Conclusion

Designing Money as Instrument of Public Trust, Private Collaboration and Sustainable Growth: As E. C. Riegel pointed out, "The greatest enemy of mankind is his ignorance of the inherent money power in all of us. When the realization of this comes to man, he will like Samson, push down the walls of his prison." Life is meant for living joyfully and creatively and not for continual mindless growth in production and consumption which itself is driven by debt-money system with unrepayable debt. Imagine a usury-free money that is created as an instrument of trust for all public and private (individual) endeavors. Money being the lifeblood and current of society and economy needs to circulate freely wherever there is genuine need for goods and services. Currency must allow free exchange and organization of human creative energy and it could be made freely available by the people, for the people wherever the need for such mutually beneficial exchange and delivery exist or needs to happen as in essential public infrastructures. What has been proclaimed as the great achievement of free market and capitalism as far as freedom and individual creativity are concerned are the achievements of the indomitable human spirit towards greater freedom, creativity and excellence. What we call competition is actually every human's innate desire and creative need to excell and surmount challenge or limitation of any kind. Reality only shifts once enough people starts entertaining a new possibility to force the tipping point!

Last updated 4/24/04

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

One of the discussion threads in Global Justice Movement list.

Please rate this article @ Global Ideas Bank. Thankyou 8/17/05

See this page quoted at Evolutionary Justice Site Money booklet page 4

Also see this article at Global Justice Movement Site 10/12/05 and at ComplementaryCurrency.org 11/28/05 New Civilization News: Oil war and US Imperialism 10/29/2004, see comment 2 and at Openmoney.org 11/17/03 and see External Link 'Rethinking and Transformin Money at Science Fair Project on Money

See This page link quoted at Monetary Evolution Net , Infoshop Wiki and Laborlawtalk encyclopedia links

Other Global sites: Wizards of Money Tree, PostCapitalism, Joytopia (german)

Additional Author Notes:

The root of the systematwide corruption of the institution of Church, the Monarchy and the State (under feudal system, totalitarian fascist/communist regimes and even within democracy) goes deep. Some of the basic assumptions and language of Economics need to be evaluated from a free and open mind. The assumption of “scarcity” of resources arises out of few “men’s greed (usurious debt-money system) and not due to man’s basic and universal needs. Man’s basic instinct and nature as formed from birth to adulthood within family, community and society is one of going out of physical survival needs to one of greater relationships, greater cooperation and ultimately a greater kinship with all life. Theories can become self-fulfilling because the very assumptions and beliefs (like survival of the fittest, man’s inherently selfish and competitive nature, educated mind is open mind, experts know best etc.) shape the institutional design, management practices, educational norms, media focus, and social expectations, which in turn create the conditions where theories appear to be valid.

The viscious cycle of poverty (explained in economics as a perpetual cycle low-productivity -> low Income -> low savings -> low capital) leaves out the reality that money “as debt” cannot be allocated to vast majority of poor, illiterate masses who have no income or access to capital (without job and collateral). The poor and illiterate are not necessarily without indigenous skills, wisdom and enterprise (see experience of grameen bank); however most poor people (dispossesed of land) are denied basic access to clean water, education and health under current monetary system. Usurious debt and inflation generating money is mathematically unsustainable. In developed countries too like Australia and USA as much as 40% of the population is under some form government welfare. The vast majority of world’s poor are women, children, disabled, and seniors. Three billion people live on less than $2 per day while 1.3 billion get by on less than $1 per day. Seventy percent of those living on less than $1 per day are women. It is not scarcity of money (or resource or labor) that is creating poverty, it is the kind of money we are using unconsciously. [poverty statistics].

In conclusion money is a measure and symbol of payment, and not a store of value. Money is a collectively agreed and acceptable medium of delivery of value and not a medium of exchange of value. This SHIFT IN PERCEPTION is a QUANTUM SHIFT in the way we perceive, generate and use money. In this system it is possible to pay every citizen a non-inflationary debt free basic income (perhaps with some expiration date to prevent hoarding), build public infrastructures based on publicly collected ground rent (land and resource use fee), and develop local economies and sustain indigenous resources and skills using community currency. It is possible for man to live and create in harmony with nature, when our currency can embody the principle of free energy flow as found in Nature which preserves the Web of Life.

Every living thing in nature spontaneously self-organizes itself through exchange of energy available freely. All human activity and endeavors can self-organize itself once debt-free tax-free money is made available as basic income to all citizens. Self-employment and small businesses can emerge in myriad ways to fill every need of humanity. All businesses and organizations will be service oriented, and profit or speculation will no longer be the motive in a fair and mathematically sound monetary system. Money that keeps circulating (not being taken off circulation for saving, hoarding, speculation, and future uncertainity) will be anti-inflationary. It is likely with increasing technology, productive capacity co-operation, and free information flow it is very likely that people will be able to afford more and more with less and less money. Think of the internet and web, where nothing is centrally controlled, yet it is exhibiting spontaneous pattern of self-organization of all kind of information. With the help of technology the gap between work, leisure and play is also likely to fade. Full employment is necessary only for purposes of long term debt-servicing and a tax-based welfare system.

Community currency is emerging as a powerful tool for fostering local econonomic development, but it is currently handicapped by some of the assumptions and perceptions inherent in conventional money (money as a store of value and medium of exchange needing some form of centralized accounting of transactions)! As long as our mind is full of theories and fear-based assumptions and preferences we cannot see and recognize the obvious. Please share this article widely, so people at least start thinking along different lines.[Added 6/9/05]

Complementary Currencies for Social Change: an interview with Bernard Lietaer, Nexus Holistic Magazine, Colorado July-Aug 2003

Community Currency Software Cyclos via Internet

We Can All Be Part of a Solution: see an example of SANE Community Exchange System in South Africa where debit is not a debt and credit is only an acknowledgement of goodwill and gratitude

"All the ingredients for ending poverty of a person always comes neatly packaged with the person himself. A human being is born in this world fully equipped not only to take care of himself (which all other life-forms can do too), but also to contribute in enlarging the well-being of the world as a whole. Poverty is not created by the poor people. So we shouldn't give them an accusing look. They are the victims. Poverty has been created by the economic and social system that we have designed for the world. It is the institutions that we have built, and feel so proud of, which created poverty. It is the concepts we developed to understand the reality around us, made us see things wrongly! It is the failure at the top - rather than lack of capability at the bottom - which is the root cause of poverty. Concepts, institutions, and analytical frame conditions which created poverty, cannot end poverty. If we can intelligently re-work the frame conditions, poverty will be gone, never to come back again....Try to imagine how the economists would have built their theory if they had started out with an axiom that all men and women are created equal, that each of them is endowed with unlimited creativity, and each of them is a potential entrepreneur. In some important ways our designing of the theoretical framework of economics or the misrepresentation of it is responsible for perpetuating poverty." - Commonwealth Lecture 2003 by Professor Muhammad Yunus, Creator of Grameen Bank

Current examples of debt-free public money in small Islands: "The Isle of Guernsey's secret of success is the fact that it has been a "protectorate" of the British Isles for centuries and, as such, is able to make its own laws and thereby determine its own destiny. By controlling its own money supply from 1816 onwards, Guernsey was able to avoid the century old trap of borrowing when it didn't have to. Guernsey decided to issue £6,000 of their own "interest-free" Guernsey State Notes. This was in addition to the current supply of English pounds which two main banks were circulating on the island already. By 1837, £50,000 had been spent into circulation by the government for the primary purpose of local projects such as the sea walls, the roads, a new marketplace, a church and a college. This £50,000 more than doubled the money supply. But there was no inflation. In 1914, while the British restricted their own money supply, Guernsey issued more ... another £140,000 over the next four years. By 1958, over £500,000 of interest-free money was in circulation on Guernsey and still no inflation. By 1990, there was a total of £6.5 million in circulation issued interest-free. There was no public debt as in the rest of Britain which was still paying for its war debts. And yet on Guernsey, prosperity was very much evident everywhere. When Dr. Jacques Jaikaran visited Guernsey in 1990, he reported on the state of the Guernsey economy in his book The Debt Virus: There were about 60,000 permanent residents; the average family owned 3.3 cars; their unemployment rate was zero and their standard of living was very high. Also, there was no public debt and a surplus of public funds was earning them interest. The Guernsey Treasury increased the money supply by 50% over a 3 year period and this increase did not cause any inflation. The price for a gallon of gas in the UK was about $5, but the price in Guernsey was about $2. Contrary to the teachings of economics in all higher institutions, inflation, it was claimed, was not related to the volume of money, but rather to the size of the commercial debt. Dr. Jaikaran also mentioned that Guernsey's income tax was only a "flat" 20%. Not bad, compared to the rest of the world." See link "Debt is like a cancer in society. It causes the ills of unemployment, bankruptcy, poverty and destitution, which lead, in turn, to crime and ill health. At some point in the future, at least in some countries, the rate of money-creation, increasing at an exponential rate, will be overtaken by the size of the government debt, increasing at an even faster exponential rate. At that point, all wealth will go to pay an unrepayable loan, and there will be no social services. This is already the case in Third World countries, where the real wealth of those countries is exported to pay an unrepayable debt, and where every newborn baby is already in debt to foreign banks. In the Channel Islands it is different. There, the government has not delegated the money-creating powers to the banks. There, the government creates debt-free money and spends it into the economy, rather than lending it into the economy, so that the government has no debt to the banks. Partly as a result, Jersey and Guernsey experience prosperity unknown in many countries. Income tax is only 20%. There is no VAT, inheritance tax or capital gains tax." More Here [1] and [2] During a visit to Britain in 1763, The Bank of England asked Benjamin Franklin how he would account for the new found prosperity in the colonies. Franklin replied. "That is simple. In the colonies we issue our own money. It is called Colonial Script. We issue it in proper proportion to the demands of trade and industry to make the products pass easily from the producers to the consumers. In this manner, creating for ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power, and we have no interest to pay to no one." Benjamin Franklin 1 America had learned that the people's confidence in the currency was all they needed, and they could be free of borrowing debts. That would mean being free of the Bank of England. In Response the world's most powerful independent bank used its influence on the British parliament to press for the passing of the Currency Act of 1764. This act made it illegal for the colonies to print their own money, and forced them to pay all future taxes to Britain in silver or gold. "In one year, the conditions were so reversed that the era of prosperity ended, and a depression set in, to such an extent that the streets of the Colonies were filled with unemployed."- Benjamin Franklin

“ The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is The People vs. The Banks.” - Lord Acton, Historian, 1834 - 1902. See class action lawsuit in Canada.

The Banking Cartel: A review

Secret History of Credit Cards: PBS Frontline Episode

Other Links and References:

USURY-FREE UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME FOR ALL: Genuine welfare instead of dependency.

The notion of a universal basic income is an old one and gaining ground world-wide to solve wide spread social problems of poverty, unemployment, gross inequality in income distribution and such. But basic income under the current debt-monetary system is not going to improve living condition substantially. Our goal needs to be creating opportunities for prosperity and creative vocation for everyone. Debt-free tax free Money has the potential to not only create great equality for all but abundance for the truely gifted person in the society.

A basic income is an income unconditionally granted to all on an individual basis, without means test or work requirement. It is a form of minimum income guarantee that differs from those that now exist in various European countries in three important ways:

it is being paid to individuals rather than households; it is paid irrespective of any income from other sources; it is paid without requiring the performance of any work or the willingness to accept a job if offered. Liberty and equality, efficiency and community, common ownership of the Earth and equal sharing in the benefits of technical progress, the flexibility of the labour market and the dignity of the poor, the fight against inhumane working conditions, against the desertification of the countryside and against interregional inequalities, the viability of cooperatives and the promotion of adult education, autonomy from bosses, husbands and bureaucrats, have all been invoked in its favour.

But it is the inability to tackle unemployment with conventional means that has led in the last decade or so to the idea being taken seriously throughout Europe by a growing number of scholars and organizations. Social policy and economic policy can no longer be conceived separately, and basic income is increasingly viewed as the only viable way of reconciling two of their respective central objectives: poverty relief and full employment.

Source: Basic Income European Network http://www.etes.ucl.ac.be/BIEN/BI/Definition.htm

Other country links: http://www.etes.ucl.ac.be/BIEN/Resources/Links.htm#non-european

Historical Use of National Debt-free Money "Given the resources on Earth, every man, woman, and child should be a millionaire manytimes over" - Buckminster Fuller

* The Saracen Empire forbade interest on money 1,000 years ago, and it's wealth outshone Saxon Europe.

* Mandarin China issued its own money, interest and debt- free. Historians and collectors of art today consider those centuries to China's greatest time of wealth, culture and peace.

* The American Colonies issued Colonial Scrips, and Ben Franklin explained to the English that this was the key to the prosperity Colonies, long before the American Revolution.

* Abraham Lincoln did it in 1863 with Greenbacks to finance and win the Civil War.

* Germany issued debt-free and interest-free money from 1935 and on, accounting for its startling rise from the depression to a World power in 5 years. Germany financed its entire government and war operation from 1935 to 1945 without gold and without debt, and it took nearly the whole Capitalist and Communist world to destroy the German power over Europe.

Was this the real cause of World War II? Did the International Bankers have to destroy the Government of Germany because it issued debt and interest free money just like Lincoln did? The map of the world today shows the effect of globalisation, as interpreted by the ethnic Europeans in history. There was no US, Canada, Australia, Latin America, New Zealand until the Europeans discovered the sea passages and started global trade. Before the Europeans, there were Arab, Indian, Chinese and Turkic traders. There was no conquest or colonisation when these people sailed the seas to trade. Only when the Europeans carried out world trade were countries invaded, human rights abused, genocide committed, empires built and new ethnic European nations created on land belonging to others. See America's third world war.

Monopolized Banking and Usury is the foundation of modern Capitalism The Tyranny of Compound Interest Now there is a problem with the interest. When you borrow $100,000 to buy a very modest home with 7-8% interest for 30 years, you end up paying roughly over $270,000 in principal and interest. A simple flat rate interest of 20-30% for 10 years is far better proposition than a compound interest of 8% over 30 years. Such is the power of compounding because one pays interest on interest. With compound interest the money lenders (bankers), "who produce nothing of value, gradually gain a death grip on the land, buildings, and present and future earnings of the whole working population (E.Sheldon)". Compound interest coupled with fractional reserve is a quick and clever way to siphone off actual resources and current and future labor from the people of the nation to the hands of bankers. We all pay the interest even if we do not borrow through rising inflation. When you took out the loan, only the principal was created not the huge $170,000 worth of interest amount. Fulfilling your obligation requires you to take more money out of the circulation than was added into it at the start. No goods or services were produced for the interest money (at the time of issue at least). If you bought an old construction then no new good was produced also! By design at any given moment some businesses and borrowers are bound to fail in loan payments and banks can foreclose on your property or farm or seize your collateral (even if you have paid twice the principal)! Just by controlling amount of credit and interest rate banks can create depression or recession or boom-bust in financial markets. The burden of national debt and personal debt (easy credit card system) is spiralling into infinity. Bankers and banker supported arms-ammunition merchants can take the entire nation to War to secure and further their financial empires through control of political leaders and institutions. Unfortunately this appears to be the case both in the US and elsewhere. On average for every tax dollar collected in the US 29% goes to defense/military, and 19% goes to paying debt of government (9% to military and 10% to non-military debt), 5% for income security, 4% to education, 3% to nutrition, and only 2% each to housing and natural resources (http://www.nationalpriorities.org). All taxes are collected locally, but local government gets a miniscule 2%, state 6% and federal government gets the lion's share (78% of total share of income tax paid by individuals)! Some people are challenging the legality of US government to coerce people in paying annual income taxes. They are saying income tax is voluntary and no law exists anywhere that says otherwise. See more here..[http://www.givemeliberty.org] Monetarization of the economy particularly hit hard the rural-farming population and set the urban-ward migration of rural small farmer who lost land or had to quit farming because every part of farm operation from buying seeds to equipments now required money instead of commodity as in the earlier barter system! The situation was especially worse in developing countries in post colonnial era. The structural adjustment policies pushed by World Bank and IMF on the developing countries mostly failed and riddled these countries with enormous debt. Imagine what would have happened if these countries were allowed to conduct export-import in mutual home currency by OPEC and WTO! With the adoption of Bretton woods policy in 1944 (which Created the World Bank and IMF) all internaltional currencies and exchange were pegged to the value of US dollar, which soon became more favored instrument of meeting fractional reserve requirement for national central banks than gold itself. By signing the agreement, nations were submitting their exchange rates to international disciplines. This amounted to a significant surrender of national sovereignty to an international organization.

Billions for Bankers, Debts for the People by Pastor Sheldon Emry In 1930 America did not lack industrial capacity, fertile farmlands, skilled and willing workers or industrious families. It had an extensive and efficient transportation system in railroads, road networks, and inland and ocean waterways. No war had ravaged the cities or the countryside, no pestilence weakened the population, nor had famine stalked the land. The United States of America in 1930 lacked only one thing: an adequate supply of money to carry on trade and commerce. In the early 1930s, bankers, the only source of new money and credit, deliberately refused loans to industries, stores and farms. Payments on existing loans were required however, and money rapidly disappeared from circulation. Goods were available to be purchased, jobs waiting to be done, but the lack of money brought the nation to a standstill. By this simple ploy America was put in a "depression" and bankers took possession of hundreds of thousands of farms, homes, and business properties. The people were told, "times are hard" and "money is short." Not understanding the system, they were cruelly robbed of their earnings, their savings, and their property. The same Bankers who in the early 1930's had no loans for peacetime houses, food and clothing, suddenly had unlimited billions to lend for army barracks, K-rations and uniforms.

A nation that in 1934 could not produce food for sale, suddenly could produce bombs to send free to Germany and Japan!Prior to 1913, America was a prosperous, powerful, and growing nation, at peace with its neighbors and the envy of the world. But in December of 1913, Congress, with many members away for the Christmas Holidays, passed what has since been known as the Federal Reserve Act. (For the full story of how this infamous legislation was forced through our Congress, read "Conquest or Consent", by W. D. Vennard). The act divided the United States into 12 Federal Reserve "Districts." This simple, but terrible, law completely removed from Congress the right to "create" money or to have any control over its "creation", and gave that function to The Federal Reserve Corporation. The people were not told then, and most still do not know today, that the Federal Reserve Corporation is a private corporation controlled by bankers and therefore is operated for the financial gain of the bankers over the people rather than for the good of the people. The word "Federal" was used only to deceive the people. A nation that in 1934 could not produce food for sale, suddenly could produce bombs to send free to Germany and Japan!

In addition to almost unlimited usury, the bankers have another method of drawing vast amounts of wealth. The banks are able to approve or disapprove large loans to large and successful corporations to the extent that refusal of a loan will bring about a reduction in the selling price of the corporation's stock. After depressing the price, the bankers' agents buy large blocks of the company's stock. Then, if the bank suddenly approves a multi-million dollar loan to the company, the stock rises and is then sold for a profit. In this manner, billions of dollars are made with which to buy more stock. This practice is so refined today that the Federal Reserve Board need only announce to the newspapers an increase or decrease in their "discount rate" to send stocks soaring or crashing at their whim. Banks collect billions in interest by loaning to Government and the Corporations!

History tells us of debt-free and interest-free money issued by governments. The American colonies did it through colonial script in the 1700's. Their wealth soon rivaled that of England and brought restrictions from Parliament, which led to the Revolutionary War. Abraham Lincoln did it in 1863 to help finance the Civil War. He was later assassinated by a man many consider to have been an agent of the Rothchild Bank. No debt-free or interest-free money has been issued in America since then.

Several Arab nations issue interest free loans to their citizens today. (Now you can understand what all the commotion in the Middle East is all about, and why the banker-owned press is brainwashing American citizens to think of all Arabs as terrorists). The Saracen Empire forbade interest on money 1,000 years ago and its wealth outshone even Saxon Europe. Mandarin China issued its own money, interest-free and debt-free. Today, historians and art collectors consider those centuries to be China's time of greatest wealth, culture and peace.

Issuing money which does not have to be paid back in interest leaves the money available to use in the exchange of goods and services and its only continuing cost is replacement as the paper wears out. Money is the paper ticket by which transfers are made and should always be in sufficient quantity to transfer all possible production of the nation to the ultimate consumers. It is as ridiculous for a nation to say to its citizens, "You must consume less because we are short of money," as it would be for an airline to say, "Our planes are flying, but we cannot take you because we are short of tickets".

interest forces workers and businesses to demand more money for the work and goods to pay their ever increasing debts and taxes. This increase in prices and wages is called "inflation." This "inflation" benefits the money-lenders, since it wipes out savings of one generation so they can not finance or help the next generation.With an adequate supply of interest-free money, little borrowing would be required and prices would be established by people (demand) and goods (supply). Source: http://www.tradersclub.com/dollarsign/billionsforbankers.shtml Begining of monetary control

Unconventional Banking for Empowering the Poor Grameen Bank (GB) has reversed conventional banking practice by removing the need for collateral and created a banking system based on mutual trust, accountability, participation and creativity. GB provides credit to the poor. Today, in September, 2002, it has 2.4 million borrowers, 95 percent of whom are women. With 1,175 branches, GB provides services in 41,000 villages, covering more than 60 percent of the total villages in Bangladesh. Grameen bank methodology is the reverse of conventional banking.

A cluster of Grameen companies have been created to bring both information technology and education to the poor people of Bangladesh. Grameen Phone, Grameen Star Education, Grameen Cybernet, Grameen Information Highway, Grameen Software, Grameen IT Park are created to bring IT to the poor, and build IT capacity in Bangladesh. Grameen Phone brings internet enabled mobile phones to the Grameen borrowers and make them "telephone ladies" of the villages. Today there are more than 21,000 telephone ladies selling telephone services in half the villages of Bangladesh. Many of these phones are powered by solar power because electricity does not exist in those villages.

Grameen Bank not only focuses on giving financial services, but it also promotes a strong social agenda. "Sixteen Decisions" adopted by Grameen Bank borrowers commit them to bring many non-economic changes in their lives, such as, keeping families small, sending children to school and making sure they stay in school, breaking away from the custom of giving dowry to the bride-groom's family, making sure they drink clean drinking water, etc. Because of Sixteen Decisions, Grameen borrowers have taken great care to send their children to school. Today not only are all of them in school, but some of them are also in colleges, universities, and professional schools. Grameen Bank hopes to see that the second generation of the borrowers will grow up to take advantage of the knowledge economy and permanently shift away from poverty. Grameen Bank offers nearly 4,000 scholarships every year to leading students of Grameen families, gives student loans to 100 per cent of students who are in the institutions of higher education. The 16 commitments of Grameen members. There were a number of major natural disasters in Bangladesh during the life span of Grameen Bank. The 1998 flood was the worst of all. Half of the country was under flood-water for ten long weeks. Impact of the post-flood repayment crisis was compounded by its overlap with a recovery problem from an earlier crisis. In 1995, a large number of our borrowers stayed away from centre meetings and stopped paying loan installments. Once a borrower fell off the track, she found it very difficult to move back on, since the rules which allowed her to return, were not easy for her to fulfill. More and more borrowers fell off the track. Then there was the multiplier effect. In the year 2000, Grammen Bank Staff came together to the Drawing Board to devise new changes in the earlier rigid format of granting loans and loan repayment schedules. Grammen Classic System (GCS) was replaced by Grameen Generalized System (GGS) Bank II. The crisis led us to create Grameen II, which has the built-in capacity to handle crises and disasters in a much better way than ever before. At present there are 168 Grameen Bank Replications in 44 countries. One new Grameen Bank Replication is created some where in the world each week. At this rate, 300 new Grameen Bank Replications will be set up all over the world by the turn of the century. The plan is to take credit to half a billion poorest people (100 million poorest families) of the world by the year 2005, and to all of world's 1.3 billion poor by the year 2025. There has been world-wide support of Grameen bank, yet a broad grassroot and public awareness is still lacking. The following statistics were taken from the Grameen bank support Group in Australia.

The accumulated saving of the borrowers (5% of loan amount), one of the indicators the bank uses to gauge its impact on poverty eradication, have grown from nothing in 1983 to 108 million US dollars today. As soon as a borrower accumulates sufficient saving, she buys one (and only one) share in the Bank, which costs $3.Today 92% of the Bank is owned by its borrowers. (Bangladeshi government owns the remaining 8% of the shares). The board sets the interest rate such that after paying all expenses, including the cost of its growth, the bank makes a modest profit. The profit is returned to the shareholder-borrowers in the form of dividends. Experience has demonstrated that it takes an utterly destitute six to ten successive loans (one year each) - and a lot of hard work - to cross the poverty line. The first loan is often as little as US$ 50. Average loan size is a little over US$ 100. In the process, the borrower builds a secure self-employment, often employing the whole family.

FUTURE OF MONEY, DEMOCRACY and SUSTAINABILITY *1,900 local communities in the world, including over a hundred in the US, are now issuing their own currency, independently from the national money system. Some communities, like in Ithaca, New York, issue paper currency; others in Canada, Australia, the UK or France issue complementary electronic money. Historically people have already demonstrated that living conditions can be significantly improved by creating their own complementary currencies instead of just relying on welfare. Surprisingly, it is in fact not the first time that such solutions have been successfully implemented in the Modern world. During the 1930’s many thousands of such initiatives were operational in the US, Canada, Western Europe and other areas affected by the Depression. Complementary currencies could become a key tool to buffer a region from the shocks caused by failures and crises in the official money system. Finally, this approach is a win/win for both locally owned businesses and society at large. *The value of barter transactions — exchanges which do not use any money as medium of exchange - totaled almost $6.5 billion in 1994 in the US and Canada, and is increasing three times faster than normal exchanges. The magazine "Barter News" covers the industry’s development and now has 30,000 subscribers. It estimates the total barter worldwide at $650 billion in 1997, and growing at an annual rate of 15%. Even Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, foresees "new private currency markets in the 21st century." *Degradation of Environment caused by short-term thinking (in business) is shown not to be due to human nature, but to the prevailing money system. It is also possible to reverse this process, by using a currency designed specifically for multinational trade and contracts which would make long-term thinking a spontaneous process, focusing the attention on long-term sustainable solutions without the need for regulations or taxation. Historical precedents have proven such results, some of them lasting over several centuries. Source: Future of Money by Bernard Lietaer http://www.transaction.net/money/book/

The Act of 1871: Congress, with no authority to do so, created a separate form of government for the District of Columbia, a ten-mile square parcel of land. WHY and HOW did they do so? First, Lisa Guliani of Babel Magazine, reminds us that the Civil War was, in fact, "little more than a calculated front with fancy footwork by backroom players." Then she adds: "It was also a strategic maneuver by British and European interests (international bankers) intent on gaining a stranglehold on the coffers of America. And, because Congress knew our country was in dire financial straits, certain members of Congress cut a deal with the international bankers (in those days, the Rothschilds of London were dipping their fingers into everyone's pie). . There you have the WHY, why members of Congress permitted the international bankers to gain further control of America. "Then, by passing the Act of 1871, Congress formed a corporation known as THE UNITED STATES. This corporation, owned by foreign interests, shoved the organic version of the Constitution aside by changing the word 'for' to 'of' in the title. Let me explain: the original Constitution drafted by the Founding Fathers read: 'The Constitution for the united states of America.' [note that neither the words 'united' nor 'states' began with capital letters] But the CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA' is a corporate constitution, which is absolutely NOT the same document you think it is. First of all, it ended all our rights of sovereignty [sui juris]. "Refer to any UNITED STATES CODE (USC). Note the capitalization; this is evidence of a corporation, not a Republic. For example, In Title 28 3002 (15) (A) (B) (C), it is unequivocally stated that the UNITED STATES is a corporation. Translation: the corporation is NOT a separate and distinct entity; it is not disconnected from the government; it IS the government -- your government. This is extremely important! I refer to it as the 'corporate EMPIRE of the UNITED STATES,' which operates under Roman Civil Law outside the original Constitution. See more here American journalist Gary Allen in his book ‘The Rockefeller File’ (1976) writes: "A distinction must be drawn between competitive free enterprise, the most moral and productive system ever devised, and cartel capitalism dominated by industrial monopolists and international bankers. The difference is crucial: the private enterpriser operates by offering products and services in a competitive free market, where consumers have numerous choices offered to them, while cartel capitalists use the government to force the public to do business with them. These corporate fascists are the deadly enemies of competitive private enterprise. Book: Unequal protection http://www.thomhartmann.com/summary.shtml Movie: The Corporation http://www.thecorporation.com Article: Monster Banks http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2005/012005/lewis.html N E S A R A (Note: please confirm yourself about the ACT & let me know)

Imagine New Peace Money

A Job For Every Iraqi by Steven Shafarman The United States has a duty, we all agree, to help the Iraqi people rebuild as a peaceful, stable, and democratic nation. At the same time, the Bush administration is under enor-mous pressure to minimize spending for Iraq’s reconstruction and to get quick results so U.S. forces can come home.So how do we help the Iraqi people build a new Iraq? The simplest and most cost-effective approach is to hire them to do it. All of them.For some weeks, U.S. officials have given $20 – about half of the prevailing wage, which is $35 a month – as a one-time payment to Iraqi civil service workers who return to work. But what about everyone else?

Iraq has a population of 24 million, although 42 percent are children; just 14 million are adults. So $20 a month for every adult Iraqi would cost less than $3.5 billion a year. Iraq’s oil royalties are estimated to be $10 to $15 billion a year; that, plus whatever the United States contributes, means plenty of money for a basic income along with substantial reconstruction. A policy of distributing oil royalties to each citizen resident in Alaska already exists.