Complementary currency conference shaping up to be a landmark event

Posted on May 3, 2013 | 2 comments

The Conference on Complementary Currency Systems that will be held 19-23 June in The Hague, Netherlands, is shaping up to be a significant landmark in the development of currencies and exchange processes. It will bring together practitioners and theoreticians from all over the world. The following message that came in recently from Edgar Kampers, one of the organizers, highlights the program for just one of the five days. Anyone involved in, or having a serious interest in this field, will probably want to be there.

Are you eager to learn about the future of currencies? Or are you keener to know how complementary currencies can support the local economy and build communities? Are you intrigued by digital currencies like Bitcoin, Freicoin and Ripple?

Then join the 2nd International Conference on Complementary Currency Systems on Friday 21st of June. It will bring a fresh perspective on local currencies like the Brixton Pound, Bristol Pound, Chiemgauer, Berkshares and the Calgary Dollars! It will explore several amazing time banks and time credits systems like Spice, Fureai Kippu and De Makkie!

The conference will be held in The Hague, The Netherlands and will bring together world-leading experts including Bernard Lietaer, Thomas Greco, Jem Bendell, Bart Jan Krouwel, Shann Turnbull and Tony Greenham.
Step into the world of complementary currencies, join the conference!

Join today at http://www.iss.nl/forms/ccs_conference_governement/
Or learn more at qoin.org/conference_english/
Twitter @CcsConference13, #CCSconf13
Prezi http://bit.ly/12qzePu

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Posted in Developing Alternatives, Emerging paradigm, My activities

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Spring Newsletter–Crowdfunding our work

Posted on May 1, 2013 | 1 comment

2013 – Spring  Newsletter

In this issue:

Crowdfunding my 2013 Summer tour

Articles and Projects

  • New chapter with Prof. Jem Bendell is now published and online.
  • My new article in IJCCR.

Recent events & Presentations

  • Money & Life.
  • DEBTx prsentation

Crowdfunding my 2013 Summer tour

I’m pleased to announce that I’ve been invited to the EU and UK for a multi-stop tour on the power of currency for people and communities. My itinerary is still evolving but so far I am slated for presentations, workshops and consultations in the Netherlands, Sweden, England, and Greece. I will be hosted for a few days by STRO (Social Trade Organization, then attend the 2nd International Conference on Complementary Currency Systems in the Hague, where I will make a presentation titled Reinventing Money: How Complementary Currencies and Mutual Credit Clearing Can Create a Sustainable, Regenerative Economy, and sit on two panels: The Future of Currencies, and another which will consider the legal and regulatory aspects of complementary currencies.

As you’ve probably noticed, travel is becoming increasingly expensive. The CCS organizers will be providing a travel allowance, but it will not be enough to cover even my trans-Atlantic flight, much less living expenses and travel to other stops on my tour. That is why I have launched a Crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo to help cover the costs of this tour. I need $4,000 to make it to all the places on the tour and cover the costs of food and lodging. I hope you’ll help me make that goal by going here: http://igg.me/at/tomstour/x/31801 and chipping in whatever you can. Please also help me get the word out and share the link with your networks! Thank you!

This is an investment in a sustainable future and, as Swami Beyondananda says:  “It’s time to shift our karma out of reverse and get our assets in gear.”

As a quick reminder, on my previous tour last October I gave a total of 15 presentations and workshops to various groups in three different countries. If you’d like a review, you can read my brief report of that tour on this site, here.  Your help with this Indiegogo campaign will make all the difference in building on that success and extending this good work to other communities in need! Here’s that link again: http://igg.me/at/tomstour/x/31801. Thanks in advance for your support in getting me to all these exciting engagements and spreading the word about the campaign!

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Articles and Projects

Following our participation last October in the International Sustainability Summit at the European Sustainability Academy in Crete, Prof. Jem Bendell and I decided to collaborate on certain projects. One of these was to co-author a chapter for a new book, The Necessary Transition: The Journey towards the Sustainable Enterprise Economy, edited by Malcolm McIntosh. Our chapter titled, Currencies of transition: Transforming money to unleash sustainability, is now online and can be downloaded here. This chapter elaborates on topics I covered in the anthology, The Wealth of the Commons, which I announced previously. You can find that chapter on this site, here.

My newest article, Taking Moneyless Exchange to Scale: Measuring and Maintaining the Health of a Credit Clearing System, has just been published in the International Journal of Community Currency Research (IJCCR). Go here to download it. This article provides some very important guidance for operators and organizers of credit clearing systems like LETS and commercial trade exchanges. Please take the time to give it your attention.

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Recent events & Presentations

In March, Katie Teague’s documentary film, Money & Life, in which I make an appearance, premiered in Tucson at the historic Fox Theater. That event also included short presentations by myself and Bernard Lietaer (with Jacqui Dunne). The mayor of Tucson, Jonathan Rothschild, was on hand to introduce us.

In April, I gave a presentation at the DEBTx conference that was held at the University of Michigan Law School. My presentation titled, Debt, Interest, and the Growth Imperative, was delivered remotely from Tucson via Skype, which worked very well. I’m told that the presentations were recorded and will soon be posted to the web, but I don’t yet have the link. It may appear at http://www.law.umich.edu/multimedia/Pages/default.aspx.

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Finally, I’d like to remind you that if you sign up to follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you’ll be notified every time I add a post to this site (which isn’t that often, so you won’t be overwhelmed). And please check out our campaign on Indiegogo. Your support will be greatly appreciated and all donations are tax-deductible through NEST, Inc.

Wishing you a pleasant Springtime,

Thomas

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Posted in My activities, Prescriptions

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Do Banks Create Money out of Nothing?

Posted on April 22, 2013 | 19 comments

One of my correspondents recently referred me to an article and asked for my opinion about it. The article is Creating Money out of Nothing: The History of an Idea, by Mike King, dated April 2012 .

I read the abstract, the conclusions, and part of the body text, but could not bring myself to make a detailed read. “The history of an idea” is not relevant to my interests nor to the debt crisis that plagues civilization. Verbose and tedious, it seems to be an academic exercise that I doubt  will be of interest even to historians.

On the positive side, it did prompt me to write a few words of clarification on the question, words that I think are both pertinent and helpful to those who truly wish to understand the nature of money and the role of banks in today’s world.

The accusation that banks create money out of nothing has, according to King, been made by many famous economists, including Schumpeter, von Mises, and Keynes. I too must admit to having once or twice used that statement as a sort of shorthand criticism of the global money and banking system.

It is surely true that saying that banks make “money out of nothing” is an exaggeration that can be misleading to the uninitiated.

Bank actually create money out of something. The question is, what is that something, and what is wrong with it?

The short answer is that banks create money on the basis of the promises of their borrowers to repay.

Mr. King would have us believe that banks simply take in money from savers and lend it out to borrowers. That is clearly wrong. Even the Federal Reserve, in its own publications, says that,

The actual process of money creation takes place primarily in banks.(1) As noted earlier, checkable liabilities of banks are money. These liabilities are customers’ accounts. They increase when customers deposit currency and checks and when the proceeds of loans made by the banks are credited to borrowers’ accounts.

In the absence of legal reserve requirements, banks can build up deposits by increasing loans and investments so long as they keep enough currency on hand to redeem whatever amounts the holders of deposits want to convert into currency. This unique attribute of the banking business was discovered many centuries ago.–Modern Money Mechanics

As I’ve pointed out in all of my books, banks serve two primary functions. They act as both depositories, reallocating funds from savers to borrowers, and banks of issue that monetize the promises of their borrowers. I’ve explained that in detail in Chapter 1 of my book, Money: Understanding and Creating Alternatives to Legal Tender, and in Chapter 9 of my latest book, The End of Money and the Future of Civilization.

But not all promises provide a proper basis for creating money. As Edward Popp, describes it, banks create both bona-fide and non-bona-fide money. (See Money, Bona Fide or Non-Bona Fide at http://www.reinventingmoney.com/documents/bonafidePopp.pdf).

The vast majority of the non-bona-fide money that banks create, is created on the basis of loans made to national governments (when banks buy government bonds). Further large amounts of non-bona-fide money are created when banks make loans to finance purchases of consumer goods and real estate (see my books for details). This is a violation of the principle that money should be created on the basis of goods and services on the market or soon to arrive there, which includes promises of established producers who are ready, willing and able to sell for money the things they ordinarily offer.

The bottom line remains: the present global, interest-based, debt-money system, is dysfunctional and destructive.

The creation of money on the basis of interest-bearing loans is the cause of the growth imperative, and the creation of non-bona-fide money is the cause of inflation.

If we are to achieve a sustainable society and assure the survival of civilization, we must transcend the present money and banking paradigm and reinvent the exchange process.  – t.h.g.

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Posted in Banking, Basic Concepts, Finance and Economics, Inflation, The Debt Imperative, The Political Money System

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Developing a framework for an equitable, harmonious and sustainable global society

Posted on April 15, 2013 | 5 comments

The current global mega-crisis is forcing us to confront the flaws and inconsistencies inherent in the present dominant structures of economics, money, and finance. As a result, we have before us a great opportunity to open up a conversation that admits to consideration ideas and proposals that may have heretofore be rejected out of hand as radical, impractical, or utopian, ideas like those put forth by Mahatma Gandhi three quarters of a century ago.

My good friend and scholar, Rajni Bakshi, has recently articulated that possibility and those ideas in her article, Civilizational Gandhi. You can download the full article here. I also recommend her article, Replacing Keynes With Gandhi.

Ms. Bakshi is the Gandhi Peace Fellow at Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations based in Mumbai, India.

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Posted in Basic Concepts, Developing Alternatives, Economics, Finance and Economics, Global Economy

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How to protect your “nest egg” while making your communty more resilient

Posted on April 10, 2013 | Leave a comment

This podcast featuring Michael Shuman, Jenny Kassan, and Elizabeth Ü, is a “must watch.” It clearly explains the options available to savers, investors, and entrepreneurs.

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Posted in Developing Alternatives, Emerging paradigm, Finance and Economics

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Bitcoin vs government, what are the stakes?

Posted on April 9, 2013 | 2 comments

Bitcoin is analogous to gold  in that it is hard to produce and acquire, its supply is limited, it can be exchanged anonymously, and it’s path cannot easily be traced. That has some good socio-political  implications and some bad ones. Here is an article that sketches a fairly clear picture of some of that. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-05/bitcoin-really-is-an-existential-threat-to-the-modern-liberal-state.html

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Posted in Developing Alternatives, Government

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Reorganizing business: from serving stockholders to serving people

Posted on March 24, 2013 | Leave a comment

Part of the socio-economic transformation that needs to occur lies in shifting business motivation from profits for a few, to benefiting the common good. Cooperatives are not the full answer, but may have a useful role to play. A recent article, Six Ways to Fuel the Cooperative Takeover, provides some useful ideas in that direction.

Here is a summary of the Six Ways:

1. Find Money

2. Convert to a Co-op

3. Hook Up With Big Partners

4. Be Co-op Curious

5. Shop Co-op

6. Make Co-op Friendly Laws

The details can be read here.

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Posted in Business, Finance and Economics

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Can governments and banks be trusted with the money power?

Posted on March 23, 2013 | 1 comment

As governments around the world struggle to manage their soaring debt burdens, the wisdom of E. C. Riegel rings ever more true. The masters of the political debt-money regime are pressuring Cyprus to confiscate part of the savings of their citizens, and Greece and other countries to impose budgetary cuts that burden the poor and middle class. Argentina wants to grab their people’s savings by nationalizing their pension funds. All the while, the purchasing power of national currencies shrinks as governments inflate them to enable deficit spending.

Riegel’s call for monetary freedom must no longer be ignored. –t.h.g.   

LET FREEDOM RING THE CASH REGISTER

[by E. C. Riegel, written circa 1940s]

Old Liberty Bell rang out the political freedom that we cherish. But unless we learn how to make freedom ring the cash register, bureaucracy will ring down the curtain on our liberties.

What is the strange power that makes the government at Washington grow stronger and our state and local governments grow weaker while the people suffer the torment of war and the travail of insecurity and the shadow of dictatorship falls across the land? It is the same power that oppresses the people of all the world — the political money power.

The political money power is the power of national governments to buy the people’s sweat and blood with scraps of paper – paper that falls like a blotter upon our production and our freedom. Each day our

wealth diminishes and more of our liberties vanish. Inflation that threatens to bring chaos is just around the corner. As our sons bleed and our mothers weep, the same grinding power throws its pall over other lands.  Yet our chains are paper – paper money that, through our ignorance, binds us to the treadmill of our own destruction.

We can be masters of our destiny; we are all powerful, if we but realize it. In each of us resides the power to assure liberty, prosperity, security and peace. In each of us lies the money power, which, when springing from us, is democratic and virtuous; when springing from government is authoritarian and vicious. As we liberate our inherent money power we curb the political money power, for the more we use our self-created money, the less we need political money. Thus we defeat dictatorship. Thus we reconstruct the shattered world on a free democratic basis. Thus we save civilization.

Parchment freedoms are but taunts and mockeries without money freedom. A people dependent upon their government for money is a subject people regardless of the form of their government. No people can declare their independence and govern their government unless they assert their money freedom. A government that is not dependent upon its people for money supply is a tyranny regardless of its professions. Government must be made to beg the people for money; the people cannot be sovereign while petitioning government for money. The citizen must command both government and business through his money power. Political democracy is a delusion without economic democracy and economic democracy can function only through the power to issue money – the power to ring the cash register – the power to support and the power to withhold support. To prevent political dictatorship the citizen must himself be a dictator. To prevent centralization of power, power must be reserved by the people. Money power is sovereignty; without it democracy is impossible.

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From Money Freedom, organ of The Private Enterprise Money Movement.

More monetary wisdom from E. C. Riegel, including his book, Private Enterprise Money, can be found at http://www.newapproachtofreedom.info/, and via my website https://beyondmoney.net/.

— Thomas H. Greco, Jr.

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Posted in The Political Money System, The state of democracy

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You are the target

Posted on March 15, 2013 | 4 comments

The graphics below capture the essential nature of western civilization today–everything is for sale, the main source of revenue for businesses and governments is advertising, everyone is trying to colonize your mind.

Corporations say, “buy, buy, buy.”
Religious organizations say, “believe, believe, believe.”
Governments say, “obey, obey, obey.”

— t.h.g.

AdBuster$5Bill

ForeheadAd1

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Posted in Geo-politics, The Political Money System, The state of democracy

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Hugo Chavez, demon or saint?

Posted on March 14, 2013 | 4 comments

Greg Palast is a well-respected investigative journalist, one of the few media people who for me retains some credibility. In his recent article, Hugo Chavez and the Global Poverty Conspiracy, he tells the story of why he was so reviled by the U. S. and why an attempt was made to assassinate him. If you want to understand current geopolitics, you must read this article.

 

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Posted in Geo-politics

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