 |
| http://www.triarchypress.com/pages/Regional-Currencies-People-Money.htm |
by Margrit Kennedy, Bernard Lietaer and John Rogers
People Money is a comprehensive guide to the principles and practice of regional currencies.
It shows how regional currencies can transform the lives and well-being of local communities, how they can sustain businesses, how local authorities can participate in their success and, consequently, why supporting regional currencies is of vital importance to the future of your community, region or country.
It is also a comprehensive guide to the development process and implementation of a regional currency.
The Present Currency System
"Centralised national money destroys community. It makes us deal with human beings like we deal with dented cans – we throw them away when we can’t make a profit from them ..."
Bob Fishman, Equal Dollars Community Currency
In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, vast numbers of people have had their livelihoods stripped away and, for many, the future looks bleak. There is a growing gap between the haves and have-nots and the disagreements between policy makers (economists and governments) about how to ‘rebalance the economy’ increasingly suggest that nobody has control or knows what to do.
The growth vs. austerity options under consideration will do little to help the financial sector stabilise. According to the IMF, there have been at least 145 banking crises, 208 monetary crashes and 72 sovereign-debt crises in the last 40 years and these are bound to continue if we stay with the present approach.
It is not just another downturn in the business cycle but a deep systemic crisis caused by the rift between a casino economics based on monetary speculation and the social and ecological realities of our time. The only way to bridge this chasm between money and planet, between money and people is to reinvent money.
The Change and Benefits of Regional Currencies
Communities are full of underused resources: individuals with time and talents; businesses with spare capacity in the form of restaurant tables, hire cars, printing services, theatre seats; voluntary associations with underused vehicles and rooms; local authorities with underused community and leisure centres.
Regional Currencies reinvent money to mobilize these resources without burdening taxpayers either at the national or regional level. Regional Currencies:
- value talents and skills
- rebuild communities and strengthen local economies
- help protect local environments share inventory, labour and skills that could serve the community
- harness volunteers more effectively
- support learning, training and skills-sharing
- sustain local businesses with spare capacity
- meet the demand for the care and support of the elderly.
Furthermore, they are not subject to the risk of a meltdown in the financial sector. Like the Brixton or Lewes pound (and there are many thousands of them worldwide, in Germany, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Brazil, Venezuela, South Africa, New Zealand, ...) regional currencies behave and do what national currencies don’t do.
Who should read People Money? See here
