Dear Dennis, I applaud your longstanding efforts on behalf of reason, peace, and monetary reform. But you must realize by now that reform is utterly impossible given the extreme centralization of monetary, financial, economic, and political power in the hands of global oligarchs. Their control of the machinery for creating, allocating, and moving money is their primary instrument for concentrating both power and wealth in their own hands, which enables them to wage wars and act in opposition to the popular will. There will never be peace in the world until they are deprived of their control over money, or more accurately, their control over the media for exchanging value, which is the fundamental function that money was created to serve. This seemingly impossible task can, and must, be achieved, not from the top of the dominant power hierarchy, but from the bottom upward by small- and medium-sized businesses as they exercise their power and right to create their own mechanisms for exchanging among themselves the value they create. Such mechanisms already exist, have long been used, and can be voluntarily applied much more widely without the need for permission from anyone. I once spoke with you about that during your 2004 Presidential campaign when I chauffeured you to the Tucson airport after a rally. But your faith in the political process evidently prevented you from seeing the decentralized approach as a real possibility. As the situation has developed since that time more people are coming to realize that it is the ONLY viable possibility.
God bless you and Elizabeth, and may we all continue in our faith that love and peace will ultimately prevail.
There is a bill pending in the Idaho legislature to make gold and silver legal tender. A recent article describes the bill and mentions that, “The passage of H177 would make Idaho the sixth state to recognize gold and silver as legal tender, as they always should have been doing.” The article also states that “Utah led the way, reestablishing constitutional money in 2011. Wyoming,Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana have since joined.” If six states can do it, why not every state?
Simply citing these examples should pique the interest of people everywhere to learn about our national money system and why the States are taking such actions. What is the point of declaring gold or silver to be legal tender? Isn’t the US dollar already legal tender? What’s wrong with that? It is questions such as these that have been the focus of my work for the past 45 years, questions that I have answered in great detail in my various books, articles, lectures and interviews, all of which have been posted on my website and on my various other channels[1]. The bottom line is this—our national system of money and banking, along with that of virtually every other country in the world, is deeply flawed and destructive[2]. But there is plenty that can be done about it—by we the people, by small- and medium-sized businesses[3], and by lower levels of government.
In this article I will discuss what the States can do to help liberate what I call the “credit commons” and restore “Constitutional” and honest money to various levels of our economy. The declaration by State governments of gold or silver as legal tender is important, not because metallic money will circulate widely, but because it establishes a proper measure of value and unit of account in which to denominate credit obligations which are the true media of exchange. Coins do not even need to be minted to serve that purpose, they only need to be defined, for example, as a specified weight of silver of some specified fineness. The definition that seems most appropriate to adopt is the original definition of the US Dollar that was established early in the history of the United States. I related that bit of history in the new, revised edition of my book, The End of Money and the Future of Civilization:
“To complete the task of defining the monetary unit for the United States in a way that would not disturb commerce, a committee was commissioned to survey the money stock and assay a representative sampling of Spanish dollar coins so that the American dollar would closely approximate those coins already in circulation. This was easily accomplished, and it was quickly settled that the United States dollar should be defined as a silver coin containing 371.25 grains of fine silver. Coins were subsequently minted according to that specification along with gold coins valued in dollars. As the country developed, various expedients were implemented to make money more abundant[4].”
Source: US Mint
Once such a standard gets established somewhere, it will be widely adopted elsewhere, and that may eventually lead to a more stable composite standard being defined and adopted[5].
Once a State defines a commodity like silver to be legal tender, it can then encourage municipal governments or private businesses enterprises within the state to issue, individually or collectively, their own credit voucher notes denominated in terms of said silver dollar units by spending them into circulation as partial or full payment to suppliers of material inputs to production, and to employees and other service providers who must be paid. Those vouchers can then circulate widely as money to settle the obligations that others in the economy have to one another. The state government could also accept said vouchers, in whole or in part, as payment for taxes, fees, and other obligations due to the state government, and the state government might even consider issuing its own modifiedTax anticipation warrants (TAWs) in the form of paper notes, ledger entries, or digital tokens denominated in terms of said silver dollar units.
People will accept these modified TAW and use them to pay one another because the warrants can be used to pay taxes and fees that are due to the issuing State government, or to pay private vendors of goods and services. When the government eventually accepts them back as payment for taxes and fees, the warrants are retired. In the interim period between their issuance and their retirement, the warrants can circulate among the population of the region as a means of payment that is independent of the federal Government, the Federal Reserve, and the banks that issue US dollars. As the TAW mature/expire, new series of TAW may be issued in amounts that are not excessive in relation to anticipated revenues.
As the people at large come to better understand and trust the validity and benefits of these payment media, they will increasingly use them in place of national fiat currencies in business dealings within the region, and in doing so will achieve a greater measure of local/regional self-reliance and control over their own affairs.
This is the latest chapter to be published of my new 2024 edition of The End of Money and the Future of Civilization. It continues the exposition begun in Chapter 13, elaborating upon sound principles of credit allocation and management, highlighting what did not work and why, and describing in detail what it takes to make an exchange alternative succeed. It answers crucial questions like:
Who Is Qualified to Issue Currency?
On What Basis Should Currency Be Issued?
How Much Currency May Be Issued?
How to Determine the Period of validity?
And considers strategies for successful launch and implementaion, with due regard for the broad situational context into which an alternative currency or credit clearing exchange may be introduced.
This is the latest chapter to be published of my new 2024 edition of The End of Money and the Future of Civilization. It provides a comprehensive overview of the alternative exchange movement over the past several decades and its present state, along with important case studies, lessons learned, and prescriptions for significant performance improvements.
Here is a list of section headings with a few brief excerpts:
A currency, to be effective, must be SPENT into circulation. — Thomas H. Greco, Jr
Two Currents of Alternative Exchange
The Tucson Experience
More Recent Experiments in Mutual Credit Clearing In order for a mutual credit clearing exchange to be scalable and successful over the long run,
The allocation of credit lines cannot be arbitrary but must be based primarily on the value of the goods and services that each participant is prepared to sell within the exchange circle, and,
The project must be anchored in the local business community, especially the small- and medium-sized enterprises that form the backbone of every local economy and are the providers of people’s everyday needs.
Local Currencies
A Better Currency Model A sound, credible, effective, and scalable currency does not need to be redeemable for conventional money, the issuer needs only to provide credible assurance that its currency can be readily redeemed for some goods or services that are in general demand. Private or community currencies that are SPENT into circulation by trusted issuers, like utility companies, goods producers, or municipal governments, have much greater potential for promoting local community prosperity, resilience, and self-determination because they allow a community to monetize the value that is created and sold by local businesses and professionals. The internal “trade credits” provided to members of mutual credit clearing associations, like those being created by the scores of commercial “barter” exchanges that operate around the world, do the same. Such home-grown sources of liquidity enable a community to greatly reduce its dependence upon official money and bank borrowing, and to automatically favor local production and local sourcing of goods and services, thus reducing dependence upon imports and global corporate providers.
This is the latest chapter to be published of my new 2024 edition of The End of Money and the Future of Civilization. It summarizes the dimensions of the money problem and the pathways toward solving it as we described them in the previous chapters, and elaborates upon the various functions of money and finance and how they can be handled in ways that are honest, fair, and empowering.
Here is a brief excerpt:
The political money system is the keystone in the arch of power. —Thomas H. Greco, Jr.
Having laid the necessary foundation in the first eleven chapters, we can now proceed to summarize the requirements for solving the money problem. We have shown how money has been politicized and how the control over its creation and allocation has become, what I call, “the keystone in the arch of power,” a power which is at once financial, economic, political, and social. Those who control money are able to control everything else. The inherent dysfunctions of the present monetary regime derive mainly from the following structural elements:
The monopolization of credit by the banking cartel in collusion with national governments
The creation of money by banks as interest-bearing “loans”
Legal tender status for official debt-money
The elimination of any operational concrete measure of value and unit of account
We have seen how that system:
Enables national governments to finance endless wars and other projects that are wasteful, destructive, and contrary both to the wishes of the citizenry and to the common welfare
Enables banks to reap inordinate profits while deciding to whom and for what purpose the money shall be distributed among “borrowers”
Gives a small, elite “super-class” the non-bona-fide money to acquire an ever-increasing proportion of the world’s real wealth and the ability to control political and economic affairs worldwide
Forces the exponential growth of debt, and destructive competition for an always-insufficient supply of money for all debts to be repaid
Emerging Exchange Alternatives
The most graceful and promising approach to empowering ourselves and our communities is through voluntary, entrepreneurial activities that can liberate the exchange process and reclaim “the credit commons.” So long as people have the freedom of association and the right to contract it will be difficult if not impossible for governments to prevent the creation of exchange media and mechanisms by private initiative. We can thereby, step-by-step, reduce our dependence upon bank borrowing and political currencies, taking control of our own credit and organizing independent means for allocating it directly to those individuals and businesses that we trust and wish to support. Riegel reminds us that, “there is no constitutional or statutory barrier to the inauguration of a private enterprise, non-debt, non-interest, mutual money system.” Only popular control of credit and competition in currencies can transcend the money problem. As Ulrich von Beckerath has observed, “Extension of exchange transactions without State money is in reality the beginning of a new system of settling accounts, indeed the beginning of a new economic order.” A new economic order is precisely what is needed at this point in history.
This is the latest chapter to be published of my new 2024 edition of The End of Money and the Future of Civilization. It continues the story begun in the previous chapter of how money has evolved and changed its character over time.
Here is a brief excerpt:
Money has become merely an accounting system, a way of “keeping score” in the economic “game” of give and take. —Thomas H. Greco, Jr.
Let us begin by summarizing the evolution of the various kinds of money that have been used to mediate reciprocal exchange:
The circulation of gold and silver coins gave way to paper banknotes that were redeemable for gold or silver coins, which made the notes essentially warehouse receipts for gold on deposit.
Then, banks began to lend bank notes into circulation based on the pledge of collateral assets (some valuable and others not) other than gold, some of which included government obligations (bonds, notes, etc.).
But ALL notes were redeemable in gold. This became known as the “fractional reserve banking” system.
Bank account balances (checkable bank “deposits”) increasingly took the place of paper bank notes, and bank customers began to write checks against their deposits instead of using bank notes to make payments.
As banks created ever greater amounts of non-bona-fide money based on national government debts and other illegitimate collateral assets, the fiction of gold-backing and redeemability could no longer be supported, and governments reneged on their promise to redeem their currency for gold. This broke the final link between political fiat money and the real economy of valuable goods and services.
But, despite that, the emergence of credit clearing to offset credit obligation against credit claims was a major leap forward in facilitating the reciprocal exchange of value.
For now, you can read or listen to the entire chapter at Future Brightly:
It will also be published soon here, and on my own Substack channel. Further chapters will continue to be posted as they are completed. Watch for Chapter 11 to be posted soon.
As always, your comments and suggestions are welcomed, Thomas
To satisfy my curiosity about AI, and ChatGPT in particular, I’ve been posing certain questions to it and been pleasantly surprised by the results. ChatGPT uses information that was publicly available online up to September 2021, so the responses that it generates will not include recent changes.
Here is one of my requests which, while much shorter, pretty well summarizes what I myself have written about the matter. I present it here for your information and your comments.
THG: Summarize the unique features of the work of Thomas H. Greco, Jr. on money and economics.
ChatGPT:
5/5 Thomas H. Greco, Jr. is known for his groundbreaking work on money and economics, focusing on alternative monetary systems and local economies. Some of the unique features of his work include:
Decentralized Monetary Systems: Greco advocates for the development of decentralized and community-based monetary systems that empower individuals and local communities to create their own means of exchange. He emphasizes the importance of currencies that are not controlled by centralized authorities like governments or banks.
Complementary Currencies: Greco promotes the idea of complementary currencies, which are designed to work alongside national currencies to facilitate local transactions and trade. These currencies are often tailored to specific communities or regions and can help stimulate local economies.
Democratization of Money Creation: He challenges the conventional model of money creation by banks and governments. Greco believes in the democratization of money issuance, allowing communities to create their own money based on real value and resources.
Mutual Credit Systems: Greco’s work includes the concept of mutual credit systems, where participants can extend credit to one another within a network. This can foster cooperation and exchange without the need for traditional banking intermediaries.
Localized Economies: He emphasizes the importance of localized economies that prioritize community resilience and sustainability. Greco’s work encourages communities to rely more on local production and resources to reduce dependency on distant supply chains.
Interest-Free Economics: Greco criticizes the conventional practice of charging interest on loans and believes that interest-free systems could lead to more equitable distribution of wealth and resources.
Advocacy for Change: Through his writings and lectures, Greco advocates for individuals, communities, and governments to explore and implement alternative economic and monetary systems. He believes that a shift away from the current monetary paradigm could lead to more just and sustainable economies.
In summary, Thomas H. Greco, Jr.’s work revolves around reimagining money and economics by proposing alternative monetary systems, promoting decentralized currencies, advocating for interest-free economies, and encouraging the development of localized, community-based economic structures. His ideas challenge conventional economic thinking and aim to create more resilient, equitable, and sustainable societies.
# # #
Update: Monday, August 28, 2023 This iteration is a bit more complete:
Thomas H. Greco, Jr. is known for his unique contributions to the fields of money and economics, particularly in the realm of alternative currencies and monetary systems. Some of the key features of his work include:
Local and Complementary Currencies: Greco emphasizes the importance of local and complementary currencies as tools for promoting economic resilience and community development. He advocates for the creation of currencies that are tailored to specific communities or regions, helping to stimulate local economic activity and reduce dependence on centralized national currencies.
Decentralization of Money Creation: A central theme in Greco’s work is the decentralization of money creation. He believes that allowing communities to create their own currencies empowers them to meet their specific needs, bypassing the traditional centralized banking system and enabling greater control over their economic destiny.
Credit Clearing Systems: Greco explores the concept of credit clearing systems, which facilitate transactions without the need for traditional currency. These systems work by enabling participants to exchange goods and services directly based on mutual credit agreements, reducing the reliance on scarce official currency.
Integral Theory and Economics: Greco integrates principles of integral theory into his economic thinking, considering not only economic factors but also social, ecological, and cultural dimensions. He emphasizes the need for a holistic approach to economics that takes into account the interconnectedness of various aspects of human life.
Monetary Reform Advocacy: Greco is an advocate for monetary reform, particularly in response to issues such as inflation, financial instability, and wealth inequality. He proposes alternative monetary systems that prioritize stability, fairness, and sustainability.
Educational Efforts: Beyond his academic work, Greco is involved in educational efforts to raise awareness about alternative currencies and monetary systems. He has authored books and conducted workshops to help individuals and communities better understand and implement these concepts.
Focus on Empowerment: One of the overarching themes of Greco’s work is empowering individuals and communities to have a greater say in their economic affairs. He believes that by rethinking the way money is created and circulated, people can gain more control over their economic lives and reduce their vulnerability to systemic financial crises.
Sustainability and Resilience: Greco’s work aligns with the principles of sustainability and resilience. By promoting local economies and alternative currencies, he aims to create systems that are more environmentally friendly and less susceptible to the boom-and-bust cycles of traditional monetary systems.
In summary, Thomas H. Greco, Jr.’s work on money and economics revolves around the development of local and complementary currencies, decentralization of money creation, credit clearing systems, integral theory integration, monetary reform advocacy, educational initiatives, empowerment, and a focus on sustainability and resilience. His ideas challenge conventional economic thinking and offer potential solutions for creating more equitable and community-driven economic systems.
Over the past few weeks I’ve begun the process of cataloging the books, pamphlets and other print materials in my unique and rather sizeable collection. The process has been greatly facilitated by using an app named CLZ Books which is able to find citations from the online database by reading the bar codes that are usually printed on the back cover or dust jacket of a book, or by manually entering the ISBN, or title, or author.
Many of the works in my collection are old enough to lack bar codes and many lack even ISBN numbers, but these can often be found in the database by manually entering the title or author. So far I’ve managed to catalog almost 200 titles. The remaining items are pamphlets and photocopies which will require more intensive effort.
In going through this process, I’m selecting a few works to add to the digital Library on my website Beyondmoney.net. I first do a search to see if digital versions already exist somewhere on the Web. If they do, I’ll provide a link, or download them to my computer and place them on my own website. If no digital version is found, I may choose to transcribe the work, either in whole or in part, by speaking it into a voice recognition app that is able to convert it to text. An example of the former is Inflation is Coming and What to Do About It, by Ralph Borsodi, one of the people who have inspired my work. It was written in 1945, but the copy I have in my library is the 1948 version which is essentially the same. I did retrieve a PDF file of the book from the website of Cooperative Individualism, and you can read it here.
The financial and economic collapse did not happen as soon as Borsodi thought it might, nor did it quite follow the mechanism that he expected. He seems not to have anticipated the globalization of the economy, the shift of the US from the world’s greatest creditor nation to its greatest debtor, or the extent to which the US dollar would become the global reserve currency, and the enormous appetite of other countries for holding and accumulating ever greater pools of dollars. Neither did he foresee the long succession of stop-gap measures that have been rolled out by the political and monetary authorities over the subsequent decades to prop up the flawed system, such as corporate and bank bail-outs, corporate consolidations, quantitative easing, and bail-ins, and the ever greater centralization of financial, economic and political control. But Borsodi was not wrong. We can now see looming on the horizon either (1) the collapse the dollar and the global financial system, which will take the economy with it, or (2) the imposition of an ever more totalitarian government that will micro-manage every aspect of society and individual behavior.
The first of these will probably be inadvertent and unanticipated. The second has long been planned, is in the works, and is rapidly unfolding. The global power elite seem to believe that they can engineer a controlled demolition of the existing financial mechanisms and replace it with a new system that will further increase their power and wealth. Recent developments are signaling the elimination of cash money, the introduction of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), as well as onerous demands on people in the name of public health, climate change, and other “emergencies.” We should expect to see the United States and other countries to roll out their own versions of China’s social credit system which will determine what each individual will be allowed or not allowed to do, along with some system of positive personal identification (PPI), most likely using a mandatory chip implant.
My physical book library also contains a rare copy of, A Study of the Money Question, by Hugo Bilgram. This slim volume,
published in 1894, provides some valuable insights into the essential nature of money, the necessary functions of an effective system of exchange, a critique of the banking system as it existed at the time, and Bilgram’s description of a “rational money system.” I did not expect to find it on the web so I spent a considerable amount of time transcribing it and adding my commentary, which you can read here. A subsequent search did locate a PDF file of the book on Internet Archive, which I have downloaded and added to my online Library.
I believe that both of these will be of value to serious students, researchers and innovators working in the field of money, banking, and exchange.
One of my most popular posts has been, There once was a river …an allegorical tale of money and credit, in which I’ve tried to show how we have all become slaves to money and those who control money. Using water in this little fable to represent money, I’ve also tried to show that we the people can free ourselves by thinking outside the box to overcome our fixation on the sort of money that has been provided for us and over which we have lost all control.
Every metaphor of course is limited and what I am hoping that readers/listeners will come to understand is that there are alternatives to conventional money that we can use to reduce, and eventually eliminate our dependence upon conventional political money. It is credit that is the foundation of an honest system of exchange and we have the power to give credit to each other in accordance with our own values and objectives, outside of conventional banks and without charging interest.
You can access the story on my website (audio with transcript) or on YouTube (audio). Or listen here.
I was the featured guest on Ellen Brown’s podcast of December 30, 2021. I consider this to be one of my best interviews in which I covered a wide range of the most important questions related to rebuilding our system of money and finance. My interview is comprised of the first 38 minutes of the program.
This audio together with a transcript can also be found here.
The first edition of my book, The End of Money and the Future of Civilization, was published by Chelsea Green Publishing in 2009. While it remains as relevant today as it was when first published the printed book has been out of print for several years. But, having had the rights reverted to me by my publisher, I am making the entire book available for free in PDF format. You can read it or download it HERE. If you would like a hard copy of the first edition used copies can still be found on Amazon.com, Abe books, Thrift books and elsewhere.
Better still, you can avail yourself of the new revised and expanded 2024 edition which I have been working on for almost two years and is almost complete. Eighteen chapters have already been posted and can be freely read or download HERE.
My previous books, as published, may be freely accessed in digital format by clicking the title below.
Redirecting our savings is an essential complement to creating independent local liquidity through private community currencies and credit clearing networks. If you want to use your savings in ways that align with your values, Community Investing 101 is a great … Continue reading →
Robert Pape, Professor of political scientist at the University of Chicago, understands international conflicts better than anyone I’ve yet encountered. In his recent post to his Substack, Why the Ceasefire Keeps Failing, he clearly describes that, in the present conflict … Continue reading →
The video included below is deficient in several respects and its short duration limits both the scope and debth of its coverage in explaining the main concepts and proposals that form the substance of my most important work. Despite that, … Continue reading →
Dear Dennis, I applaud your longstanding efforts on behalf of reason, peace, and monetary reform. But you must realize by now that reform is utterly impossible given the extreme centralization of monetary, financial, economic, and political power in the hands … Continue reading →
This video report from Alex Krainer harmonizes with what I’ve been arguing for mamy years. The fragility and faults of the centralized global debt-money regime, combined with the imperial overreach of the US and western allies are bringing the matter … Continue reading →
I recently viewed the video. Yanis Varoufakis: Iran War Collapses U.S. Neoliberal Economy, an interview by Glenn Diesen. Varoufakis does a very good job of exposing the fragility of the neoliberal economic model and its inability to withstand a major … Continue reading →
By Thomas H. Greco Jr. Professor Carroll Quigley was a historian and theorist who was renowned as a professor at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, where he taught many famous and influential people including Nancy Pelosi and … Continue reading →
Virtually everyone senses that there is something drastically wrong with the state of our world. Many rail against the governments, institutions, and people that they hold responsible for the various aspects they recognize as unfair, unsustainable, destructive, and utterly inhuman. … Continue reading →
In 2013 I wrote an article that was published in the online academic journal, Internet Journal of Community Currency Research (IJCCR). That article, Taking Moneyless Exchange to Scale: Measuring and Maintaining the Health of a Credit Clearing System, was intended … Continue reading →
Upon the recent completion and publication of my new Chapter 20—Exchange, Finance, and the Store of Value, for the revised edition of my book, The End of Money and the Future of Civilization, I loaded it into NotebookLM and asked … Continue reading →
