2001 / 2002

3. globalisation as the topic of inquiry
by the House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs.

Life-long indebtedness begins with student loans that take 17 years to repay, continues with mortgages that are paid back up to 4 times, and ends with pensions that are devalued through inflation and are at risk due to mismanagement.

Banks create money as interest-bearing credit (97% of the total money supply) and the State borrows money as National Debt. Instead, the Government could make use of its right to create money interest-free (M0) and use the ‘Seigniorage’ mechanism to increase the money supply for public services such as education and health.

LETS (Local Exchange Trade Systems) and TIMEBANKS are the community model for creating money as interest-free accountancy units. They record transactions between people who agree the value between them. Commercial barter companies do the same for businesses, but take around 7% commission in cash and the motive is profit. The world-wide common currency in clearinghouses for inter-trading is time.

NEXT MEETINGS

Prof. Dr. Kennedy discovered that it is virtually impossible to carry out sound ecological concepts without fundamentally altering the debt-based money system. Tonight she will offer her extensive experience and research at the beginning of her world tour. The title of her talk is the same as her book that has been translated into 12 languages since it first was printed: how money works, how it causes the global problems we are facing and the solutions that people are finding. She works as an architect, urban planner and professor for ecological building techniques in Hannover, Germany. She starts her world tour in London, together with her husband Declan who gives public talks on the progress of ecological villages world-wide.

Nov 21: Public Government Spending and Interest-Free Banking –
Practical Solutions to Monetary Problems - Richard Douthwaite

Public spending in excess of public revenue does not necessarily mean a public borrowing requirement. If the government spent money into circulation rather than leaving it to commercial banks to create, it would not only make more public capital projects possible but it would also make the economic system far more stable. This is because the money supply would not disappear when a worried public ceased to borrow for consumption and businesses ceased to borrow to invest. The looming global depression will be exacerbated by a sharp decline in the money stock, rather than moderated by there still being a lot of money about. Douthwaite will also discuss the role that money created on the basis of debt plays in generating the growth compulsion of the current economic system and the extent to which interest-free banking would reduce this.

Richard Douthwaite is an economist and writer who has published The Growth Illusion, The Ecology of Money, Short Circuit. He lives in the West of Ireland and has co-founded FEASTA the Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability, which is currently developing plans for an interest-free bank.

Dec 12: Monetary Reform is Party Policy in New Zealand where Democrats are Convinced Reformers and Part of the Alliance Government
Michael Rowbotham

Michael Rowbotham’s books The Grip of Death - A study of modern money, debt slavery and destructive economics and Goodbye America “place him on a par with the social reforming economists E F Schumacher and Henry George“ writes Francis Hutchinson in The Ecologist. They have led him on world tours for speaking engagements. Tonight he will report on the progressive politics in New Zealand as a model for other countries. Canon Peter Challen writes: “A lucid account of where money comes from, explaining why debt increasingly enslaves us. An analysis and proposals for the supply of money, creating a supportive financial environment and decreasing reliance on debt. A radical, shocking and eye-opening exposé of how our money system really works.”

David Williams was the first officer employed by a local authority (Hounslow) to put LETS into place as an anti-poverty mechanism for community building.

In Hillingdon, the Groundworks Trust has established an Internet Café which David manages – partly by paying workers in Hillingdon £s or Cuppa Vouchers to have a drink. A booklet is used to record transactions between people and every six months books are called in to control credit and ‘fraud’. Tonight David will share his experiences with local currencies that are the model for Sterling on a global level: Hillingdon £s are the interest-free currency that banks create as debt: Cuppas are the ‘M0’ supply that Government mints as cash and coin.

Feb 19: Debate on Financial Supervision with MEPs, MPs and Representatives of the Supervisory Powers – Keith Whincup

Keith Whincup is a ‘bank victim’ turned ‘star fighter’. He lost his Renault garage with 40 employees due to Barclay’s reneging on a loan. While still hoping to win compensation through legal procedures, he has also studied the law sufficiently that he is now giving evidence to the Treasury Select Committee at the House of Commons. He is also talking to the European Commission on the supervision of banking in the UK.

Mar 14: CurrencyWales.com – A Proposal for Economic Self-Determination for the People of Wales – Eluned Hurn

Eluned Hurn introduced computer communication to Wales in 1983 and set up the first LETS (Local Exchange Trading System) in Powys in 1993. She has been invited to prepare a Briefing Paper on a Currency for Wales for the National Assembly and will report on her progress – both on the level of coalition building and on the political response.

OUR CONTEXT

¨ “The Parliamentary Process needs to make certain that the Money Supply
ensures its Value” The Rt Hon Lord Caithness

OUR ISSUE: DEBT- and INTEREST-FREE CURRENCIES

STABLE STERLING could become a parallel currency
as a debt- and interest-free model for the Commonwealth of Nations.

Monetary Reform groups pop up everywhere. The range of interests is wide and the issues vary from ethical investment and social credit to green taxes and barter for the third sector. Canon Peter Challen, Chairman of the Christian Council for Monetary Justice has compiled over eighty agencies who come together to learn and understand, study and analyse, educate and promote and generally share their concerns for a better future thanks to a better money system.

Public Confidence has still faith in the Parliamentary Process and Labour’s Third Way despite the tacit contract between governments and banks that continues to affect citizens detrimentally. The House of Lords’ Select Committee’s Inquiry into the Global Economy gives reason to hope that ever improving dialogues between State and Citizens will prevent what people are increasingly afraid of.

Executive Summary from the Submission of Evidence to the Select Committee’s Inquiry in the Global Economy:

Open Money is required for an ‘open and integrated economy’. Globalisation should be called dollarisation or economic imperialism. It is the world-wide creation of the ‘need’ for dollars through debt. It is also the territorial proliferation of international banking practices to supply national currency to finance national governments and trans-national corporations to employ people.

The FORUM for STABLE CURRENCIES has been hosting debates between analysts of monetary reform, victims of banks and institutions and promoters of LETS and Barter Companies since 1998. Programmes have been distributed to both Houses of Parliament in the hope that the topics debated become part of the political agenda, especially as EURO challenges the sovereignty to issue national currency.