Economy Discussions - Transition Derry2024-03-28T21:57:28Zhttps://transitionderry.ning.com/group/economy/forum?feed=yes&xn_auth=noJames Robertson Newsletter No.27 Nov 09tag:transitionderry.ning.com,2009-11-11:2613445:Topic:40572009-11-11T18:38:06.000Zmarian farrellhttps://transitionderry.ning.com/profile/marianfarrell
1. REFLECTIONS ON THE PAST WEEK<br />
Not a good start. A leading article on "Back to the Future" in The Times(London), Monday 2nd November states that "Capitalismis the most efficientway of creatingwealthand also of spreading it. ... Above all, an efficient economyrequiresfaith in the banking system".<br />
The writer clearly hadn't realised that such statements say little more than "Hurrah for business as usual" or "We must have change", unless you define what you mean by abstractions like…
1. REFLECTIONS ON THE PAST WEEK<br />
Not a good start. A leading article on "Back to the Future" in The Times(London), Monday 2nd November states that "Capitalismis the most efficientway of creatingwealthand also of spreading it. ... Above all, an efficient economyrequiresfaith in the banking system".<br />
The writer clearly hadn't realised that such statements say little more than "Hurrah for business as usual" or "We must have change", unless you define what you mean by abstractions like "capitalism"(and "socialism"), "efficiency"and "creating wealth"- what theirpractical implicationsare for the real world of today.<br />
For example, how did that statement connect with the next day's government announcement of a new shake-up for the UK banking system? Did it suggest we should have faith that "an efficient economy" would be restored byfeather-bedding the restructured banks with a further subsidyof £40 billion taxpayers' money?<br />
Would our faith in the banking system then be further enhanced by the announcement three days laterthat, having already bought up £175 billion worth of assets - mostly government debt - to help the banks, the Bank of England had decided to expand "quantitative easing" by another £25 billion?<br />
Does the The Times'statement have any relevance to Lord (Adair) Turner's recent suggestion, as head of the FSA (Financial Services Authority), that the British private financial sector has become "too swollen" for the good of the economy, and that some parts of it make no useful economic or social contribution at all? - see <a href="http://www.jamesrobertson.com/news-sept09.htm">www.jamesrobertson.com/news-sept09.htm</a>.<br />
Gordon Brown enthusiastically congratulated the Cityof London in his Mansion House speech of 21st June 2006, for its financial and business services having achieved a larger role in the British economy than financial services in any other major country!- see <a href="http://www.jamesrobertson.com/news-jul06.htm">www.jamesrobertson.com/news-jul06.htm</a>. How do we reconcile Adair Turner's "too swollen" charge with that?<br />
If Adair Turner or Gordon Brown or any other government financial authority, or any political party - or indeed any established NGO or academic body - seriously wanted to make a useful contribution to public understanding of our money system and to public policy for it, wouldn't they commission an independent analysis of the costs as well as the benefits for our society and economy from our private financial sector in the past ten years? Why has none of them done so?<br />
Is it perhaps because they share Adair Turner's view that it is dangerous to let politicians and the public understand how the money system works - that, for example, "the present convention of non-transparent money creation is based on well founded fearsthat governments will abuse direct control of money printing presses" (see his article Europe's Best Defence Against Deflation, Financial Times, 4 November 2002. For more, see p.34 of my and John Bunzl's book Monetary Reform - Making it Happen).<br />
Have the authorities in our supposedly democratic country been deliberately concealingfrom citizens and their representatives how the money system they manage for us now works? Yes, of course they have.<br />
In the last few weeks, this lunatic saga has continued to unravel. It still has further to go and more to reveal. Developed by us oh-so-clever humans and used by no other species, the idiotic way we allow our money system to be managedwould be a joke - if it didn't cause suffering to billions of people and other creatures around the world.<br />
Around the world now, thousands of politicians, officials, experts, NGOs, commentators and journalists from many countries are preparing for the Copenhagen global climate conference in December. Already they accept that it won't produce a binding treaty, only prepare the ground for the possibility of one at a later date.<br />
More important in the long run, none of them seem to understand the link between the global environmental threat and global finance. It is that the world's money system now imposes a perverse calculus of values on countries, places and people everywhere.<br />
This bothencouragesthe better-off minority to try to preserve and expand their privileged economic and social positions, and compelsthe poorer majority to try to survive and maintain themselves and their families, in ways that are bound to overwhelm the planet's resources, including its capacity to absorb carbon and other climate-changing emissions. Without the worldwide money system's radical reform, any eventual climate treaty is bound to fail.<br />
The week ended on a rather better note. On Saturday 7 November the dear old Times, which steadfastly refuses to publish letters I send them on these matters, carried a centre-page "Opinion" article by Janice Turner, one of their regular writers: "Let's target our ire on the things that matter".<br />
It was one thing, she said, to pursue the "gratifyingly easy scalps" of errant Members of Parliament who had got taxpayers to refund their expenses on things like duck houses and dog food. But what about the really serious damagethat the bankershad inflicted on almost everyone but themselves?<br />
"It was too complicated, too hard on the old attention span, to bring to account the slippery charlatans who stole our billions. Perhaps the lack of sustained rage against the City is down to a deliberate obfuscation of the facts. 'You little people' say the bankers, 'can't comprehend the algorithms of international finance. Just remember one thing: how critical it is we're paid egregious sums even when we've failed'."<br />
Spot on. In other words, Bankers rule, OK?<br />
<br />
2. THE FINANCIAL SECTOR HARMS THE REAL ECONOMY<br />
In "How the Servant Became a Predator: Finance's Five Fatal Flaws" William K. Black'smessage is that "the financial sector is a tool to help those that make real tools, not an end in itself. But five fatal flawsin the financial sector's current structure have created a monsterthat drains the real economy, promotes fraud and corruption, threatens democracy, and causes recurrent, intensifying crises".<br />
Black sees the first fatal flaw as follows. "Even when not in crisis, the financial sector harms the real economy. It is vastly too large.The finance sector is an intermediary - essentially a "middleman". Like all middlemen, it should be as small as possible, while still being capable of accomplishing its mission. Otherwise it is inherently parasitical.<br />
Unfortunately, it is now vastly larger than necessary, dwarfing the real economy it is supposed to serve. Forty years ago, our real economy grew better with a financial sector that received one-twentieth as large a percentage of total profits (2%) than does the current financial sector (40%). The minimum measure of how much damage the bloated, grossly over-compensated finance sector causes to the real economy is this massive increase in the share of total national income wasted through the finance sector's parasitism."<br />
Click herefor the full text. Thanks to Steve Kurtz for the reference.<br />
<br />
3. MONEY AS A SYSTEM OF SYSTEMS<br />
To understand how money works, it helps to see it asa system of systemsthat interact with one another. How a money system operates and what money values - prices of some things compared with others - arise from it are largely determined by<br />
who creates the public money supply, how and in what form (as debt or debt-free),<br />
how governments collect public revenue(for example, what they taxand what they don't tax),<br />
and what public spending is spent on andwhat it isn't spent on.<br />
The need for radical change in all three of the above is briefly explained in answers I gave to questions (<a href="http://www.sidint.net/after-the-crisis-the-need-for-a-new-monetary-system">www.sidint.net/after-the-crisis-the-need-for-a-new-monetary-system</a>) about my contribution to Development,Vol. 52, Issue 3, September 2009.<br />
<br />
4. "MASSIVE, RADICAL REFORMS" ARE NEEDED<br />
Mason Gaffneyis the author of many books, including (with Fred Harrison) The Corruption of Economics. His latest is After the Crash- <a href="http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1444333070,descCd-description.html">http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1444333070,descCd-description.html</a>.<br />
Here is an extract from " The four vampires of capital " by him in Land and Liberty,Summer 2009 - <a href="http://www.landandliberty.net/uploads/landl1224.pdf">www.landandliberty.net/uploads/landl1224.pdf</a>.<br />
"What about banks and our money supply?Federal bonds and real estate have become their major assets. The pressure is on to issue more bonds, and support land values, to save the banks and the virtual-money they have created. Must we? Do the banks and mortgagees have us over a barrel? They would like us to think so. But not if we open new investment and job opportunities by untaxing work and production.<br />
The changes I propose are massive and radical, I know; but we have been massively, radically wrong, and the times call for massive, radical reforms.People will resist, will object, will twist and turn and contort in dozens of ways, as Washington now does, to protect banks and landowners and the current power structure, resisting the unwelcome inevitable. They have eaten, drunk and been merry on low taxes, cheap credit, foreign loans and rising land values. Meet The Great Reckoning: it is time to foot the bill. We can do it and turn America healthy in one strokeby taxing land values and rentsto retire public debts."<br />
<br />
5. THE PUBLIC MONEY SUPPLY: NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL MONETARY REFORM<br />
(1) Two petitions to the UK Prime Ministerare now open for signature. I warmly recommend British citizens to sign both. They are at:<br />
<a href="http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Money-creationand">http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Money-creationand</a><br />
<a href="http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Broadbandfunding">http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Broadbandfunding</a>.<br />
They are an interesting pair. The first supportsmonetary reform on principle; the second supports a step towards the principle of monetary reformas a way of financing urgently needed investment in an important item of public infrastructure.<br />
(2) Robert Poteat'spaper for the 2009 conference of the American Monetary Institute explains why"The bank credit/debt money system is inherently and unavoidably inflationary." See <a href="http://monetary.org/moneyscenesix.htm">http://monetary.org/moneyscenesix.htm</a>.<br />
(3) Lowell Manning, a civil engineer in New Zealand, is one of many monetary reformers who have come from more practical professional backgrounds than economics. He has developed an up-to-date version of Irving Fisher's equation which has served as an analytical basis for many monetary reform proposals since the 1930s.<br />
I hope Manning's work will come to be accepted as important for economists, as the need for monetary reform belatedly penetrates their professional minds.<br />
One practical conclusion is that:<br />
"the effect of unearned interest on deposits is to transfer claims on the real wealth of the nation from those who produce the economic output to those in the investment sector who produce nothing. Houses and other assets become more expensive in terms of the inflated prices in the investment sector but must be bought using the less inflated money of the productive sector.<br />
Unless inflation in the investment sector and the productive sector are equalised, there must be an ever-widening gapbetween debt-bound wage and salary earners on the one hand and the participants in the investment sector with net deposits in the banking system on the other."<br />
A short version of Manning's findings is at <a href="http://www.flowman.nl/lowellshortpaper20090706.htm">www.flowman.nl/lowellshortpaper20090706.htm</a>. For the full version ask him (his email is manning at kapiti.co.nz) to e-mail you a copy of 090527A final.doc.<br />
(4) HOW THE INTERNATIONAL MONETARY SYSTEM CREATES CRISES<br />
This Bretton Woods Project report identifies four main featuresof the current international monetary system.<br />
First, floating exchange rates have been enormously volatile.<br />
Second, the dollar's central roleas the world's reserve currency allows the US to borrow cheaply and to continue borrowing indefinitely, with very damaging consequences for the rest of the world. Though American monetary and fiscal policy decisions can impact all other countries, the US can ignore this.<br />
Third, there is little effective international oversight and control over the international monetary system.<br />
Fourth, the rules, institutions and norms of the international monetary system are guided by the ideology and economic model known as the Washington consensus.<br />
The report argues that: "The international monetary framework which emerged after the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in the 1970s has proved volatile, damaging and prone to crises. It is time for a fundamental redesign and the introduction of a global reserve currency, to help stabilise international exchange rates, smooth commodity prices, promote international economic cooperation, and prevent future financial crises."<br />
It concludes that a fair, transparent process should negotiate the necessary reforms, involving all countries and open to civil society and parliaments, under the auspices of the United Nations. This has been demanded by thousands of civil society organisations, but the leaders of the G20 have not yet heeded it.<br />
Click herefor the full report.<br />
<br />
6. LAND VALUE TAXATION (Also see Item 4 above)<br />
ALTER (<a href="http://www.libdemsalter.org.uk">www.libdemsalter.org.uk</a>) launched a new 100-page paperback on The Case for a New People's Budgetat the Liberal Democrats' Conference in September. It marked the centenary of Lloyd George's People's Budget in 1909. It has a Foreword by Vince Cable.<br />
It contains10 essays as follows: "The People's Budget"; "Land Value Taxation and Transport"; "Business and Enterprise"; "Food Scarcity and Farming"; "Utility Companies"; "Housing"; "Poverty and the Welfare State"; "Banking & Finance"; "This is How We Do It"; and "Sustainable Taxation & Modern Liberalism".<br />
The last two chapters - by Tony Vickers - deal with key practical questions for the present and the future. But all convey how much better off we would be if we replaced existing taxes with LVT.<br />
I recommend it warmly.It costs £5.50inc. postage and packing from<br />
Catherine Hodgkinson, 51 Demesne Furze, Oxford Ox3 7XG<br />
or contact Tony Vickers (his email address is tonyvickers at phonecoop.coop).<br />
Click herefor a report on the Irish government's decision to introduce Land Value Taxation, and herefor the role played by the Irish NGO Feasta in making that happen.<br />
Click herefor news about the mutual support developing between LibDemALTER (Action for Land Taxation and Economic Reform), the Labour Land Campaignand the Co-operative Party on LVT.<br />
<br />
7. OTHER IMPORTANT TOPICS<br />
(1) "Altruistic Economics: The gift culture and the end of extinction". In issue 18 of the always excellent Pacific Ecologist (<a href="http://www.pacificecologist.org/archive/18">www.pacificecologist.org/archive/18</a>), Jonathan M Newton faces up to the fact that "our current alienated, resource-wasteful economic activity and antiquated banking and money systems are inadequate".<br />
(2) When Markets Are Poison. "Studying the financial crisis and the climate crisis together can provide useful tools for understanding how to tackle both. Overconfident commodification of uncertainty (in the form of a trade in new and complex derivatives) helped precipitate a global economic crash. Overconfident commodification of climate benefits (in the form of a trade in carbon) threatens to hasten an even worse catastrophe" - <a href="http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/summary.shtml?x=565377">www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/summary.shtml?x=565377</a>.<br />
(3) Media Lens (<a href="http://www.medialens.org">www.medialens.org</a>) responds to the "profoundly distorted picture of our world"presented by the increasingly centralised, corporate nature of the media - providing a "propaganda system for corporate and other establishment interests". The "costs, in terms of human suffering and environmental degradation, are incalculable".<br />
(4) Political and Corporate Corruption and Fraud. Click hereto read about action proposed by the UK House of Commons to regulate political lobbying of the UK government.<br />
<br />
James Robertson<br />
11th November 2009<br />
<br />
james@jamesrobertson.com<br />
<a href="http://www.jamesrobertson.com">www.jamesrobertson.com</a> Freeconomy: My year living without cashtag:transitionderry.ning.com,2009-11-10:2613445:Topic:40552009-11-10T12:28:18.000ZAdminhttps://transitionderry.ning.com/profile/MariaAngelaFerrario
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/09/mark-boyle-money" target="_blank">http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/09/mark-boyle-money</a><br />
<br />
Blog by Mark Boyle on living with no cash<br />
<br />
"The morning I finally decided to give up using cash, the whole world changed. It was the same day news broke about the banks' misbehaviour in the sub-prime mortgage market, so when I began telling people of my plans, they assumed it was in preparation for some sort of apocalyptic financial…
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/09/mark-boyle-money" target="_blank">http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/09/mark-boyle-money</a><br />
<br />
Blog by Mark Boyle on living with no cash<br />
<br />
"The morning I finally decided to give up using cash, the whole world changed. It was the same day news broke about the banks' misbehaviour in the sub-prime mortgage market, so when I began telling people of my plans, they assumed it was in preparation for some sort of apocalyptic financial meltdown. However, having long viewed credit as a debit against future generations, I was infinitely more worried about what George Monbiot called the "nature crunch". Nature, unfortunately, doesn't do bailouts"<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/09/mark-boyle-money" target="_blank">more</a> Open Money - start your own currencytag:transitionderry.ning.com,2009-06-12:2613445:Topic:26212009-06-12T12:46:05.000Zmarian farrellhttps://transitionderry.ning.com/profile/marianfarrell
Click to start a currency!!<br />
<br />
<a href="http://wikiwikimoney.com/">http://wikiwikimoney.com/</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://drupal.org/project/marketplace">http://drupal.org/project/marketplace</a><br />
<br />
<br />
A brief introduction to open money.<br />
<br />
We've all grown up with the idea that there's only one type of money. Imagine if we'd grown up thinking that apples are the only type of fruit. What would we think when we met an orange? Conventional money is one type of money and it's certainly very useful when there's…
Click to start a currency!!<br />
<br />
<a href="http://wikiwikimoney.com/">http://wikiwikimoney.com/</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://drupal.org/project/marketplace">http://drupal.org/project/marketplace</a><br />
<br />
<br />
A brief introduction to open money.<br />
<br />
We've all grown up with the idea that there's only one type of money. Imagine if we'd grown up thinking that apples are the only type of fruit. What would we think when we met an orange? Conventional money is one type of money and it's certainly very useful when there's enough of it around, but when there's a shortage, it gets difficult to buy and sell things. The familiar shortages of conventional currencies are not because it evaporates, just that it tends to go somewhere else, to leak away. Typically, only about 20% stays in a locality for more than a few transactions and the rest flows straight through.<br />
<br />
An extra money<br />
<br />
Open money is a different kind of stuff, in much the same way as an orange is a different type of fruit and you can use it alongside conventional currency. There's always enough of it to go round and when you spend it stays around. Open money is used by people, businesses and organisations in communities where they issue their own, internal community currencies, so there's lots of them. Community currencies are not exchanged for conventional currency (as happens with some local currencies) but issued in addition to it.<br />
<br />
The amount of open money (community currency) in circulation is directly related to trading activity, so there can never be too much or too little. Community currencies cannot leak away from the communities that generate them. Using them helps to build stability in communities by increasing the proportion of local trading and makes it easier for businesses and communities to care for the natural environment as well as more likely that they'll want to.<br />
<br />
A practical way to get to grips with the idea of community currencies is to play the open money game [if it's called LETSplay ... we get sidetracked ... though I guess it's not a 5 min job to switch that over.]<br />
<br />
It's money, but not as we know it.<br />
<br />
To use open money effectively you need to manage your accounts in a different way from how you're used to managing accounts in ordinary money. It's a bit like cooking a dish using a different set of ingredients, you use different techniques and you produce different results.<br />
<br />
1. You don’t need to be in credit to be able to spend this kind of money so unlike the type we've grown up with, there's no advantage in building up a large credit.. If you do, all that happens is you reduce the flow of money in your community rather than adding to your ability to spend. With this type of money you've got that anyway.<br />
<br />
2. The money we're used to is easier to spend than to earn. Open money works the other way round. It’s much easier to earn though spending it can take a bit more effort than ordinary money. A key part of managing your use of open money is to take care not to earn more than you can make good use of. As you get started, the best way to get this right is to spend first and then you'll know how much you can usefully accept.<br />
<br />
3. We encourage this because the accounts in each community currency always add up to zero so for some accounts to go into credit it's necessary for some others, to go below zero. Imagine if everyone tried to go positive.<br />
<br />
4. Similarly, every account can't be below zero though you'd be right to wonder about some people just spending, not earning and running up massive negative accounts. When something like that happens with ordinary money we call them bad debts. People get whatever they've bought and don't pay. The nearest equivalent with the mutual credit type of accounting used for open money would be someone doing a runner with a large negative account and if that happens a lot it would reduce confidence in that currency. If it happens at all, it's not the same as a conventional bad debt in that the people who are owed money have already been paid – if they hadn't, there wouldn't be a large negative balance in the runners' account. However, to maintain confidence in community currencies, to guard against this happening, to regulate their balance, open money has another novel feature.<br />
<br />
5. With an ordinary bank account, only you and the bank get to find out how much is in there. With open money this works differently. Information about your balance and turnover is open to other account holders in each currency. This helps you to decide whether to accept payment in a community currency. Access to this information puts you in a position to be able to make an informed choice about whether to let someone who wants to buy something from you, to issue some currency.<br />
<br />
6. This open accounting arrangement is what community currencies use to regulate themselves. In contrast to the conventional system, the regulation of how much money to allow to be issued is done by the users on an ongoing basis on the ground, rather than by a central administration and has the benefit of giving them involvement and responsibility for their currencies, for their communities.<br />
<br />
7. Another reason for the name 'open' money is that users also have an open opportunity to start another community currency for free. Any community can have it's own currency and as the self regulation works better at smaller scales, as currencies get larger, new ones will be formed and so the size of currencies is also self regulating. This is similar to how email groups grow and subdivide.<br />
<br />
8. By spending before you earn, you help yourself and your community. You help yourself by getting an interest free loan and you help your community by creating community currency. A negative balance (known as a commitment) simply means that you have issued community currency that others can spend and in return have made a commitment to repay the other members of the community. You don't have to do that by a specific time and there is no charge for this, it's interest free.<br />
<br />
9. Because it's interest free, and because of the way that open money is issued within mutual credit networks, being below zero is not the same as being in debt with ordinary money so that's why we call it commitment.<br />
<br />
10. We suggest you review all your outgoings and try converting some of them to open money. Anything (from wages to decorating) that you start to use open money for, or partly for, will save you some hard currency that you can use on other things.<br />
<br />
11. Once you've got going, the best way to manage open money accounts is simply to aim to have them pass through zero from time to time. Sometimes, during a project or business start up, an account may go a long way into commitment and that's fine.<br />
<br />
12. Everyone takes hard currency and that's not the case with open money. It takes a bit more effort to spend but when you do, you’re helping your pocket and each of the communities that you use it in, in ways that ordinary money cannot.<br />
<br />
<br />
thanks to Andy Ryrie for this Keeping Cash Flowing In Village Shopstag:transitionderry.ning.com,2009-05-18:2613445:Topic:23462009-05-18T14:00:29.000ZAdminhttps://transitionderry.ning.com/profile/MariaAngelaFerrario
hello,<br />
a project might be worth keeping in mind.<br />
<br />
'Dr Karise Hutchinson and Professor Barry Quinn from the Ulster Business School at the University’s Coleraine campus have been awarded 320,000 Euro to conduct research in Northern Ireland. They are on the look-out for five retailers in country areas to take part in the project. The three-year project is being funded by the European Regional Development Fund and European Union’s Northern Periphery Programme'<br />
<br />
more info at…
hello,<br />
a project might be worth keeping in mind.<br />
<br />
'Dr Karise Hutchinson and Professor Barry Quinn from the Ulster Business School at the University’s Coleraine campus have been awarded 320,000 Euro to conduct research in Northern Ireland. They are on the look-out for five retailers in country areas to take part in the project. The three-year project is being funded by the European Regional Development Fund and European Union’s Northern Periphery Programme'<br />
<br />
more info at<br />
<a href="http://news.ulster.ac.uk/releases/2009/4375.html">http://news.ulster.ac.uk/releases/2009/4375.html<br />
</a> Quick Follow up on Transition Economic Forum, Magee 1st Maytag:transitionderry.ning.com,2009-05-05:2613445:Topic:21212009-05-05T12:09:31.000ZAdminhttps://transitionderry.ning.com/profile/MariaAngelaFerrario
Hello there,<br />
plenty was discussed during our two hours session ... just a quick note<br />
<br />
The idea, for me, is to progress with taking practical actions as well as not to loose the sight on the big picture.<br />
<br />
<b>The big picture:</b> I like to explore further the 'links' between what I see 'nested systems' at local scale and their 'networks' with neighbouring, national and international systems : people skills, renewable energy, food and water, dwellings, transport and economy.<br />
<br />
<b>The ground…</b>
Hello there,<br />
plenty was discussed during our two hours session ... just a quick note<br />
<br />
The idea, for me, is to progress with taking practical actions as well as not to loose the sight on the big picture.<br />
<br />
<b>The big picture:</b> I like to explore further the 'links' between what I see 'nested systems' at local scale and their 'networks' with neighbouring, national and international systems : people skills, renewable energy, food and water, dwellings, transport and economy.<br />
<br />
<b>The ground approch:</b> I am gonna to do a bit more research on how to we could combine LETS with a 'backed' Local Currency, if at all possible.<br />
<br />
In particular I'd like to focus on the viability of an energy-backed local currency system (e.g. where locally produced 'watts' are used to back pounds) with an eye also onto green bonds and saving schemes...<br />
<br />
<b>First steps:</b> on this account Richard suggested to start having a look at the publication "The Ecology of Money" , downloadable for free from <a href="http://www.feasta.ie">www.feasta.ie</a> website.<br />
<br />
so if anyone is interested in the same, please give me a shout and see what we can learn and do Transition Economics 2tag:transitionderry.ning.com,2009-03-10:2613445:Topic:12012009-03-10T21:36:22.000Zmarian farrellhttps://transitionderry.ning.com/profile/marianfarrell
There was shock and anger at last night's session as people realised that banks have been creating money out of nothing and then profiting from the interest they charge on it. Basically, when I borrowed to buy my house, the bank didn't phone around and ask ten savers if they could hold off withdrawing their money for a couple of years so that I could use it. They just created the amount I wanted, wrote me a cheque which I paid to the previous owners and they probably used as part payment for…
There was shock and anger at last night's session as people realised that banks have been creating money out of nothing and then profiting from the interest they charge on it. Basically, when I borrowed to buy my house, the bank didn't phone around and ask ten savers if they could hold off withdrawing their money for a couple of years so that I could use it. They just created the amount I wanted, wrote me a cheque which I paid to the previous owners and they probably used as part payment for their new house. That is, it became REAL money. It wasn't here before I took out a mortgage. Now because of me it was in the money system. Twenty years later I am still paying the bank Real money for the fictional money they created plus Real interest. That's just the beginning; it gets worse but I haven't taken it all in yet. Listen out for Transition Derry's interview with <a href="http://www.jamesrobertson.com/g20monetaryreform.htm">James Robertson</a> who is proposing Monetary Reform that takes money creation out of the hands of private, profit-making institutions. Transition Economicstag:transitionderry.ning.com,2009-03-03:2613445:Topic:8822009-03-03T07:18:00.000Zmarian farrellhttps://transitionderry.ning.com/profile/marianfarrell
The first in the series of learning forums on Economics was held last night, 2nd March in Holywell Trust.<br />
We all were interested in demystifying the language of Economics. What is it about? The origins of the word are Greek - <i>eco</i> meaning house and <i>nomis</i> meaning management, so Economics is about housekeeping - putting your house in order. We looked at economic activity - providing the basics of food, shelter, services and we wondered about the structures for providing these in the…
The first in the series of learning forums on Economics was held last night, 2nd March in Holywell Trust.<br />
We all were interested in demystifying the language of Economics. What is it about? The origins of the word are Greek - <i>eco</i> meaning house and <i>nomis</i> meaning management, so Economics is about housekeeping - putting your house in order. We looked at economic activity - providing the basics of food, shelter, services and we wondered about the structures for providing these in the future.<br />
Next week's focus is Money. We'll be watching the video Money as Debt (on this site) and reading James Robertson's Open Money Manifesto (attached below). New learners welcome.<br />
Listen out for this week's radio interview with Rob Hopkins - details will be posted. Transition Economy - DIY moneytag:transitionderry.ning.com,2009-02-08:2613445:Topic:5432009-02-08T09:12:50.000Zmarian farrellhttps://transitionderry.ning.com/profile/marianfarrell
How many billions are we going to allow governments to pour into banks before we stop joking about how we would like some of those big bonus payments? We've been led to believe that the money system was in the capable hands of experts, so we didn't need to worry. Well that obviously wasn't true. Now those experts seem to be treating the money system like the weather, as if there is only so far mere humans can go in controlling it. Well money was invented by humans, as a means of exchange so we…
How many billions are we going to allow governments to pour into banks before we stop joking about how we would like some of those big bonus payments? We've been led to believe that the money system was in the capable hands of experts, so we didn't need to worry. Well that obviously wasn't true. Now those experts seem to be treating the money system like the weather, as if there is only so far mere humans can go in controlling it. Well money was invented by humans, as a means of exchange so we could easily provide for ourselves and our families. That bartering system is still in operation locally - where people swap care for each others' children, share farmwork, building skills and more.<br />
Transition Derry are opening up discussion on how we can get back to basics with local money systems. In March we will be hosting a series of open forums on the following themes, alongside radio interviews with leading economic thinkers and activists. All contributions welcome.<br />
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Monday 2nd March – What is transition economics? (Rob Hopkins interview)<br />
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Monday 9th March – Money (James Robertson interview)<br />
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Monday 16th March – Globalisation<br />
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Monday 23rd March – The Social Economy (Ann Pettifor interview – A Green New Deal)<br />
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Monday 30th March – A Citizen’s Income<br />
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Monday 6th April – Doing it Ourselves (Richard Douthwaite interview)