A year long project begins

"The Future of Money" is the title of a book I want all my friends to read. Ordinarily I would be buying and gifting copies, but strangely, that turns out not to be possible. My efforts to contact the author have been ineffectual, so as I reread it for the fourth time, I am going to make notes and share them on this blog. If you can get hold of a copy, I recommend you read the real book itself. My blog will naturally reflect the limits of my understanding of this stuff, and I am certainly no expert, just a fan. I haven't been this passionate for anything since I stood on the street waiting to buy tickets for a Beattles concert in Montreal in the sixties! But what could be more gripping a topic than money? Along the way comes what the heck people mean by "complementary/alternative currency"...which turns out to be pretty exciting stuff! How about systems that handle a lot of our needs without extra taxes and regulations?

On the board of the Global Abundance Alliance, three years ago we were beginning to look systematically at "what is a gift economy?" We had  read Lewis Hyde's book "The Gift"- my  first exposure to the idea that what we know as "the economy" which seems so overwhelmingly important, is in fact a subsidiary section of the give-and-take in humanity, which somehow we have collectively endowed with nearly divine importance. Helen Kessler recommended I read "The Future of Money" by Bernard Lietaer

Helen had the paperback on her shelf, but she lives on the other side of the country. Imagine my surprise when I tried to buy online, to discover that is was selling for $150 a copy! A paperback copy!

I got the book on an interlibrary loan. When it arrived, there was a note to say I couldn't take it out of the library, but could only read it on the premise. So I travelled back and forth for the week or so it took to read 500 pages, taking notes and exclaiming over the story to anyone who would listen, and getting to know the local librarians really well.  Meanwhile, my son found a copy in Spanish, fortunately one of my languages, for a mere $50, so I have actually now been able to own and reread it. If I miss the point in my translation, the fault is all mine, and I apologize to the author.

In his preface to the 2005 Spanish edition published in Argentina, Lietaer says he wrote the book in the 90's as a warning that our monetary system was dangerously fragile. He hoped to raise people's consciousness about money and the financial system so as to stimulate the creative alternatives that would cushion the blow of a great financial crisis for as many people as possible. He wanted more people to understand the existence of complementary financial systems that had actually been road tested around the world by people in the countries affected by 86 financial crashes of the previous 20 years.

People who have lived through these preliminary experiences of financial system collapse have pioneered models of mutual credit arrangements that we all can use now that his predictions have unfortunately been fulfilled in the crash of 2008 and subsequent "Great Recession" Such systems are in place in Argentina, Germany, Switzerland, & Austria

His predictions of financial system collapse centered on the role of the US dollar as what's called "an international reserve currency", meaning that dollars have been used all over the world and circulate way beyond the boundaries of any national control. In 2004 the US was consuming 6% more than it produced. In that same year, the International Monetary Fund expressed criticism of the US for the first time in history. The problem was massive, unsustainable levels of debt both by government and industry. If the Chinese and Japanese holders of US dollars stopped wanting them, if it was thought that Americans could no longer repay their enormous loans, there was risk of a sudden rapid fall in the value of the US dollar, on top of the steady erosion of value they were already experiencing .  

In the event, the crash that actually occurred came not from government default, but from the unsustainable debts incurred by private financial institutions operating unregulated, internationally..... making ever wilder loans in the real estate market. In fact, the Chinese and Japanese have been gritting their teeth as their US investments plumetted. Apparently they are taking a longer view, not calling in their debts. I suppose they expect we will all work this out together somehow. Lietaer sees our actual financial troubles as a long term opportunity to put in place what it will take to have sustainable abundance. The mutual credit arrangements he champions will need to be democratically controlled, transparent, and regulated against fraud in the same way as official money needs to be.

I am writing this on a train, riding from Washington DC to Raleigh, NC, where I live. It will take me 6 hours- an hour longer than it would take me to drive. There is a lot more leg room than I am accustomed to on airplanes. My daddy was a railroad man, and I rode on a lot of trains as a child, but I have not been on one in years.  I had forgotten how large the windows are, and how the land flashes by so close you can almost feel the trees. There are rivers, and fields, cement factories and trailer parks, farms and towns. I am moved by the beauty of this forgotten America. I like the look of my fellow passengers, too. They are not so glossy as the ones on TV.

I think we have been systematically undervaluing and ignoring the things that matter in life- not so much in our individual lives, but in our life together. We have looked so hard at personal success, we have forgotten our fellow passengers. I have set this year aside for taking a look at that. As I explore the gift economy and re-read Bernard Lietaer's wonderful book, I will share it with you.