbon Institute have watched the growth of the #Occupy movement with a mix of hope and curiosity. So a few weeks we  collaborated with filmmkaer Ben Zolno, who wanted to go out and spread the word. We offered to fly him out, and donated 100 copies of The End of Growth to the cause. In return, Ben passed out the books and asked some questions about the contents for us. As a bonus, he even filmed some of the responses. You can read the report of his experience here.

Last week we partnered with him again, and Ben returned to Wall Street, this time with a few recommendations:

1. Dig Deeper.
2. Ditch Wall St.
3. Change the Paradigm.

1. Dig deeper.

While a number of folks Ben spoke with were fairly well-versed with the issues of energy constraints, climate change, and ecological limits, the vast majority hadn’t had the opportunity as yet to explore the more fundamental questions about our economic system. Yes, they are right to voice strong dissatisfaction with the shocking state of inequality in our country, but will regulating big banks, ending “too big to fail” handouts, and reducing the wealth gap be enough to fix our broken economy?

As PCI Fellow Wes Jackson recently said, “Fixing economic inequality doesn’t address the deeper problem—infinite growth on a finite planet. It’s just means we’ll all hit the edge of the petri dish at the same time.”

And so Ben is back at Zuccotti Park, this time to work with fellow members of the OWS Education Committee to create an #Occupy suggested reading list, book club, and teach-in series. On the list of books? The End of Growth and Deep Economy, among a handful of others.

2. Don’t just occupy Wall Street, ditch it.

The #Occupy movement has given a tremendous boost to the “Move Your Money” campaign, which aims to encourage people to switch their bank account from one of the handful of big Wall Street banks to a local credit union or bank. Last weekend, the “Bank Transfer Day” led to an unprecedented number of new accounts at credit unions and local banks across the country.

But Americans have four times more money in Wall Street investments – stocks, bonds, mutual funds, pension funds, and insurance funds – than we do in banks. We are the ones fueling the multinational companies we distrust.

Most Americans don’t realize that 99% of us don’t have a choice in the matter—SEC regulations prohibit us from investing in small, local businesses. Breaking this form of “investment apartheid” would have a profound impact on building the community resilience we need to respond to economic uncertainty, energy constraints, and climate change.

Thankfully there’s a rare opportunity right in front of us to put a serious hole in that wall—a bipartisan effort between Tea Party leaders in the House of Representatives and the Obama Administration to create a “crowdfunding” exemption.

And so, while PCI doesn’t normally engage in advocacy, we’re helping to spearhead an effort to get this legislation passed in the Senate. Ben has taken this message to Occupy Wall Street. We hope you’ll support this effort by signing the petition, spreading the word, and contacting your Senators.

3. Change the paradigm.

It is up to all of us to decide what our economy is for. There are demands that folks who are part of the #Occupy movement, and the rest of us who recognize the need for change, can and should make of our elected leaders: Kill GDP; internalize externalities; get money out of politics and end corporate personhood, etc.

But those rules and goal changes should naturally follow from a more profound shift in our economic paradigm. As PCI Fellow Joshua Farley wrote:

We have one demand: change our paradigm, our understanding of what is possible. Acknowledge the fact of a finite, fragile planet that we cannot afford to abuse.

Upon whom do we make these demands? Upon which political and economic leaders? We make these demands upon ourselves. Upon those willing to stand up to confront our unjust and unsustainable system, to call for a return to a society willing to pay its own way, to live within its means; for a return to an America that inspires the world to do better, that leads the planet toward a sustainable and desirable future. We make these demands upon ourselves, and we will not rest until our demands are met.

With a social movement as diverse and organic as #Occupy, only a fool would claim to know what the movement represents or predict where it will go in the weeks and months ahead. And we hesitate to speak for those brave souls at the various #Occupy encampments around the country, putting their personal comfort and safety on the line. But we hope these recommendations can help.

photo credit: Chris Wieland, creative commons license.

Source: Post Carbon Institute Publications | 9 Nov 2011 | 6:09 pm UTC

Just over a year ago we released our flagship publication, The Post Carbon Reader: Managing the 21st Centurys Sustainability Crises.

In that time, this hefty book from a small publisher (and with an even smaller marketing budget) has sold over 10,000 copies, and its chapters have been downloaded over 20,000 times. Its in classrooms at over 25 different colleges across the United States. Its received praise from academics and professionals alike. It won an independent publishing gold medal. (And it may or may not have been featured on Oprah!).

Most satisfying to us has been the feedback weve gotten from readers:

• The entire book is fantastic and extremely useful! – Stephanie Kennedy, graduate student
• My dog-eared copy is full of notes, underlines and highlights. – George Dondero, Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission
• One of the best readers that I have seen in my 48 years as a university professor. – Al Williams, University of Nebraska

People often ask what the story is behind the book. So here it is:

When Post Carbon Institute was founded in 2003, few outside the field of petroleum geology had any inkling that we might soon be facing a squeeze in global fossil fuel supplies. We set about collecting and disseminating critical thinking by field experts on the coming challenges, and helped individuals and groups start the vital work of relocalizing their communities.

Over the next few years, James Howard Kunstlers book The Long Emergency, Al Gores An Inconvenient Truth campaign, the emergence of the Transition movement, and many other factors contributed to a growing awareness of our complex energy/climate plight. And then came the pivotal year of 2008:

• To the surprise of just about everyone, oil prices crossed the $100 barrier (in real dollars) for the first time since the 70s—and then skyrocketed to nearly $150 by July.
• In September came the further surprise of Lehman Brothers collapse, and the near-collapse of Wall Street and the U.S. economy.
• And suddenly in November came the surprise of a generation—a black man elected president—and a grand, giddy hope that the country might finally be able to change its course on energy and climate policies.

It was clear that big changes were underfoot, and we at Post Carbon Institute saw an opportunity and a need to push the public conversation on sustainability to a deeper level. It was time to start talking openly about the big, complex challenges the world faces, and the hard truths about the limited responses available to us.

In 2009 we began building the framework for this new approach by recruiting 28 Fellows who are leading experts on a variety of sustainability issues—and who, critically, understood the two realities that had come to define the Post Carbon worldview:

• The world is hitting the limits to growth, and
• the best path forward is to build the resilience of our communities and our society.

The Post Carbon Reader was the first product of this new collaboration. Our hopes for the book were modest. We knew that "readers" generally dont sell well—our main goal was to simply compile, in one place, a comprehensive statement of what we believe as an organization to aid our further efforts. But we also knew that there was a hunger for this kind of information, and that if we put it together in the right way, it could go far.

So we made some rather unusual decisions. We kept the graphs and charts to a minimum. We kept the chapters relatively short. We purposefully mixed graduate-level writing with conversational pieces. We got a rock poster artist to design the cover. We set a low price ($21.95) and starting releasing nearly every chapter in PDF format, for free.

The results, as mentioned, have been remarkable. As The Post Carbon Reader enters its second year were looking for new ways to promote its message, especially among academic audiences where it has done so well. We have a growing fan base on Facebook, and weve recently launched a LinkedIn site for more in-depth disucssion and networking. If youre a fan of the Reader, THANK YOU for your support, and please both spread the word and tell us how we can make it better for future editions.

Daniel Lerch
Publications Director

Source: Post Carbon Institute Publications | 16 Nov 2011 | 6:33 am UTC

By David Korowicz

Richard Douthwaite (1942-2011), co-founder of Feasta and much-loved colleague and friend, died on November 14th 2011 after a long illness. We will miss his unique and far-ranging intellect, the clarity of his thought and writing, his warmth and his laughter. Tributes to him are coming in from around the world and you can read them below.

In line with his wishes, we are continuing with our scheduled events and publishing of articles. Tonight’s lecture by Steve Keen will be going ahead as planned.

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Below you can read tributes to Richard. Please scroll down to the end to see them all, as some are posted as comments.

If you would like to add a short message about Richard, please add it to the comments section at the end of this page. Please email longer messages to website@feasta.org.

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======================

Anandi Sharan

[This] is such sad news about a friend who was one of the most courageous and innovative thinkers I knew. Richard and I went on a trip to Montreal in the early nineties to fight the battle for emissions reductions against the establishment, and from that time onwards he remembered me and always gave me his time on many subjects, like what to do in India to manage the expected rise in energy prices due to peak oil, and the need to switch from debt-based currency to normal money to facilitate more local trade and more local economic autonomy.

Some years ago I wrote the India report on the likely impact of cap and share based on his overall strategic insights and his report for Ireland, and more recently he explained that the reason for high debt in Europe was the loss of export markets in oil producing countries, and we discussed whether exports in Annex 1 countries would ever really come back. He thought they could if those countries exported renewable energy systems, and I thought there was no time for such reforms and agriculture and forests were likely to have to be the dominant economic sector from now on. When he and his wife Mary and their son and his family came to visit India and stopped by for some days, we had many interesting dinner time conversations, but after the meals Richard always refused a drink, his son saying he would end up reciting poetry; and so instead we talked all evening long about the emission based currency unit and energy prices. I will miss talking to him a lot, and sending him my ideas for him to tell me whether they basically hung together. He usually said they did but of course why would they not seeing as I put it all together after listening to him carefully.

He will live on in his children and grandchildren, in his wife Mary’s memory, in the memories of his many friends, and his ideas will live on in FEASTA, the Irish think tank on sustainability, which he co-founded, and in his books, and in the work of the many people he influenced.

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Dongying Wang

What a news, I saw him the other day on google chat! Very sad to hear this, though I haven’t meet him in person. My thoughts are with his family.
Dongying

Ms. Dongying Wang (王冬莹）
Energy & Climate Change Program Coordinator
Global Environmental Institute
www.geichina.org

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Oliver Tickell

He was a very good man in every sense and we are all the poorer without him.

Oliver Tickell
www.kyoto2.org

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Brian Davey
In the last few months and weeks of his life Richard kept working. One of these projects was the jointly authored book for which he has written a chapter and which I am editing. A few days ago he was keen that the very last thing that he had struggled to write go on the Feasta blog, partly as a way of publicising the book. He died the same day that I sent the book off to a publisher.

Richard’s chapter is titled:

“Time for some optimism about the climate crisis”

Typical Richard!

Speaking for myself I am not terribly optimistic but there is no doubt that his optimism carried things and people along, including me.

You cannot hope to follow or notice all the trends in our current ecological, economic and social crises as an individual – so you do it as part of a network. Unlike many more conventional economists, Richard respected and valued the opinion of non-economists who knew their stuff and whose expertise and knowledge helped him (and through him, us) build up his picture of the world. He knew, perhaps because he was also a journalist, that he needed to build up a network for himself and partly out of that Feasta was created – but his contacts and interests were also world wide. I was immensely privileged for him to include me in that network.

I didn’t always agree with all the details of his picture of the world but I was always aware that what he thought, and the information that he pulled together, had to be taken as a key reference point, an important orientation not just for myself, but for many people. It would be a terrible thing to reduce a description of someone to them being a “resource” – but he was an economist after all and there is no denying that he was a tremendous resource for all that. That said, this was not a resource sold to the highest bidder on the knowledge market – he was generous with what he knew and his knowledge was made available for all of us – because the world is going into crisis and Richard wanted to keep working to the very last to make sure that we are well prepared for what is ahead.

So I am sure that the abiding memory of many people will be of someone working extremely hard, and who was, therefore, incredibly well informed about issues not normally within the province of economics – noticing important trends in new thinking and drawing out their significance. When I switched on my computer in the morning his was already on and there would often be a message there sent from earlier. His computer skype connection would still be on when I went to bed at night.

That must be how he had such a comprehensive grasp of the latest in climate science, including the agricultural and land issues, the trends in energy depletion and other issues outside economics as such – as well as the more economic focused issues like monetary theory, the banking and eurozone crisis, complementary currencies, strategies for local economy and so much more. To follow these issues as they evolved was genuinely his enthusiasm – which you could tell because, when he gave a lecture, there would be those moments when he expressed himself about some point – let’s say about money circulation – and there would be these little outbursts of almost boyish excitement at the intricacies of the topic at hand.

The day before he died we had a conversation on the phone – he was too weak to type, but he was thinking that maybe he could continue writing by getting a dictation recorder that could send audio files.

It sometimes seems a cliche when people say that they will miss someone who has died – but with Richard you know how true it can be.

================

Rob Hopkins

I can’t remember when I first met Richard. Living in Ireland and being involved in sustainability meant that Richard was somehow always there, whichever event you went to, Richard was invariably there, his commitment to these things was amazing. He was always so helpful and supportive of the young, emergent initiatives I was involved with, and always had time to chat on the phone, to clarify or to very gently help me to completely rearrange some half-baked ‘eureka’ moment I had had that turned out to be nothing of the sort. He had the gift, as a writer, to be able to unpack complex issues and make them understandable, reading ‘Short Circuit’ was a revelation for me. He was also not content for the ideas he promoted to be academic exercises, but he pioneered and supported a number of experimental local currencies and other models. I always found him kind, thoughtful and incisive. We have lost one of our keenest minds, and someone who was able to illuminate complex issues at a time when we most need him. He’ll be much missed.

Rob Hopkins, Transition Network
www.transitionculture.org

================

Richard Heinberg

I’m very sorry to hear this, because it is a loss to so many of us who benefited from Richard’s brilliant work. He understood better than almost anyone else what is wrong with our current economic system and how we might transition to a sustainable economy that supports all of us. We at Post Carbon Institute appreciated so much his contribution to our POST CARBON READER, and his sage counsel on economic issues.

Originally posted at FEASTA

Source: Post Carbon Institute Publications | 15 Nov 2011 | 4:25 pm UTC

 

Energy Literacy | Conservation | Resilience | Relocalization | Family Planning | Beauty | Biodiversity

Energy Literacy

Conservation

Resilience

Relocalization

Family Planning

Beauty

Biodiversity

Photo Credits (creative commons license):
-Energy literacy: Fred JK
-Conservation: Paul Cross
-Relocalization: Emily Nedecor
-Beauty: Brian Auer
-Biodiversity: Martin Heigan

Source: Post Carbon Institute Publications | 18 Nov 2011 | 3:42 am UTC

While there has been much discussion in terms of Transition and diversity over the past few years, little has been said about the issue of age. It’s not something we’ve explored here at Transition Culture in the past. Sometimes it is suggested that Transition only appeals to older people, whereas Occupy, for example, tends to attract more younger people. But is that the case? Is it that straightforward? How might Transition best serve people at the different stages in their lives, and what might they, in turn, bring to it? What are the things that attract people of different ages and what do they hope to get out of their engagement? I ask these questions by way of stimulating discussion, and thought a useful framing might be William Shakespeare’s Seven Ages of Man (with apologies to female readers for Shakespeare’s gender focus), from ‘As You Like It’. It begins:

Interesting male perspective on babies, who in my experience do a lot more than “mewling and puking” (how about “smiling and gurgling”, for example?), but anyway, other than joining their parents at events, there is not really a specific role that babies can actively play in Transition that I can think of, so let’s move onto the next one….

I think this probably tells you more about Elizabethan schools than about the school-age children themselves, but this refers to the age of being at school. I think, from my experience working with this age group, that this falls into two halves. For primary school aged children, the best thing is not to talk too much about climate change, peak oil and so on, rather to focus on skills and on low-impact approaches to energy, food and travel just being an everyday part of life. Kids need that time in their life to be kids. At secondary age though, there is a lot that can be done, designing into their teaching experience the understanding of the world around them, good critical thinking skills, teaching ecological design, how change happens, the skills for personal resilience, feeling empowered by their educational experience, and feeling that they can shape how their school, their home life and their community develops.

This is the age of perhaps 18-22, which is about breaking away from the family, confronting our parents (not necessary literally, but psychologically), standing on our own ground, the age where “Be realistic, demand the impossible” feels an entirely reasonable ask, and where putting your body on the line feels a natural thing to do. When I was 18 I marched, I went on roads protests, I ran about a several hundred yards pursued by security guards in an attempt to gatecrash the launch of the much-resisted Bristol spine road (I had no idea what I would have done if they hadn’t caught me and I’d actually got there, probably rather sheepishly crept in at the back).

Had someone asked me to get involved in setting up a community energy company, I would have felt that that was way beyond me, I didn’t have the skills, the interest, the patience. I was fired by a sense of injustice, of anger, of a desire to rebuild the world from scratch. In terms of Transition, Transition Heathrow best capture this energy, it brings the aspects of Transition around growing food, working with the community, learning skills, but puts them in a context that is edgy, that has the frisson of making a bold statement on its own terms. If I were that age again (unlikely), I would more likely be attracted to Occupy than Transition, but I would find Transition’s analysis of things useful, and would see it as part of the larger movement for change.

This is an oft-explored tension within Transition, the extent to which it overtly embraces activism or not. Rather than being something that will ever be resolved, I think it will remain as one of those open questions, an edge with a lot of energy to it. In any Transition initiative, it is too simplistic to suggest that young people will engage only where a more radical edge can be created, but when I think of myself at that age, what attracted me to permaculture was that it had a very radical, playful edge to it (such as when Bill Mollison, after a withering take on the uselessness of lawn culture, plants the hazelnut in a lawn, stating “being a good urban guerrilla, we might start by putting a hazelnut in the lawn” at 2.20 into this video). For me, this is also very much present in Transition.

People with young children often learn to be very productive in very limited time, and to juggle many things. Often the very innovative ideas such as using social media to promote local currencies and other initiatives, and the sense of how the web can underpin this work will emerge from those in this age. They would tend to be more present and behind initiatives like the Brixton Pound, which is very funky and which uses social media in really creative and successful ways.

Hmmm. Not so sure about the round belly bit, but I’d say here we move into the late forties, and into the fifties. Kids grown up, bit more time, life perhaps a bit less hectic (?). Sometimes this means that engaging in Transition is a great way of meeting people and building a social network that was previously much easier to achieve when you have young children. Often by this time people have amassed more in the way of practical skills, skills in managing/participating in groups, and more self knowledge, and have a degree more confidence that they can make things happen. In some places, Transition core groups might consist largely of people at this age, as they tend to have the time available to give to kicking things off, the experience that trying to change things can actually change things, and some of the skills that are needed.

The gifts that this age brings to Transition include a sharing of experience and memories that might be useful to those engaged in more practical Transition work. Indeed there is a case to say that as the economy continues to unravel, that part of the work of Transition initiatives will become offering care and support services to our elders.

I am aware that this piece has consisted of massive generalisations, but given that my research in Totnes found that those under 30 were not so well represented, and that being an observation in many (but by no means all) of the Transition initiatives I visit, I thought it might be worth looking into. Interestingly, in countries such as Spain and Portugal where the economic and job prospects are that much more precarious, there seem to be a lot more people involved with Transition. The creation of a more sustainable, more resilient future will need the input of people of all ages, and each will have a role to play. The aspects of Transition that appeal to someone in their 40s will not be the same as those that appeal to teenagers, but all those roles are vital. What I do see in many Transition groups is a very respectful space for all the generations to come together and work on a project that they feel excited about.

So, this has been one of those posts that is offered more as a conversation starter, rather than a complete argument. It would be interesting to hear your thoughts. How has your initiative managed to engage younger people? How does the range of people in your group represent the seven ages? Have you ever felt excluded from Transition because of your age, or that it was not relevant to you? How might that more direct approach represented by Occupy look in a Transition context? Can we design Transition in such a way that whatever age you are, you feel part of a dynamic and deep process that speaks to what you care about, the passion you bring and the skills you have? Over to you…

Originally published November 25, 2011 at Transition Culture

Source: Post Carbon Institute Publications | 25 Nov 2011 | 3:23 pm UTC

[Excerpt]  The tide of economic growth that has flowed since the second world war may finally be ebbing. For politicians and most economists, this is like saying the sky is falling. Growth has become guidepost and grail, the sine qua non of economic existence. Growth is necessary to job creation and the health of businesses. Without growth the rolls of the homeless and jobless swell, requiring governments to shoulder more responsibility; yet at the same time tax revenues fall, making both new and existing government debt unbearable.

Stimulating growth has become job No 1 for policymakers. David Cameron insists that his nation must deregulate business and reform employment law in order to "go for growth". And at the conclusion of the recent G20 global economic summit, the US president, Barack Obama, reported that the discussions there had revolved around the question, "How do we achieve greater global growth?" Such statements raise nary an eyebrow; they are entirely expected

Nonetheless, in recent years a few economists have advanced a contrary view. Tim Jackson in the UK, Herman Daly in the US, and Serge Latouche in France have argued that growth is not always good for the environment or for the real health of communities, and that GDP growth is impossible to sustain over the long run anyway because we live on a planet with limited natural resources. Their position has won few adherents in the mainstream. In the "real" worlds of politics and economics, questioning growth is like arguing against gasoline at a Formula One race….

Read full article

Originally posted at The Guardian

Image credit:delphwynd/flickr

Source: Post Carbon Institute Publications | 30 Nov 2011 | 5:39 pm UTC

[Excerpt]: After years of studying and then teaching permaculture and natural building, Rob Hopkins helped to establish the Transition movement, which has been called "the biggest urban brainwave of the century" by Nicholas Crane of BBC2. The Transition movement promotes what Hopkins has called "engaged optimism" as we prepare for a lengthy period of ever-dwindling energy supplies. He is the author of The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependence to Local Resilience and The Transition Companion: Making Your Community More Resilient in Uncertain Times.

Source: Post Carbon Institute Publications | 5 Dec 2011 | 12:38 pm UTC

I spent a fascinating afternoon on Monday at an ‘Economic Summit’ (nowhere near as glamorous as it sounds) for Members of South Hams District Council and West Devon Borough Council. The meeting was called to update councillors on the strategic thinking within the councils in terms of the economic development of the area and to hear their views on it. Three communities were invited to present to the councillors the work they were doing to regenerate their economies, and Totnes was one of them. What I want to do in this post is two things simultaneously. I want to give some reflections from that meeting, but also give a review of ‘The Portas Review’ (“an independent review into the future of our high streets”) which was published yesterday. Together they give a sense of the two deeply different narratives that were on show at the Summit, the dangers that their incompatibility presents, as well as the opportunities that emerge.

Narrative One. ‘Produce Economic Growth or Die Trying’

At the summit event, this was the narrative pushed by the (all-male) presenters from the Council as they unveiled their strategic plans and the new role of local authorities in the local economy. Most used term of the day? “Identifying barriers to growth”. Growth, so this narrative goes, is only being held back by ‘regulation’ and ‘red-tape’, and by a lack of spending on new infrastructure. The solutions we need are large scale ones. Tim Jones, chair of the Local Economic Partnership, waxed lyrical about Sainsburys building a new regional depot in the area, a vital piece of infrastructure and investment that will create jobs, the new £10bn Hinkely Point C nuclear power plant getting the go-ahead in the area was, he stated, “a project to die for”.

He talked about the different things that the area apparently needs, roads, more construction and so on, one of which was mentioned as “that whole debate about renewable energy” (funny, there wasn’t any debate around any of the other things). The next speaker stated that the councils have “some great credentials in the environmental sector” without stating what those actually were. This is all, we should remind ourselves, in a context now where sustainable development has been redefined as any development which sustains economic growth. The talk was all of “creating the conditions” for attracting businesses and of having a more “flexible” planning system (i.e. build what you like where you like). At events like that 2 years ago, the term ‘low carbon economy’ was banded about freely. Now nobody even mentioned it once.

Narrative Two. ‘Erm, we already have a vibrant economy thanks’.

Now here’s where it got really interesting. Even before we got to give our presentation, a number of the council members stood up to say that in the area, 65-85% of economic activity is already generated by small to medium sized businesses, the majority of whom employ less than 25 people. As one member said “why do we need a Sainsburys distribution centre? We have local grocers, local farmers, local processors, local markets. This will undermine, not support them”. These are the businesses that weather economic storms because they have nowhere else to go. They don’t make a decision to relocate and overnight throw hundreds of people onto the dole. They are the businesses that actually build a community’s resilience. They are the ones with the links to local farmers, local producers, local people, and to each other. They are the ones who care about that place, because they have to live there. What is required, one might suggest, is to stop undermining that sector of the economy, and to rethink its value in the context of the bigger challenges bearing down on us fast.

“Barriers to growth?”. Start with these….

I started my presentation by pointing out the very real barriers to growth that represent the elephants in the corner as far as Narrative Two is concerned. The first is the woeful oil dependency it fosters, and the fact that all the changes we had heard proposed thus far would increase our oil dependency rather than reduce it, and this is not a time when that is a smart thing to do. Bloomberg are now stating that the smart money in the options market is for the price of oil to reach $150 a barrel within a year. The Financial Times reports that the cost of importing oil into the EU has risen from $280bn in 2010 to over $400bn in 2011, and it is clear now that the price of oil will strangle any possibility of a revival of economic growth (and if you think ‘unconventional oil’ will make much of a difference, think again). You want to identify a barrier to economic growth? Well there’s one very big one. Until we massively reduce our oil dependency, we can kiss any chance of any sort of revival in our economic fortunes goodbye.

Then of course there’s climate change, and the fact that our inability to prevent runaway climate change within the next few years will be the mother of all “barriers to growth” (and the smart money is on the probability that we won’t prevent it). And, lest we forget, there’s the economic crisis, the scale of which few people still appreciate. In a recent post at Automatic Earth, Stoneleigh quotes Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital in the US as saying “our government doesn’t have enough spare cash to bail out a lemonade stand”. Yet bailing out the EU would take hundreds of trillions of dollars, which no-one has. And if we in the UK think that by not signing this week’s EU treaty we are somehow insulated from the crisis unfolding there, have a look at this chart by Morgan Stanley Research:

As George Soros put it recently, “people don’t realize that the system has actually collapsed”. All of a sudden the word “barrier”, at least in the way it was used at the Summit, looks like a considerable understatement. The question that needs to be asked, I said in my presentation, is “does any particular new development or development model increase our oil dependency and our scale of economic precariousness, or decrease it?” These are the very real risks, the very real “barriers to growth” identified by the World Economic Forum as the risks with the greatest perceived likelihood of occurring and economic impact on developed economies. Let’s get real here.

Enter ‘The Portas Review’

Mary Portas (see right), star of ‘Mary, Queen of Frocks’ (a TV programme where she goes and makes-over failing retailers) was asked by the government to do a report about how to revive the UK’s high streets, and her report was published yesterday. In the main I have to say I thought it was rather good, delicately straddling the space between ‘Narrative 2′ than ‘Narrative 1′. At one point she says, in a soundbite perfect for our discussion about the Sainsburys distribution centre:

“A pound spent in a retailer with a localised supply chain that employs local people has far greater domestic impact than a pound spent in a supermarket or national chain. What’s more, out-of-town developments are often presented as major new sources of employment, but we need to recognise that this ‘job creation’ is often just job displacement”.

Her argument is that rather than sit back and be battered, high streets need to come out fighting, to innovate, to become places people want to visit. She puts forward some great ideas for making our high streets the vibrant, bustling places they need to be:

• The solutions need to bubble up from each place. As she puts it, “each high street will need to find its own bespoke response to revival, rather than being prescribed some generic response from on high”
• “Local people”, she argues need to be seen “as co-creators not simply consumers”
• She argues for the creation of ‘Town Teams’, charged with regenerating high streets and town centres, arguing that shopping malls have a management team, and high streets need something very similar
• She argues for ‘Super BIDs’ (Business Improvement Districts) where local businesses come together, funded by an annual fee to all local traders, to oversee the stimulation of business in the area. These ‘Super BIDs’ she argues could have the power to compulsorily purchase empty shops and get them going again
• She proposes new street markets, where for perhaps just £10 a table, anyone could sell anything (legal), and some of the shops could also have stalls
• She proposes cuts in business rates for new start-up businesses
• Big retailers, she argues, could mentor smaller businesses, and large chain retailers should be compelled to highlight in their annual reports “what they are doing at a local level to support the local high street”
• She also is clear that one big problem is absentee landlords who have no interest in their property being a part of this kind of regeneration process, and she suggests ‘empty shop management orders’ and a range of ways to force landlords to use their properties more responsibly
• The community should have the right to take over empty properties, and as well as the ‘Right to Buy’, she also proposes a ‘Right to Try’, which I love, arguing that “if [a community] can’t buy an empty property then they should be able to try it”, and “to go into the property and test co-operative ventures”.
• She also proposes the use of loyalty cards, although doesn’t mention the Brixton Pound, which would no doubt, like the forthcoming Bristol Pound, be right up her (high) street.

In short, there are loads of great ideas in the report. I love her talk of “looking beyond simply price-based considerations to include community wellbeing and long-term sustainability”. There is a passion that runs through it which I admire. I do however have just two criticisms of the report. The first is that there are a couple of places where I feel she is simply not angry enough, where she pulls her punches. She acknowledges the terrible situation that many high streets have been thrown into by out of town shopping centres and supermarkets muscling onto the high street, but is frustratingly shy about naming names as to how that has happened. She writes:

“The fact is that the major supermarkets and malls have delivered highly convenient, needs-based retailing, which serves today’s consumers well. Sadly the high street didn’t adapt as quickly or as well. Now they need to”.

It’s a bit like blaming a mugging victim for not ducking in time when the mugger took a swing at him. It is hard to adapt quickly enough when a supermarket pitches up next to your shop and undercuts all your prices, provides acres of free parking and uses all the other tools at its disposal to push you out of business. Have a look at this graph from the report showing the percentage change in UK store numbers between 2001 and 2011:

This is not a change in direction that happened by accident. Nor did, as the report states, the fact that 8000 supermarket outlets now account for over 97% of total grocery sales in the UK. This ‘transition’ (if you like) was supported, indeed driven, through subsidies, through a planning system driven by the same mania for growth that we are seeing today, it was driven by corporate interests, lobbyists, a whole wretched economic model that saw small businesses as disposable and large corporates and shareholder returns as essential, not just by unimaginative shopkeepers who failed to “adapt” quickly enough. Communities up and down the country tried to resist their towns being taken over by out-of-town shopping centres, becoming ‘CloneTowns’, and tried to protect their local traders by stopping supermarkets opening up on their high streets or one the edge of town, but were usually defeated by supermarkets’ huge budgets and legal fire power.

To give her her due she does suggest that when it comes to communities and supermarkets, there is not a level playing field. Her suggestion that “people need a powerful, legitimate voice and planning needs to be a much more collaborative process than it has been to date”. She suggests that developers should make a financial contribution to ensure that the local community has a strong voice in the planning system (I can see that one going down like a lead balloon). There is a key tension here though in terms of a government who would see such an approach as a “barrier to growth”, as unnecessary ‘red tape’ to be swept asunder.

The other problem with it is that reading it one would think that the decline in high streets is happening in isolation from the larger economic picture. There are some trends working in favour of the high street. The price of fuel has meant that John Lewis recently reported that sales at their out-of-town stores are now down 12% compared to their town centre stores. I would have love to have seen what this report would have looked like if she has explicitly been asked to look at how high streets could also boost community resilience in the wider sense, actually responding to the looming energy crisis, to the debt crisis. Although she does touch on some things that would be very helpful for this, some joining up of dots is frustratingly elusive.

Back at the summit… tools for building bridges

What was fascinating at the summit was a sense that began to emerge about how a dialogue might look that was about building a bridge between these two narratives. It was the Conservative councillors who were arguing for support for local businesses, for more apprenticeships, for support for new businesses. Arguing that economic growth, as we’ve known it so far is over, is probably not going to register, whereas presenting Transition as the opportunity for entrepreneurship and innovation, for supporting local businesses which are key to community resilience, seems to gain far greater traction. What will impress such people is not the amount of carbon we’ve saved, but the number of jobs we’ve created. Often they see those two things as mutually exclusive, we can model just the opposite. Once Transition becomes the thinking that underpins hundreds of jobs in a place, it becomes a no-brainer.

The Portas Review presents a powerful and well-reasoned argument that we need to nurture and revive the high street, that they need to be diverse and innovative, that local people need to be more involved and that they need some kind of protection from the predation of the chainstores.

I left the meeting feeling that the strategic planning guys are a dead loss, they have to make the kinds of plans that include Sainsburys distribution centres and nuclear power plants because that’s their job. They represent a slow moving supertanker in terms of how long it takes to move things forward, and how long it takes to turn them around, what the film ‘The Story of Broke’ refers to as ‘the dinosaur economy’. Will the finances to build them still be in place in a couple of years? Will the realisation dawn that they deplete rather than enhance the area’s resilience? Will the new Community Resilience Framework‘s assertion that it is up to communities to choose what they are building resilience to mean that they will also, under the localism agenda, be given the powers to resist things they see as diminishing their resilience?

A question arises here in terms of timing. We have very little time to make this stuff happen, it needs to happen now. Local authority strategic infrastructure planning work stretches out 20 years into a very uncertain future, yet moves very slowly and is very difficult to turn around. So the question that arises from the Summit is is there any value to a Transition initiative putting its energy into these long-term strategic consultations or into setting up community enterprises, retraining, reskilling, new food systems and so on? Also, given that most of the money from central government is distributed via. the networks of Narrative One, much of the resource that is needed to build the more resilient systems won’t reach them. Again, plugging the leaks of our economy and enabling inward investment are vital. I think this is a different take on emergency preparedness, that what we need to do right now is to take the ‘can do’ spirit and entrepreneurial drive Portas lays out, combined with the bottom-up mobilisation, the intentional localisation and resilience-building that runs through Transition, and harness the inherent enthusiasm and support for this that can be found everywhere.

Transition is so important because it is about doing things, engaging the community, starting to create and model the economy we do want to see. Across the world, Transition initiatives are doing just that, whether it’s Sustainable Dunbar’s new community bakery now open for business, Bath and West Community Energy just raising £721,350 in a community share launch for renewables in the area, or the Plymouth Food Charter which Transition Plymouth are a key part of, they are starting to model the kind of economy for which there is much more support. Yes it needs support, it needs investment, it needs that money currently being spent on bypasses and new roundabouts, and it needs to be far more visible on the ground. Portas puts it beautifully in her report, “what really matters, what’s really important, is that we roll up our sleeves and just make things happen“. Indeed.

At the end of the meeting, one of the senior representatives of South Hams District Council stood up to give his reflections on the day, and what he said gave a great sense of how these two narratives might find some common ground, and how Council thinking might shift. He talked about how own his thinking had shifted as the day went by, and that he was now questioning why developing an economic strategy for the area always meant thinking in terms of large scale ‘solutions’ and big centrally-funded infrastructure projects, and that perhaps focusing on local economies might be a more skillful way to move forward. This felt like a powerful observation, and one we can certainly build on locally.

I often end talks with Arundhati Roy’s quote “another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day I can hear her breathing”. Might we be able to adapt her quote, so that, in the context of what I have written about here today, it is not only a case of hearing her breathing, but being able to see her, around us, setting up local businesses, reviving her local economy, setting up a community bakery, mentoring scores of young people with business ideas, attracting inward social investment finance, creating the models whereby people can invest in their communities, creating economic blueprints which set out the case clearly for how the local economy can be strengthened and supported? Yes there are very real barriers to growth, such as the barrier that you can’t do infinite growth on a finite planet, but there are no barriers to the growth of the innovation, community and resourcefulness that already underpins our local economies and local traders, and which represents the real bedrock on which a new, more resilient economy needs to be built.

Source: Post Carbon Institute Publications | 15 Dec 2011 | 4:13 pm UTC

Most people dont regularly check the California Senate Committee on Banking, Finance and Insurance for the latest news about potential legislation, and so its no surprise that most people have never heard of California Assembly Bill 2789. Thats too bad, because California AB 2789, passed into law in September, 2010 and effective January 1, 2011 as the Money Transmission Act, is a ticking time bomb, and the big red numbers are glowing 50 as of midnight tonight.

What the law accomplishes sounds mundane enough: it requires money transmitters–companies that act like banks, but arent, such as PayPal–to get licenses. As usual, however, the devil is in the details. Previously, California corporations were only required to get money transmitter licenses for international funds transfers, and domestic transfers were unregulated. Now both kinds of transfers are regulated. Also, the price of each license is a little bit steep: half a million dollars and change.

Oh, and if you want to do business nationwide, youll need 43 more of those licenses from almost every state. The forms and requirements are different everywhere, most states want your fingerprints to do a criminal background check (the exact same criminal background check, it turns out), and the price varies wildly from a measly $10,000 to $1,000,000+ per state. Want the forms? Good luck finding them; some states dont post them on-line.

Why does Californias law matter at all when the regulatory framework for money transmitters is already such a mess? Well, Silicon Valley is located in California, and if Valley startup founders risk going to jail (which, under the updated PATRIOT Act, they do) for transmitting money illegally without a license, then there arent going to be very many new companies working on ways to handle payments that dont involve the same old banks touting the same old plastic cards. Not to mention that there arent a lot of investors who like the idea of putting half a million dollars into a companys bank account so that it can be immediately locked up and used for licenses.

In other words, the Money Transmission Act is designed to kill innovation.

The only silver lining is that the very last clause, section 1872, allows companies that had already been operating under the old law to continue doing so without repurcussion until July 1, 2011, which is when the music stops. On that date, every affected company needs a license application on file, or else the founders, employees and even investors will be committing state and federal crimes by merely continuing to operate.

Who would sponsor such a draconian law? According to legislative analysis of AB 2789, we can blame The Money Services Round Table. If The Money Services Round Table sounds like a shady political group that doesnt want to reveal its true identity, that is because it is a shady political group that doesnt want to reveal its true identity! Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, however, we know that its lobbyists had some very important things to tell the Federal Reserve in 2006, including its member list (which may have grown since then). At the time, it included such names as:

• Western Union
• MoneyGram
• Travelex
• American Express

While its no surprise that these companies might want to keep out the competition, that doesnt make anti-competitive behavior something we should accept. The big four payment card companies (Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express) have managed to raise interchange fees for years and years thanks to legislative tricks, and only now is Congress trying to solve the problem by regulating debit (but thanks to lobbyists, not credit) card interchange rates via the Durbin Amendment to the Dodd-Frank Act, which has severe problems of its own.

You might argue that innovation in the financial industry is alive and well, but youd only be right if you mean that in the most cynical terms. Case in point: Square, a payments company that is a media darling frequently cited as a leading innovator, does not disrupt the financial infrastructure in any way. In fact, Visa just invested in Square directly because it does such a good job of propagating the status quo. PayPal similarly exists to promote existing financial infrastructures, not replace them with something better.

My company, Think Computer Corporation, will be forced to shut down FaceCash (https://www.facecash.com)–the only payment system built from the ground up to replace the plastic card network–if we cannot meet Californias requirements to apply for a license by July 1. (Were pretty confident well be okay, but its still a considerable risk.) Another one of our competitors wont admit it, but even after raising $20 million in venture capital funding, they just stopped operating entirely in April, 2011, likely because of the regulatory uncertainty posed by AB 2789. Today, a former American Express executive who worked on the companys Serve mobile payment system confided that the license issue had even become an internal issue for the one of the very same companies that sponsored the legislation in the first place.

Simply put, in a capitalist society, this system is insane. It does not protect consumers. It prevents market competition. It keeps interchange prices so high that Congress cant even hold enough hearings about the issue.

Source: All content | 21 Jul 2011 | 5:41 pm UTC

Tom Atlee alerted me to this report which I think provides some good insight into the popular movements that have been ongoing in Europe over the past few months. It may be helpful in determining how the Occupy movement might avoid losing momentum and move on with strength to the next level of planning and organizing. What comes after the protests and expressions of dissatisfaction? Is it really necessary to reach consensus in presenting demands and moving toward positive action? –t.h.g.

Occupy to Self Manage
By Michael Albert

http://interactivist.autonomedia.org/node/33609

I have yet to see my nearest large occupation, Boston, or the precursor of all U.S. occupations, Wall Street. Instead, I have been on the road for the past six weeks in Thesselonika and Athens Greece; Istanbul and Diyarbikar Turkey; Lexington, Kentucky; London, England; Dublin, Ireland; and in Barcelona, Madrid, and Valencia Spain.

In all these places, I talked with diverse individuals at many meetings and popular assemblies. I met people involved in occupations, as well as audiences assembled by my hosts to hear about participatory economics. Beyond addressing assigned topics, my own priority was to learn about local movements. I repeatedly asked what folks struggling for many months wished to say to other folks first embarking on similar paths.

Boredom, Disempowerment, and Consensus Obstruct Growth
In Greece and Spain, a single message predominated. It had nothing to do with analyses of capitalism or other analytic focuses. Instead, Greek and Spanish activists reported that they had massive assemblies in widespread cities and their occupations grew, grew, grew, so that assemblies were up to 12,000, 15,000 – and then they shrunk, shrunk, shrunk, so that assemblies are now not meeting, or are meeting in the hundreds, or less.

Yet I heard, time after time, that nothing had diminished regarding the population’s rejection of unfolding injustices. The people remain fed up in huge numbers and still turn out massively for demonstrations, marches, and strikes. So why were most people who were rallying and marching no longer assembling? The reply I heard at every stop was that the decline of the assemblies wasn’t due to repression, or to people being co-opted, or to people being tricked or saddened by media distortion or dismissal. In fact, the assemblies shrinking wasn’t due to anything anyone else did to the assemblies, or said about them, or didn’t do to them, or didn’t say about them, activists repeatedly reported. Instead, they told me, the problem emanated from within.

For example, Greek and Spanish activists said that at assemblies initially people spoke with incredible passion of their plights and desires. Their voices often broke. Their hands shook. Each time someone rose to speak, something real, passionate, and persistent happened. It was enchanting and exciting. People were learning not only new facts and interpretations – and, indeed, that kind of learning was relatively modest – they were also learning new confidence and new modes of engaging with others. But after days and then weeks, the flavor of the talks shifted. From being new folks speaking passionately and recounting their reasons for being present and their hopes for their future by delivering deeply felt and quite unique stories, the speakers shifted toward being more seasoned or habituated folks, who lectured attendees with prepackaged views. The lines of speakers became overwhelmingly male. Their deliveries became overwhelmingly rehearsed. Listening to robotic repetition and frequent predictable and almost text-like ranting got boring and alienating. Sometimes it was even demeaning.

At the same time, new people, who were still far more prevalent, didn’t know what to do while they were occupying. We could assemble, they reported. We could talk and engage with each other. We could listen to others and sometimes debate a bit – the Greek and Spanish Assemblers reported – but, how long could we do that and feel it was worth the time we had to spend away from our families, friends, and jobs, not to mention from rooms with a roof?

As they first formed, the assemblies were invigorating and uplifting. We were creating a new community, I was told. We were making new friends. We were hearing from new people. We were enjoying an environment where dissent was the norm. But as days passed, and then weeks, it got too familiar. And it wasn’t obvious to folks what more they could do. There weren’t tasks to undertake. We weren’t being born anymore, we were dying. It was hard. For many it was impossible to keep learning and keep contributing. There was a will, but there was not a way. Folks didn’t have meaningful things to do that made them feel part of a worthy project. We felt, in time, only part of a mass of people.

After a time, many asked, why should I stay and listen to boring talks? Why should I be hugely uncomfortable and cut off from family and work, if I have nothing to do that is constructive, nothing that is empowering, nothing that furthers worthy aims? And so people started to attend less, and then to leave.

Another factor that was initially exciting but later became tedious, was seeking consensus. At first it was novel. It implied trust, which felt good. It implied shared intentions, which felt inspiring. But after awhile, seeking consensus became tortured, a time waster, and its reason for being the only decision making approach became steadily less compelling.

Why can’t we arrive at decisions which some people do not like and don’t even want to participate in? Why can’t we arrive at decisions, and have a strong minority that dissents, and then respect that minority, and even have it pursue other possibilities to see their worth? Why do we allow some small group to cause discussions to continue without end, turning off many from relating when the small group has no legitimate claim to greater influence than anyone else – save that our mode of decision making gives them a veto?

Folks recounted all these dynamics very graphically and movingly. No one said that people stopped participating in assemblies because of fear or the cops or depression over the newspapers. No one said people left because they had developed doubts about protest or resistance, much less about the condition of society. Instead, everyone I spoke with, and it was a lot of very committed people, told me participants left due to lacking good reasons to stay. The bottom line was that the assemblies got tedious and, ironically, even disempowering. Folks wondered, why must I be here every day and every night? The thought nagged. It led to legions moving on.

Making the Very Good Even Better
What is the solution, I asked, in each new city, and we discussed possible answers. Occupy but better yet, self manage, I was told. The former option is basically passive – the latter is active and yields tasks and opportunities to contribute.

Grow in numbers and awareness, but those who become well learned must stay in touch with new people, and always remember that new people’s involvement matters most. Otherwise old timers are getting more knowledgeable but also more aloof, and new people will not stay.
Why not have classes for learning? Why not have activities for creating? Why not have actions for winning changes? Always speak to the new people. Always speak from experience, from events, not from preconceived lines. Always involve yourself and new people in tangible and worthy activity. Make the options evident and easy to become involved with.

Of course some things can’t be solved at occupations themselves. Sleeping out is a young person’s passion – but not an option for everyone. In Dublin, this was particularly evident. So, while sleeping in an occupied space makes sense for some young or homeless folks, why not proactively take for granted that many other folks, particularly with families, will not and cannot sleep under the stars? Why not have a program of activities that returns people to their home locales for organizing purposes each night, or even for all but the explicit time of assembly meetings, perhaps?

Ideas that resonated in the many discussions, and that activists involved felt needed preponderant support, included: once an occupation has a lot of people, have subgroups initiate other occupations in more places, all federated together and providing one another mutual aid. In the most local, neighborhood occupations, visit every home. Talk with every resident. Involve as many neighbors as possible. Determine real felt needs. If what is most upsetting neighbors is housing concerns, daycare issues, traffic patterns, mutual aid, loneliness, whatever, try to act to address the problems.

Have occupations self manage and create innovations artistically, socially, and politically. Have occupations occupy indoors, not just outside. It is a leap, perhaps, but not much of one. In Barcelona and Madrid – some have tentatively begun occupying abandoned apartments and other buildings, preparatory, I believe, to inviting the homeless to dwell in them, as well as to using them for meetings and the like. In Valencia I was at a very fledgling university occupation, begun, indeed, after a talk. But to occupy buildings, especially institutions like universities or media, isn’t just a matter of call it, or tweet it, and they will come. It is a matter of go get them, inform them, inspire them, enlist them, empower them, and they will come.

In Greece and Spain, and to an extent the other venues I visited too, violence was another focus. All who I talked with agreed it was a suicidal approach on two counts. First, violence is the state’s main strength. Shifting the terms of conflict toward violence shifts it precisely where the state and elites want it – toward their strength. Second, violence distorts the project. It makes it inaccessible for many. It makes bystanders critical. It diminishes outreach, and outreach is the basis of all gains.

I have been to Greece a number of times, and in earlier trips this view was quite weak among young Greeks, who were more typically ready and eager to rumble. But now the non violence stance has growing traction in Greece. In Spain, from the start, it was predominant and Spanish activists have successfully avoided giving the state an excuse for violence, thus causing every act of violence by the state to reverberate to its disadvantage.

Forget about violence and rioting, develop campaigns emanating from occupations, which means, said activists in Spain, developing demands to fight for. Indeed, over and over activists involved asked about demands that could unite constituencies and which could be fought for in creative and participatory ways so that victories were possible which would really matter to people’s lives and enthusiasm and spur further struggle. They felt that while the open ended character of dissent worked fantastically initially, and was warranted while waiting for enough outreach so demands would represent a real constituency’s views, not just those of a few leaders, over time, one needs focus.

Some suggestions for demands that arose were welcome. Others less so. For example, everyone liked demanding big cuts in military spending and reinstatement and enlargement of funds for social programs. But what folks really liked was when that demand was explored and enlarged to include transforming the purposes of military bases that would otherwise be shrunk or closed due to budget cutting to instead stay open and do worthy public works such as building low income housing, first for base residents who would need and appreciate it, and then for the homeless.

And regarding the homeless, a demand that hit home was freezing foreclosures, returning homes, distributing vacant homes, housing the homeless – including the idea of enacting occupations to undertake these results directly, a process that has begun in Barcelona and Madrid which also have robust movements to block foreclosures.

Another approach that seemed to gather considerable support was to demand full employment. But that wasn’t all. Recognizing the lack of current demand for produced goods people realized a sensible full employment demand would require also reducing the work week by 10 – 25 percent, depending on the country’s unemployment rate. Of course if most people saw their incomes decline by a corresponding amount, they would face catastrophe, and thus the reduced hours demand has to be combined with a demand that most people would incur no loss of income. (Living wage policies and redistributionist progressive taxation would also be part of the mix.) Full employment additionally strengthens working people because when they all have jobs, the threat of being fired declines to near irrelevance. Winning this demand also means workers enjoy more leisure and higher hourly wages for those in need. Additional costs would have to be born by owners, and if they don’t agree, that’s fine – workers might want to occupy those factories, and then move to self manage them.

Another popular notion was going after media. One option that resonated as a possible campaign goal, even while obviously falling short of total transformation (though certainly on the way toward it), was demanding one or more new sections of mainstream newspapers, or shows, or whatever which would be devoted to, for example, labor dissent, or feminism, or peace, or ecology, and so on. Crucially, these would not be managed in the usual corporate fashion, but, instead, via self management of their participants under the umbrella of major labor, women’s, peace, or ecology organizations, for example.

In these exchanges, activists were imagining a worldwide campaign against mainstream media, against military spending, for low income quality housing, and for full employment including accompanying income redistribution and increased leisure. They envisioned these campaigns unifying protest into resistance and then unifying resistance into creative self management, even as each occupation also related to its own local concerns.

Self Managements!
Occupations – or what might come to be known, in time, as self managements – would occur in local neighborhoods and federate up to cities and beyond, but also at the entrances to, and perhaps even inside, mainstream media, and at military recruiting stations and bases, at government ministries and branches, and finally, one can envision, even at factories and other workplaces. And in such endeavors not everyone would have to sleep outdoors but everyone would have to give some of their time, resources, insight, and energy to aid one or another campaign of the overall project.

The revolution, so to speak, is not immediately at hand. In my youth we bellowed – “We want the world and we want it now!” It was fine as a rousing chant. But we need to also understand that it takes time, it takes sustained effort, traversing not weeks or months, but years.
Indeed, even with the incredible speed and ingenuity of current outbreaks of activism, there are undeniably pessimistic scenarios in which occupations wind down and then demos happen for a time but manage to win only minor if any gains until movement morbidity sets in. This is what the Greeks and Spaniards are trying to avoid. It is why they are beginning new kinds of occupations aimed at media, housing, universities, and at the transformation of budgets, and soon, perhaps at hiring and firing. Projects that are designed to enhance and widen participation in ways leading to massive involvement of masses of people – all knowing what they want and how they can contribute to attaining it.

There are, however, also optimistic scenarios in which occupations diversify and morph into self managing projects radiating out campaigns for change while also welcoming into sustained participation countless actors of all ages and orientations. In this picture, daily marches to support other campaigns in a city – like in New York currently – with growth in numbers and confidence, leads to empty buildings becoming residences and meeting places, to mainstream media businesses becoming targets for occupation, and likewise for universities, and other workplaces of all kinds. Simultaneously, local neighborhoods generate their own assemblies, again, like in New York, initiated by the residents who had been schooled in the earlier, larger, city-wide endeavors, and then local participants patiently and empathetically enter every house, every kitchen and living room, and elicit desires, and, in time, participation.

Paths Forward
Envisioning all this and much more, once people’s ambition is unleashed from the shackles of daily pessimism, was not hard for folks I talked with. The optimistic path is a scenario involving planting the seeds of the future in the present. It is a scenario that marshals energy and insights to building alternatives, but also winning gains now all fought for and implemented in ways that build desires and organization aimed at winning still more gains in the future.

We need a sense of proportion and pacing. The occupations now underway still involve only a small fraction, indeed a tiny fraction, of the people in pain and angry about it. To grow, the occupations need to very explicitly conceive themselves in ways that address immediate needs, are aimed at viable and worthy long term goals, and develop modes of participation that cause normal folks, enduring normal harsh conditions, to feel that giving their time makes good sense because it can eventually lead to a new social system with vastly better outcomes than those presently endured. Occupations that began in response to economic insanity need, as well, to broaden and adopt a more encompassing focus taking into account not only the economy, but also, and equally, matters of race, gender, age, ability, ecology, and war and peace. This is what makes a movement a threatening project able to induce capitulation from authorities afraid to make it grow even larger. It is what makes a movement worthy of winning, as well.

We need not only patience in the face of a long struggle, but also a sense of optimism and desire. The occupations are a start, a veritable firestorm of initiation, and they already have vastly wider support than their direct participation evidences. There is a possibility lurking in these events that is awesome in its potential implications. We should all be patient and keep our heads, yet we should all also realize that this may be a very special time, especially for young people, during which it is possible to make an indelible, enduring, and incredibly desirable mark on history.

#     #     #

Source: Beyond Money | 2 Nov 2011 | 1:43 am UTC

More and more people are wondering about how the Occupy movement will shift from protest and demonstration to strategies and actions that will result in personal and community empowerment, actions toward restructuring our institutions and shifting the balance of power from Washington and Wall Street to Main Streets, neighborhoods, and civic organizations. 

One rather obvious strategy is to change the way we spend and invest our money.

Click here to see a list of financing alternatives that I started preparing as a resource list for my presentation to the Financial Planning Association in May, 2011. I have since added a few items to it, including a link to One PacificCoast Bank, a relatively new bank which has as its mission, “to build prosperity in our communities through beneficial banking services delivered in an economically and environmentally sustainable manner.” According to a description on the BALLE website, the “founders granted 100% of the bank’s dividends, when declared, to a foundation dedicated to the communities and environment upon which we all depend.  This unique structure ensures that the bank’s interests are aligned with the needs of its customers and communities. We call this “beneficial banking.” 

I like the sound of that and I’m hoping that this case may be the forerunner of a new pattern of corporate ownership in which service is the foremost purpose and profits are distributed to entities that serve the common good, not just the narrow interests of a few.

I have made my resource list a permanent page which is listed in the sidebar to the right under Resources. It remains a work in progress.–t.h.g.

Source: Beyond Money | 22 Nov 2011 | 9:48 pm UTC

“Quakers in Britain share the concern for global economic justice and sustainability expressed by the Occupy movement.  We agree with the statement of Occupy London Stock Exchange that our current economic system is unsustainable. It is undemocratic and unjust. We need alternatives.

We, too, “want structural change towards authentic global equality. The world’s resources must go towards caring for people and the planet, not the military, corporate profits or the rich,” (as stated in Occupy LSX initial statement). We are grateful to the various Occupy groups for raising these issues so passionately and respond to the deep spiritual significance that we recognise in the movement.

“Those of us who have visited have been welcomed, and found the Occupy sites an exceptional learning experience.  We honour the values and positive ways of working within Occupy communities: without hierarchy, based on care for others, open to the contributions of all and searching for the truth.  These are in harmony with our Quaker practice and business methods.

“The idea that another world is possible is crucial for us too.  We cannot accept the injustice and destructiveness of our economic system as it is. At the annual meeting of Quakers in Britain in August 2011 we wrote: “We need to ask the question whether this system is so broken that we must urgently work with others of faith and good will to put in its place a different system in which our testimonies can flourish”.   We support the process initiated by the Occupy movement to create a path towards a different future, and to develop it democratically.

“We hope that individual Quakers will continue to provide support, both moral and practical, to the movement.  We greatly value its peaceful quality and we pray that this can be actively supported by all, including the civil and ecclesiastical authorities who have the difficult task of maintaining simultaneously both public order and the right of peaceful protest.”

Signed Paul Parker, Recording Clerk for Quakers in Britain

Source: Beyond Money | 25 Nov 2011 | 6:27 pm UTC

One of my correspondents recently alerted me to a review of David Harvey’s book, The Enigma of Capital, and the crises of capitalism. I’ve not seen the book, but if the review is a faithful description, the book seems to be well worth reading.

I’m not inclined to frame my analyses and prescriptions in terms of competing ideologies because that leads to immediate resistance by the true believers on one side or another. Rather, we need to encourage people to think outside of their comfortable boxes by pointing out implicit assumptions and evident dysfunctions, and suggesting structural as well as policy changes that show promise of providing better outcomes.

Of course, what constitutes a better outcome will always be a point of disagreement based on the fundamental values, attitudes, and beliefs that different segments of society hold dear (e.g., the 1% vs the 99% that the Occupy movement has been highlighting). Besides that, our desires and expectations must ultimately adjust to the reality of our planetary limits to physical growth.

Based on the review, the points that I may agree or disagree with Harvey about are inserted in red in the review below.

The Enigma of Capital, and the crises of capitalism, By David Harvey

Review by Andrew Gamble

Friday, 30 April 2010

Andrew Mellon, the US Treasury Secretary during the Great Crash of 1929 and one of America’s richest men, observed that in a crisis assets return to their rightful owners. Nothing much has changed. As the present crisis has mutated from a banking crisis to a fiscal crisis and a sovereign debt crisis, bonuses continue to be paid, while the people of Greece and Iceland suffer huge cuts in jobs and services.

As the head of Citibank helpfully pointed out, “Countries cannot disappear. You always know where to find them.” Once the bubbles are burst, expectations about asset values are dashed, optimism gives way to despair, and wealth is ruthlessly redistributed. Capitalism survives by purging itself of debt and loading the costs of adjustment on the weak and the poor.

[I agree, but something needs to be said about HOW it purges itself of debt. We’ve seen very clearly in this latest cycle how the capitalists have come away whole by pushing the debt off onto the public sector by means of government bailouts. That has cause severe fiscal (budgetary) problems for governments, which now are pressured to cut spending. That is where the weak and the poor (including the “middle class”) get fleeced and sacrificed because the cuts are typically made in social spending and programs that promote the common good.]

For David Harvey, this is the latest of the great structural crises which have punctuated the development of capitalism and which signify that major limits have been reached to further growth. Crises on this view are inherent in capitalism itself, and the means by which it renews itself. Only a periodic clear-out of debt and unproductive activities creates the basis for a further leap forward.

Harvey is less interested in the detail of how the 2007-8 crisis unfolded than in understanding it as a manifestation of how capitalism works. Over the last two decades, he has become a leading exponent of classical Marxist political economy, his work known for its exceptional clarity and for integrating spatial categories into the theory of capital accumulation.

Capitalism in the last 200 years has proved itself by far the most dynamic and productive economic system known to history, but the wealth comes at a price, both for human beings and increasingly for the natural environment.

Periodically, capitalism over-expands and overshoots, encountering limits it cannot immediately transcend. This is a system which must keep expanding by at least 3 per cent a year. What drives it is the hope of profit, and this impulse comes to shape all social relations as well as nature. During booms, capital accumulates very fast, but the amount of surplus generated becomes harder and harder to absorb. The investments that have been made in the boom fix capital in all sorts of ways, in buildings, cities, regions and countries, as well as in labour forces and ways of organising production.

After a time many of these past investments no longer yield a high return and sometimes no return at all. This is what precipitates the crisis. It may take the form of a profits squeeze, caused by militant labour wresting gains from capital, or by factors depressing the rate of profit, or by too little demand. Harvey argues that the present crisis is particularly hard to resolve because it comes after a long period in which real incomes in the US have stagnated, while the wealth of the property-owning elite has soared.

The gap between what labour was earning and what it would spend was covered by credit. The average debt of per household, including mortgage repayments, was $40,000 in 1980. By 2007 it was $130,000. Getting this debt down and restarting the economy is a huge task.

[I too have been preaching that the limits to growth have been reached, and yes, however one might choose to characterize an economic system (capitalist, socialist, or otherwise), there must be a periodic “clear[ing]-out of debt and unproductive activities,” for the system to maintain its vitality, but not necessarily to make way for further growth.

I’m wondering if Harvey’s book adequately explains the phenomenon of “expansion and overshoot,” and whether or not that would also occur under his conception of a alternative non-Capitalist system. I’m also wondering about the basis for his statement that, “This is a system which must keep expanding by at least 3 per cent a year.” I’ve seen estimates that run closer to 6%. My own belief is that the proximate driver of continual economic growth is the compounding of interest that is a fundamental feature of our global monetary system, and that the surplus that is created by the economy goes largely into capital concentration and profit-seeking reinvestment, rather than to increased and more equitable consumption. Thus, we see starvation and want amidst plenty.]

Harvey is pessimistic that growth can be restarted without the infliction of quite unimaginable hardships on the many of the world’s poorest people. Capitalism survives by socialising losses and distributing gains to private hands. Harvey devotes a large part of his argument to show how this is done through the close ties of the state and finance. He calls it the state-finance nexus.

[Yes, this is an increasingly obvious point. I’m glad to see that Harvey is highlighting the “state-finance nexus.” I trace that back to the founding of the Bank of England in 1694, which established the pattern of central banking and government-banking collusion that has since spread around the world and culminated in a rather monolithic regime. But there are cracks beginning to form.]

This is not a conspiracy: both sides of the relationship need one another and support one another. There are frictions and conflicts, but in the end they work together because this is the only system anyone knows or thinks can be made to work. Michael Bloomberg, as Mayor of New York, commissioned a report which declared that excessive regulation in the US was threatening the future of the financial sector in New York.

The financial crash of 2008 destroyed the credibility of the financial growth model put in place after the last great capitalist crisis in the 1970s. It has also, as Harvey notes, put a question-mark over the continuance of US hegemony, because of the shift in the balance of the global economy towards the rising powers of India and China.

He thinks that the accumulated rigidities over the last cycle have become so great that only a very fundamental restructuring can restore the basis for renewed economic growth. But the pressure for an early return to business as usual are very great, threatening an early return of credit and debt as the only way to fuel the economy, and the eruption of another crisis in a few years.

Harvey argues that each major capitalist crisis has been worse than the last one, and more difficult to surmount. He accepts that capitalism, with all its resilience and inventiveness, is quite capable of overcoming this crisis too; but he is sceptical, and believes that this is the moment that a revived anti-capitalist movement can seize the opportunity to put forward a realistic alternative to capitalism as a way of organising the economy.

[Yes, it is evident that each successive cycle is more extreme than the last. The financial system based on interest-bearing debt is shaking itself apart.

It seems odd that he attributes “resilience and inventiveness” to capitalism. These are human qualities that might thrive in a variety of circumstances. The question is how, specifically, to support them. ]

This is perhaps where the argument is least convincing. The anti-capitalist left is fragmented and not particularly numerous. Radical political responses during previous capitalist crises have often favoured the right. The rise of China and India, both of which have continued to grow through the recession, suggests that the fundamental shift in the balance of the global economy is only just beginning, and if it continues is likely to provide huge potential for growth and absorption of surplus, provided certain political conditions are met.

This will not be easy but is certainly possible. Marx thought that no social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed. On the evidence Harvey himself provides, capitalism still has a long way to go before that is the case, and no gravediggers are in sight.

[What are the physical limits to the application of those “productive forces?” It is evident that the masses of India and China cannot possibly achieve the levels of consumption and way of living that have prevailed in the West. The emphasis must shift from capital accumulation and increasing consumption to more equitable distribution and better quality of life for all.]

But this book is a welcome addition to the literature on the crisis. It provides a lucid and penetrating account of how the power of capital shapes our world, and sets out the case for a new radicalism and a vision of alternatives. What we need, he argues, is not just a new world but a new communism, following the failure of the old – although he does accept ruefully that using “communist” as a political label may not bring instant success in the United States.

[I guess we will need to read the book to see what Harvey has to propose in making the “case for a new radicalism and a vision of alternatives.”]

Andrew Gamble is Professor of Politics at the University of Cambridge and author of ‘The Spectre at the Feast’ (Palgrave Macmillan)

[Annotated comments by Thomas H. Greco, Jr.]

Source: Beyond Money | 26 Nov 2011 | 4:05 pm UTC

The following is a message sent by Guy “Josh” Josserand, one of my friends and associates, to the Occupiers in Tucson. It is an eloquent expression of hope and power that I think should be widely shared.–t.h.g.

Dear Occupiers and Occupationists,

Thank you so much from my heart for the power of your presence.

This is a rising tide of public awareness and personal participation for which I have had decades of anticipation.

A tsunami of love and respect for life is forming that can wash clean some centuries of fear-based domination of the many by the few.

Government of the People, for the People, and by the People now faces its last best chance to escape corporate feudalism.

Are we serfs or are we sovereigns?

Toward this end I wish to encourage the Occupation to speak, not about what it needs but WHAT IT GIVES.

As much as the Occupation needs the 99%, we all, the 100%, need what the Occupation offers even more.

It offers us all power and voice.

Let us INVITE each one to take control of the power they have.

Let us encourage them to accept the power they are.

Let us remind them of Marianne Williamson’s message which Nelson Mandela repeated in his Inaugural Address.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Let us incorporate this perspective into every communication and act of Occupiers in every town and city of the world. Success of the Occupation will be measured by the degree to which we can eradicate fear from the hearts of both the 99% and the 1% as well, for the One Percent also suffers from bondage. Though they fortify themselves with wealth, it is only a wealth of power and dominance which is antithetical and incompatible with actual freedom, justice and happiness. Injustice for anyone breeds injustice for all, and as Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. reminded us many years ago, “None of us is free until all of us are free.”

‘Josh’

Guy Josserand III

guyjosh3@gmail.co

Source: Beyond Money | 28 Nov 2011 | 10:41 pm UTC

Es ist vollbracht. Der Verein ist nun auch von Amts wegen rechtskräftig und die Mitglieder setzen alles daran, der neuen Regionalwährung HUMMEL den Weg zu ebnen. In der ersten Sitzung wurde der Vorstand gewählt. Zusätzlich wurden drei Beisitzer als erweiterter Vorstand hinzugewählt. Es stehen weitere Aufgaben an. Die Bitte an dieser Stelle: Alle Interessenten, die sich vorstellen können, aktiv für ein Regionalgeld zu arbeiten, sind aufgerufen, sich zu melden. Netzwerk und Multiplikatoren sind die wichtigsten Voraussetzungen zur Etablierung der neuen Währung für die Hansestadt. Als Verbraucher, als Unternehmen, als Verein - Sie alle braucht der Hummel, um zu einem effektiven Mittel der Zahlung und des Handels zu werden. Und Sie alle profitieren von einer starken Regionalwährung.  Sprechen Sie mit Menschen aus dem Verein, wenn Sie Fragen haben. Nächste Möglichkeit: Die Zukunftswerkstatt lädt ein zur Podiumsdiskussion : Fließendes Geld. Chance für ein BGE “von unten”? 19:00, Kulturladen St. Georg, Alexanderstr. 16

Info: Zukunftswerkstatt lädt ein zur Podiumsdiskussion

Am Tag der Gründung trafen sich in der Handelskammer zu Hamburg Geldhäuser und Anlageexperten, um den 16. Börsentag durchzuführen. Drinnen die Welt der Indizes und Anzüge, draußen die Anlage-Geschädigten von Lehman und Co. Und um die Ecke gründete sich DER HUMMEL e.V., sehen wir es als ein gutes Zeichen.

Source: Der Hummel | 6 Nov 2011 | 6:58 pm UTC

Auf der Podiumsdiskussion des Hamburger Netzwerkes Grundeinkommen am 21.11.11 stellte sich auch der Verein „Der Hummel e.V.“ vor. Im gut gefüllten Kulturladen St. Georg debattierten Bürger und Finanzexperten zum Thema „Fließendes Geld“ und „Regionalwährung“. Die derzeitigen Verwerfungen des Finanzsystems, Schuldenberge und Währungskrisen haben auch in Hamburg die Bürger verunsichert. Gibt es Alternativen? Kann ein bedingungsloses Grundeinkommen die Wirtschaft ankurbeln und die Menschen sozialer sichern, als es bisher der Fall ist? Interessante Fragen, die in engem Zusammenhang zu funktionierenden Regionalwährungen stehen. In Hamburg haben sich Menschen zusammengefunden, die für den Großraum eine Regionalwährung schaffen wollen. Eine Chance für Verbraucher, Unternehmen und Organisationen durch zirkulierendes Geld, dessen Wert bei Einbehalt verfällt. Ein Geld, das nicht abwandern kann, sondern in der Region verbleibt. Und eine Währung, die sogar Gutes tut – durch kleine Prozente am Umsatz, die gemeinnützigen Organisationen zugutekommt. Wenn Sie Interesse an einer Veranstaltung mit den Organisatoren des HUMMELs haben, so nutzen Sie gerne das Kontaktformular am rechten Rand.

Source: Der Hummel | 22 Nov 2011 | 4:40 pm UTC

Deutscher Bundestag (Pressemitteilung)

Materielle und immaterielle Aspekte des Wohlergehens Deutscher Bundestag (Pressemitteilung) Mit diesen Fragen befasst sich die Enquete-Kommission „Wachstum, Wohlstand, Lebensqualität" unter Vorsitz von Daniela Kolbe (SPD) bei ihren nächsten beiden Sitzungen. Mit den Sachverständigen Prof. Dr. Christoph Schmidt und Prof. …

Source: Google News: Wachstum-Wohlstand-Lebensqualität "enquete kommission" -dewezet.de | 6 Dec 2011 | 10:58 am UTC

Gut leben in Deutschland VDI nachrichten Die britischen Aktivitäten sollten auch die Enquete-Kommission des Bundestages zu Wachstum, Wohlstand, Lebensqualität, die einen Wohlstands- und Fortschrittsindikator für Deutschland entwickeln soll, inspirieren, hofft Bergheim. …

Source: Google News: Wachstum-Wohlstand-Lebensqualität "enquete kommission" -dewezet.de | 9 Dec 2011 | 2:18 am UTC

Zweifel an der traditionellen Idee vom Fortschritt VDI nachrichten Der Bundestag hat eine Enquete-Kommission eingesetzt – und niemand bekommt es mit. Vor ziemlich genau einem Jahr schon wurde die bislang 27. Kommission mit dem sperrigen Titel "Wachstum, Wohlstand, Lebensqualität – Wege zu nachhaltigem Wirtschaften und …

Source: Google News: Wachstum-Wohlstand-Lebensqualität "enquete kommission" -dewezet.de | 9 Dec 2011 | 2:18 am UTC

Nßlein: Freiheit, Gerechtigkeit und Solidarität schaffen Zusammenhalt und … news aktuell (Pressemitteilung) Berlin (ots) – Martha C. Nussbaum, Professorin für Recht und Ethik an der University of Chicago diskutierte am Mittwoch mit den Mitgliedern der Enquete-Kommission "Wachstum, Wohlstand, Lebensqualität" über das Thema "Wachstum und globale Gerechtigkeit" … und weitere »

Source: Google News: Wachstum-Wohlstand-Lebensqualität "enquete kommission" -dewezet.de | 15 Dec 2011 | 9:39 am UTC

Any study of local/community currency systems will reveal that many of these have failed. Of the ones that have survived, many have had very minimal economic impact. In fact, it is possible through a rather basic economic analysis, to demonstrate that even many of the surviving systems have accounted for an extremely small portion of economic activity in the regions they serve. While that analysis is not the purpose of this article, it does make one wonder if there is some greater force at work here, or some overarching law which constrains the success of CC systems. Intuitively, it would seem obvious that a community currency is most effective if it can be used to purchase products and services which are entirely of local origin, for only then can the currency be re-circulated within the community. Of course the traditional currency can also purchase those same products and services of local origin, as well as those of non local origin, so this sets the parameters of what we can generalize into the form of an economic law:

The Law of Local Currencies: The degree of economic activity accounted for by a local currency cannot exceed the degree of self sufficiency of the community in which it is used.

In other words, if a community produces 5% of the goods and services that it consumes (probably, in this age of specialization and globalization, a very generous estimate for most communities), then the local currency cannot account for any more than 5% of the economic volume of that community, and at least 95% of the economic volume of that community will use the traditional currency.

From here, one could raise an interesting question, and perhaps develop a corollary to the law. Is there some threshold, or critical mass of local self sufficiency, below which a CC system is just not sustainable? Might a study of CC systems indicate that below this threshold, the obstacles to CC adaption and use overcome its advantages, and the CC system just fades away? Well leave that question for another time and examine how we can use the Law of Local Currencies to our advantage.

So what actions does the Law of Local Currencies compel us to take? One approach is as follows.

1. Be very selective when inviting local merchants into your CC system. For example, instead of signing up the local supermarket, where the vast majority of the processed foods sold are probably not locally sourced, go through that supermarket and make a list of all of the products that might be produced locally – products made from ingredients which in turn can be sourced locally. The list might include soups, salad dressings, tomato sauce, vegetable and fruit juices, bread, crackers, cookies and other baked goods, mayonnaise, ketchup, and other condiments, breakfast cereals, jams, jellies, and many, many more items.
2. Start an incubator for new, small locally based, sustainable goods and services, where support, assistance, idea exchange, and facilities are provided for local residents who wish to produce local products and services.
3. Find a church or other organization which has infrequently used kitchen facilities, or find a restaurant which would be willing to rent kitchen space during off hours, and produce these processed foods in these facilities. Encourage residents or local organic farms to produce ingredients for these foods, knowing that there is a ready market for them, and some of the community currency that they receive in payment can be used to purchase the processed food items that are being produced. 4. Besides food, identify every other category of important local economic activity and human need – housing, transportation, energy, education, health care, and others. Many of these areas may appear to be impenetrable fortresses of traditional currency dominance, but an investigation of innovative and imaginative locally based alternatives may just amaze and inspire you. These categories comprise such a large portion of economic activity that without offering viable local alternatives, a CC system can not achieve any substantial level of local economic penetration.
4. Establish a microloan project and invite more affluent members of the community to invest in the community in this manner. You are not asking for gifts or grants, but capital for small loans which will go toward community building through funding of the above mentioned types of businesses. Establish a means of directing these loans towards promising projects. Enable your CC system to handle all loan disbursement and loan repayment transactions.
5. Dont be timid. Starting up these locally based ventures may be disruptive to others in the community who are offering non locally based alternatives. Consider a properly designed CC system with internet and mobile phone capability and other advanced features to be a Disruptive Technology – an innovation that creates a new (and unexpected) market by applying a different set of values. Remember that you have to break some eggs to make an omelet!

What Else? Even the best efforts at increasing local self sufficiency will still leave many gaps where traditional currency must be used. One approach to address this problem is to expand the geographical area of the CC system to include neighboring communities where products and services are produced which fill these gaps, thereby increasing the level of self sufficiency of the combined communities. Now, one might then ask if this isnt a step in the direction of just replicating the traditional currency system, where it eventually leads to a very large geographical area of CC operation, large volume production and specialization. To answer this, lets look at the extremes. If there is not enough self sufficiency in the area in which a CC system operates, then the CC system runs the risk of becoming just a low impact, feel good project, or perhaps not even surviving. Approaching total self sufficiency might involve expanding the area of the operation of the local currency to a point where the end result is a replication of the existing system (although without the controversial practices of central banking and a debt based currency, but that is a subject for another day.) It would appear that the proper balance therefore might lie somewhere in between.

Conclusion: The Law of Local Currencies defines the limits of possible impact and penetration of a local/community currency and attention to its implications compels a CC system to focus on increasing local self sufficiency by assisting in the creation and support of sustainable, locally produced goods and services in every category of economic and community activity, particularly through establishment of incubators and micro loan programs and other such initiatives.

Bruce Colley is the developer of LocalMart (LocalMart.net), a full featured internet and mobile phone enabled CC system with integrated social networking, multi-vendor, multi language ecommerce store, incubator (BetterWorldWorkshop.org) and microloan facility (MicroLendingNetwork.org). bruce@localmart.net

Source: All content | 25 Jul 2011 | 12:52 pm UTC

In this short video by Katie Teague, David Korten describes the fundamental strategy that I have been advocating for a long time. Forget about petitioning Congress or appealing to the power structure. The old system cannot be reformed; it must be transcended. We need to reduce our dependence upon their systems, structures and institutions, and learn to share and cooperate in building new ones that serve the common good. That must begin with the greatest of all our dependencies–money.

Katie Teague is the producer of the film, Money and Life.

Source: Beyond Money | 11 Dec 2011 | 5:12 pm UTC

In this short video by Katie Teague, David Korten describes the fundamental strategy that I have been advocating for a long time. Forget about petitioning Congress or appealing to the power structure. The old system cannot be reformed; it must be transcended. We need to reduce our dependence upon their systems, structures and institutions, and learn to share and cooperate in building new ones that serve the common good. That must begin with the greatest of all our dependencies–money.

Katie Teague is the producer of the film, Money and Life.

Source: Beyond Money | 11 Dec 2011 | 5:12 pm UTC

Holiday Greetings!

Here is an update on what I’ve been thinking and doing since my return from Asia two months ago. I know this is a busy time of year for everyone, so I’ll keep it brief.

Michigan conference and presentation links

The 2011 International Conference on Sustainability, Transition & Culture Change: Vision, Action, Leadership that was held in Michigan in November was very productive and enjoyable. Amongst the participants with whom I had opportunity to interact were Australian economist Steve Keen, author of Debunking Economics, Nicole Foss of Automatic Earth, and Albert Bates of the Eco-village Training Center and The Farm in Tennessee. I was also inspired to hear the stories of a number of land-based participants from Michigan and the Midwest who have taken significant steps to prepare for the transformation and are well positioned to thrive throughout the chrysalis stage of the ongoing societal metamorphosis.

I gave a somewhat abbreviated version of my slide presentation on The Emerging Butterfly Society. This was recorded, along with the rest of the conference proceedings, and can be accessed at http://www.livestream.com/localfuture/video?clipId=pla_ade24121-d46d-4448-863c-babe129a604f . Be sure to also watch Albert Bates’ amazing story about the history of The Farm. It’s a remarkable tale of what a small group of people can achieve to help others when they have love in their hearts and shared objectives.

I was also invited, by one of my colleagues who lives in the area, to be interviewed for a cable TV series that he produces (Investigating Community Resilience), for a program called Outside In. On the day following the conference we met at Up North studio in Traverse City, Michigan to record two half-hour segments that were to be broadcast via cable during the following weeks. These are now available on the program website. The first segment can be downloaded at http://ir.nrec.org/content/author-tom-greco-talk-about-history-money-and-debt, and the second at http://ir.nrec.org/content/more-tom-greco.

I think these went particularly well because the interviewer, Dave Barrons, is an TV personality with many years of experience who has a strong interest in the topics of my books and was well prepared with some excellent questions. Please watch these and pass the word along to your networks.

The next in this series of Local Future conferences is being planned for the end of May 2012. Since next year’s BALLE conference will be held in Grand Rapids from May 15 to 18, it seems advantageous to hold it in the same city immediately following. Watch the LF website for details.

Jubilee: The only way out of the Global Financial Predicament

As I wrote more than three years ago in The End of Money, “the growth god is dead.” We must face the fact that the limits to physical growth have been reached. This does not necessarily mean a decline in living standards or a global war for control of resources. There is plenty enough to provide a dignified life for everyone on the planet and even two or three billion more. We have been tremendously successful in developing “labor saving” machinery and technologies that can make us more healthier and more comfortable. The problem is that those benefits have not been equitably distributed and the whole range of incentives that are built into the industrial society promotes waste and conflict. We can all live much better while consuming less stuff, but to achieve that we’ll need to reinvent money, banking and finance. Accelerating debt growth cannot continue much longer. One way or another, much of the existing debt will need to be written off in the coming years. Will it be done deliberately, fairly, and systematically, or in a chaotic collapse of the global financial system?

If you want to understand what is happening on the global financial front, please watch this dialog between Chris Martenson and James Turk as they talk about Europe and the global economy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BsMj59hyJOQ.

And for a good understanding of the underlying factors that are bringing an the end to growth, and to get some direction on what to do to adapt, you may want to consult the following:

• Richard Heinberg (The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economy),
• Michael Ruppert (Confronting Collapse: The Crisis of Energy and Money in a Post Peak Oil World and Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil),
• Chris Martenson (The Crash Course).

The Occupy Movement

Over the past several weeks, I’ve posted a number of comments and links to materials about the Occupy movement. The most recent of these highlights a panel session that was held on November 10^th at the New School in New York City. The panel was titled, Occupy Everywhere: On the New Politics and Possibilities of the Movement Against Corporate Power. It featured Oscar-winning filmmaker and author Michael Moore; Naomi Klein, best-selling author of the Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism; Rinku Sen of the Applied Research Center and publisher of ColorLines; Occupy Wall Street organizer Patrick Bruner; and journalist William Greider, author of Come Home America, Who Will Tell the People?, and, Secrets of the Temple (about the Federal Reserve). The panelists provided some interesting perspectives on the movement. You can find the video and a transcript of the proceedings at the Democracy Now! website.

Yes! Magazine, in conjunction with Berrett-Koehler Publishers, has just come out with an excellent booklet, This Changes Everything, which both describes and gives some direction to the Occupy movement.

“This Changes Everything shows how the movement is shifting the way people view themselves and the world, the kind of society they believe is possible, and their own involvement in creating a society that works for the 99% rather than just the 1%.”

It features brief statements by more than a dozen leading voices, including David Korten, Naomi Klein, and Ralph Nader. You can get a copy from Yes! Magazine.

I’m confident that what began as a protest and expression of dissatisfaction with the status quo will quickly shift into a broad-based citizens’ movement to establish a true government “by the people and for the people” and a world that works for all. If you’re not already a part of this exciting process, Get Informed and get onboard…

Plato o plomo

I recently read the book, Killing Pablo, a story written by Mark Bowden (Black Hawk Down). I didn’t seek it out, it just appeared, so I grabbed it. It’s all about money, drugs, power, violence, and corruption, specifically related to the Columbian drug cartels and Pablo Escobar. It is an astounding example of the breakdown of law and order and the corrupting power of extreme wealth, particularly when in the hands of ruthless sociopaths. That is not to say that Escobar was the only one using the tactics of violence and terror. In the end, it seems it was the use of those same tactics by paramilitary groups with shadowy connections to both the Columbian and U.S. governments that brought Escobar down.

This is a chilling story of what can happen when terror, intimidation, and assassinations become a way of political life. The cartels and power brokers had (have?) a way of posing a choice to the government and military officials they sought to corrupt—plato o plomo, (silver or lead)? That was no idle threat. The cartel(s) had (have?) the wherewithal to carry it out. No one was safe in Columbia during that time. They could protect neither themselves nor their families. Police, soldiers, politicians, legislators, and judges were assassinated by the thousands, their family members kidnapped and often murdered, and innocent civilians killed in frequent bombings. This is a book that will cure you of any residual naiveté you may have regarding money, power, and politics.

THRIVE

I recently viewed the movie THRIVE: What on Earth Will it Take?, and attended a discussion group about it in Berkeley. The movie, a documentary produced by Foster Gamble, addresses the same basic questions that set me on my current path many years ago, namely, why is there so much suffering and deprivation amidst great opulence, and why is the earth being continually despoiled with no end in sight? What will it take to enable everyone on the planet to live a dignified life and realize their full potential?

While some may not relate well to the first part of the movie that considers free energy and UFOs, the movie is well worth viewing for its description of the domineering mindset and elite control that characterize our present reality, and for its inspirational vision of what our future could be. THRIVE groups are springing up in many places as people seek to understand the dimensions of our situation, and to help one another decide on appropriate actions.

Finally, this verse from a Christmas card caught my eye:

     May the true meaning of Christmas fill your heart with happiness all year!

Whatever your religious background might be, I invite you to contemplate these questions, What is the true meaning of Christmas? What is it that all religions are supposed to provide? How can we make religion a force that brings us all together instead of one that separates us?

And here is my wish for the New Year, and forever more—

        Peace on Earth and Good Will Toward All!

Tom

Source: Beyond Money | 19 Dec 2011 | 3:56 am UTC

We know Harry will never understand the brilliance of  “Bartering” and we know, with his millionaire status (somehow on a politicians salary, which needs further explanation but we shant hold our breath since old Harry loves to spend OPM but would NEVER explain how he amassed a small  fortune while never working an honest day in his life ). We also know old Harry would never actually shop where the rest of us normal folk who work  in private industry, shop, at CostCo that is!  And we know Harry will ALWAYS stoop so low as to belittle a potential opponent on subjects Harry knows absolutely nothing about (Economics, Wasteful Spending, Bartering).    But this isn’t about Harry Reid.

The above pictured article was printed in the most recent issue of CostCo’s FREE  magazine, “The CostCo Connection”. A must read. Especially right now as the liberals and other left wing loon’s (John Smith comes to mind here, with his Column in Sundays  Review Journal, something  about Sue Lowden and a flock of Chickens roosting on John’s Hairless Head) are all blasting Sue Lowden on her actually brilliant statement on health care and the barter system.  Thank you CostCo  for this timely article about a system MILLIONS of Americans are using TODAY, especially in this time of economic uncertainty, recession, out of control political spending, and political pandering by left wing liberals.  If you haven’t got a copy, get your butt off the couch,  drive  to CostCo and pick up the CostCo Connection! Pages 20 and 21, Barter 2.0  !!!  “An ancient idea gets a modern twist”!         (It’s probably also on the CostCo web site).

Thank You Sue Lowden, for bringing the  “System of Barter”, a system that actually works, for the benefit of all parties involved, to our attention and Thank You CostCo for your great follow-up article on the Barter System.

Imagine (if you will) that you’re a painter with a need for minor surgery, you offer to paint your doctors house in return for the surgery needed,  a win for both parties (except maybe not  for old Harry and his “Tax and Spend” Cronies). How about if you’re a Plumber, you offer your doctor a new and updated (water saver) toilet for some medical procedure you or your family may need. A win/win/win, (for you, the Doctor and the green folk who want water conservation). The list can go on and on and on, bartering is a huge part of the American spirit. (OK, I concede, bartering for open heart surgery may not work, the doctor may have you open and ready for that triple by-pass and decide he wants to re-negotiate with you, a time you just might not be at your negotiating best).  There are many Bartering Exchanges in our country (google bartering exchange) and they are growing at unprecedented rates due to the economy, unemployment and the administrations inability or lack of desire to actually fix the problems facing us today.

Don’t be a “Brain Dead Liberal” by knocking something you don’t understand and have never tried, (like the liberals who applauded the Mexican President and his BLASTING of  Arizona’s new illegal immigrant laws without ever reading them and without realizing these same laws mimic the federal laws most of them voted for and supported in the past, probably without ever reading these very same federal laws).

Brains, Brilliance, Beauty and Bartering to Boot. What else would a voter want in a future Senator?  VOTE, Vote Soon and Vote For SUE LOWDEN  for U.S. Senator !

And remember, if you continue to be a bit brain dead and vote for Harry Reid, you have just “Bartered” your vote for a “Future Harry Handout”. A  handout we (Taxpayers) are all forced to pay for sometime in the future.

http://blogs.reviewjournal.com/uncategorized/the-brilliance-of-the-barter

Source: Ormita | 4 Jun 2010 | 4:34 am UTC

One of the most overlooked methods of doing business is using the barter system. People assume that you have to pay money in exchange for the receipt of something of value. Not only is this not true, it makes good business sense to barter for the exchange of goods and services. Bartering is a great way to get and give something of value without spending a dime.

Just exactly does it mean to barter anyway?

Barter or trade is a powerful tool that represents a solution for companies with available inventory or services. By accepting payment in trade dollars instead of cash, a business maximizes their efficiency by increasing inventory turnover or billable hours. Using the trade dollars earned, the company can purchase the goods or services they want – without paying cash.

Bartering can occur with almost anything. Any product or service can be bartered and it doesn’t have to be a business only trade. In planning to barter, it’s important to think creatively. What have you got to offer that someone is willing to trade for? What do you need in exchange? When planning to barter it’s also important to understand that it never hurts to ask. Inquire and ask a supplier if they barter. Don’t be embarrassed. You don’t barter because you don’t have the money to spend. You should do it because it’s one of the smartest and fastest growing ways of doing business.

You can barter at any time. It’s an excellent way to build relationships while conserving cash. Excess goods and services can be traded for things and goods that you need.

Here are some examples:

You are an expert in marketing. You need a new brochure; you can barter your marketing expertise to a printing company in exchange for them printing the product.

You are an expert in customer service. You need a vacation; you can trade your expertise at the Hotel destination in exchange for free rooms.

You have a yard sale and a painter comes by who wants some of your stuff. You need your house painted. You can offer to trade the stuff you are planning to sell for their painting services.

Here are some methods for more successful bartering:

Be flexible in your thinking.

Bartering will not always deliver exactly what you want, when you want. You must be willing to change vendors, try new ways to promote your business, or perhaps look into different options. If you can be flexible bartering will not only work for you but it will make life more interesting and adventurous.

Be creative.

Creativity means you must be willing to look beyond the obvious. You must see new ways of doing things. Don’t only think cash as the answer. You might find that trading can be an even more powerful motivational tool. Using trade to settle debt, close sales, travel, or charitable contributions are just a few of the creative applications of bartering.

Be willing to wait for the right opportunity.

As with patience, with bartering, good things come to those who wait. Nine times out of 10 you will get you what you want, but you may have to wait for it.

Be quick to respond.

While you must be willing to wait, you must also move quickly when something comes along that is not normally available on trade. Those who do not respond quickly are often left sitting on the sidelines. It’s like a taking advantage of a great sale. Don’t spend time mulling it over; grab it the first time.

Think barter first.

In the normal, everyday world you are always thinking about how you are going to increase sales to pull in more dollars into your business. In the barter world, the sell-side is easy. Now you need to expend the same kind of time and energy on using your dollars. You must think trade before spending cash. Think trade all the time.

http://businessplanoutline.thecompanymarketing.com/2010/06/01/bartering-for-more-business/

Source: Ormita | 4 Jun 2010 | 4:34 am UTC

One day my wife told me that her friend offered her to teach swimming. This was in return for taking care of her aquarium while she was away on vacation.  My wife said ‘what an offer’, to which I said ‘what a Barter’.

The barter system for getting goods and services dates back many centuries. In most cultures the barter system was used before money was created. What makes the barter system even better today than ever before is that it can now be done globally.

There are examples of property bartering system popular in Dubai to swap their lands as per their convenience and deal. Interesting?

Musician Joel P.West launched his record Dust Jacket and the record is available only through the barter system. It mentions that To receive the free download, send in something of your own creation that describes a part of you. It could be a candid thought or a journal entry, a drawing you’ve been working on for months or a photograph you accidentally took thirty seconds ago. It could be a song or video, an image of something you are building, or it could even be a single word.

I think Bartering is widespread now. In 2008, China signed a barter deal with the Democratic Republic of the Congo worth $9bn to build the country’s infrastructure in return for a slice of its mineral wealth. Both parties held the deal up as a win-win. China needs raw materials for its industries and DR Congo does not have the money to pay to upgrade its infrastructure. (BBC, 14 April 2008)

Bartering can also be used by businesses that are seasonal in nature such as resort hotels. A bartered hotel room is more cost effective than an empty one. Bartering thus allows businesses to capitalize on unproductive assets and spare or unused capacity. With a large exchange, it is possible to barter pretty much anything.

Bartering is a win-win situation for the individuals and businesses.  Following are the benefits of bartering for individuals and businesses:

Benefits of bartering for individuals

• Save money
• Recycling
• Build relationships
• Spring cleaning

Benefits of bartering for Businesses

• Conserve cash.
• Generate new business.
• Turn excess and idle inventory into useful products and services.

There are several bartering websites which allow online transactions:

U-Exchange

Trashbank

CareToTrade

The Internet Barter Exchange

PeopleTradingServices.com

Freecycle

Let’s take a plunge to see how these websites work. Few websites allow Items to be exchanged for items or skills, however some of the websites allow transacting with cash as well.  Below table explains the mode along with some examples:

What Can be Swapped?

Example:

This is growing up at good pace. Infact the barter industry have 450,000 businesses worldwide turning over US$9 billion per annum (barternews.com, 9 July 2009). This has grown up over the past years of recession when there was cash crunch however Companies should focus on utilizing this new mode of commerce and drive innovative ways to do online business and reduce cost.

Can you suggest some innovative ways of bartering which can help various companies in different sectors? I term it as Barter e-Commerce or B-Commerce. What do you think?

http://www.infosysblogs.com/multi-channel-retailing/2010/06/next_generation_bartering.html

Source: Ormita | 4 Jun 2010 | 4:35 am UTC

PR Log (Press Release) – Jun 02, 2010 – NEW YORK, June 3, 2010 – BarterQuest (www.barterquest.com), a platform that supports the cashless exchange of goods, services and real estate, today announced that people can now follow BarterQuest on Twitter and become our fan on Facebook.

On Twitter, BarterQuest’s tag is #barterquest. You can be among the first to learn about items of special interest that have been newly listed on our site and are available to trade. You can join the growing community of BarterQuest followers and tweet your thoughts about the site or barter generally. And you can become a fan of BarterQuest on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/BarterQuest/44313703688. Share your trading experiences. Be up to date on what may be happening on the site, post your comments on our wall, and participate in an exchange of ideas.

“Barter is an inherently social activity,” stated Dr. Paul Bocheck, President BarterQuest. “To successfully trade you need to network, communicate, and have trust in your trading partner. BarterQuest is all about making trading easier by providing effective ways for you to find your trading partner, negotiate and complete your trade, and have greater confidence that you will get what you bargained for. Social media provides a natural extension of and compliment to the trading community formed on our site.  We hope that people will use Twitter to follow us and learn more about current trading opportunities. We also hope that people will become our fans on Facebook and share their thoughts; this can make others more successful traders and help BarterQuest to better support them.”

About BarterQuest

BarterQuest supports the cashless exchange of all types of goods, services, and real estate. BarterQuest provides a trading platform based on proprietary technology (patents filed) that instantly matches the haves and wants of users for two party and multi-party trades. Barter is facilitated by a user friendly Web design that is unique in its combination of features that support trading.  BarterQuest is headquartered in New York, NY and is owned and operated by JPM Global, Inc., a Delaware corporation. For more information, visit www.BarterQuest.com.

Except for historical information contained herein, this news release may contain forward looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties.

http://bit.ly/aiL6U2

Source: Ormita | 4 Jun 2010 | 4:47 pm UTC

The success of your WordPress business website depends on a lot of things, how abundant cartage is advancing to your website, how your website is designed, if it’s simple to navigate, simple to acquaintance you, if it has abundant agreeable and affluence of added things. However, the a lot of important affair to starting a acknowledged WordPress business website is to begin the above apparatus of your website on cardboard afore you alpha putting it calm on the web.

There are four above apparatus you allegation to begin on cardboard to accomplish it easier on yourself after on; the home page, acquaintance page, about me area and your monetization strategy.

We’ll allocution about the home page first.

Next to your monetization strategy, the homepage is apparently one of the a lot of important pages on your website. The homepage is the aboriginal affair that your admirers will see if they go to your website.

Make abiding that the adapt will abate abashing and accomplish it simple for your barter to acquisition what they’re searching for. You wish to break abroad from accepting too abundant traveling on at the aforementioned time because alone a committed chump is traveling to try and abstract what’s traveling on.

For example, accepting a lot of activated ad links, diminutive text, continued paragraphs and awe-inspiring fonts will either abstract your barter or annul them. Accomplish your homepage as simple as accessible and adviser your barter to area you ultimately wish them to go on your website.

The accent of a acceptable acquaintance page

The acquaintance page is area abounding new entrepreneurs absence the baiter on the WordPress business websites. If you’re just starting your website and business online you wish to accomplish abiding that you allure the acquaintance as abundant as possible.

What does that mean?

Make abiding that you acquire affluence of agency for your barter to get in acquaintance with you, even if that agency downloading new pieces of software.

Make abiding you acquire a annual like Skype which will acquiesce barter to alarm you from their computer chargeless if they acquire Skype as well. You can aswell burning bulletin with Skype, which allows added barter to ability you instantly. Skype aswell has a annual that will acquiesce you to accomplish calls from your computer to someone’s buzz and for you to acquire a buzz bulk through Skype.

An email abode is an accessible best to acquire on your acquaintance page but to accomplish your email complete added able put abutment at the beginning.

For example, if you buy a area name from GoDaddy alleged MyBusiness.com add an email annual with them, which is chargeless to do, and alarm it Abutment @ MyBusiness.com. That gives your email abode a able feel that will win credibility with your customers.

The ‘about me’ section

It doesn’t complete like this area is all that important but this is area your barter will get to apperceive you. Yield some time and put some anticipation into autograph this area or cutting it on video.

An important assignment to apprentice about starting a business website is that humans do business with humans they like. There are abounding scams on the internet and if you appearance just a little personality to your barter they’ll be fatigued to you and your products.

Another tips is to hotlink the about me area to your acquaintance page, which will just accomplish action added seamless for your customers.

The endure section of the addle is the monetization strategy

It’s amazing how abounding agency you can monetize a business website and some are beneath accessible than others.

If you acquire a artefact or annual you can acutely monetize your business website
by announcement those. If you wish to advertise added people’s being on your website you can aswell do that, it’s about alleged Affiliate Marketing.

If you do consulting of any affectionate you can run the absolute WorPpress business website yourself and use a affairs like Genbook to allegation your barter for their consultations.

One of the best agency in my assessment to monetize a website is through a associates website or a anchored associates website. A associates website is what it sounds like humans pay a assertive bulk anniversary ages to acquire and acquire admission to the agreeable you outline for them. A anchored associates website is accessible for a anchored bulk of time for anniversary member.

For archetype if you wish to do a six ages training on how to alternation your dog, you can set your website up to acquire payments for 6 months and that affiliate is finished, they don’t acquire to tie themselves down to a constant abiding arrangement with your website.

All of these apparatus are traveling to yield some time and possibly a lot of abatement on cardboard but if you acquire your adapt in duke afore you alpha piecing calm your website, I agreement it’s traveling to be a lot easier to do and in the continued run a lot faster to get up and running.

http://bit.ly/d3fH6o