Get rid of the money system, then get rid of goverrments

Incredible Bread Machine, the book was copyrighted in 1966.
[link to library.mises.org]
200 pages, 6.6 megabytes

The video: [link to www.youtube.com] (55 minutes black
and white)

Link supplied thanks to targetfreedom dot com

This guy - Ben Dyson - isn't as effective as Jem Bendell, but is worth while watching and listening to.

[link to www.positivemoney.org.uk]

Muti-Lateral Barter replaces central banking (Thomas Greco)

Coming soon: a world without money and banks.

[link to beyondmoney.net]

Who in their right mind would be so bold as to predict the end of money and banking as we’ve known it (besides yours truly, that is)?

Well, how about the Governor of the Bank of England?

“There is no reason products and services could not be swapped directly by consumers and producers through a system of direct exchange – essentially a massive barter economy. All it requires is some commonly used unit of account and adequate computing power to make sure all transactions could be settled immediately. People would pay each other electronically, without the payment being routed through anything that we would currently recognize as a bank. Central banks in their present form would no longer exist – nor would money.”

– Mervyn King – Governor of the Bank of England

You see, even the insiders can see the writing on the wall.

Another observer who has been in the thick of cashless trading developments for decades is Bob Meyer, publisher and editor of Barter News. A while back, Bob wrote an article that gives some pertinent history of the “barter” industry and sketches his vision of how “Simple One-to-One Exchanges Will Give Way to Organized, Computerized, Multi-Lateral Barter.” I strongly recommend that people read it

[link to www.barternews.com]

Five videos about the Mondragon Cooperative (chopped from an older film documentary on the successful Mondragon Cooperative founded by Fr. Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta in Spain).

One: [link to www.youtube.com] (10:03)(the coop bank is mentioned in part one; history begins with Spanish Civil war)

Two: [link to www.youtube.com] (10:02)(history continued, initial organization and founders of Mondragon)

Three: [link to www.youtube.com] (10:03)(legal, administrative, and financial structure of cooperatives; bank started)

Four: [link to www.youtube.com] (10:04)(bank finances new cooperatives, statement that of the 80 cooperatives begun not one has failed is incorrect as one was not showing a profit and was in fact shut down [book source], 3 to 1 pay schedule mentioned - this ratio has since been increased [to at least 6 to 1?], teaching and research sections)

Five: [link to www.youtube.com] (10:34)(high productivity per worker -twice the general Spanish work force, labor dispute causes strike in 1974, grocery coop begun with 100K members at time this film was made, school coops begun, film ends)


For more information please go to:

[link to www.mondragon.mcc.es]
[link to www.distributistreview.com]
[link to www.distributist.org]

Lew Rockwell has a very good piece of writing in regards to Jury Nullification:

[link to www.lewrockwell.com]

This principle could be used to help in any kind of defense including the type of problem Bernard von NotHause had.

IMF's epic plan to conjure away debt and dethrone bankers

So there is a magic wand after all. A revolutionary paper by the International Monetary Fund claims that one could eliminate the net public debt of the US at a stroke, and by implication do the same for Britain, Germany, Italy, or Japan.

[link to removingtheshackles.blogspot.ca]

This piece is very well written, but there is an important error.

This error is a common presumption not limited to the writings of Benes and Kumhof; the error is in these two paragraphs:

"Benes and Kumhof argue that credit-cycle trauma - caused by private money creation - dates deep into history and lies at the root of debt jubilees in the ancient religions of Mesopotian and the Middle East.

Harvest cycles led to systemic defaults thousands of years ago, with forfeiture of collateral, and concentration of wealth in the hands of lenders. These episodes were not just caused by weather, as long thought. They were amplified by the effects of credit."

The problem is not with using (mutual) credit as a basis for a monetary system, it is caused by two interactive factors.

(1)Positive interest is added to the hypothecation of the promissory note - rather than a demurrage fee.
(2)The seigniorage in the credit instruments is presumed to be the property of the so-called "lending institution" rather than being vested with the people.

Some websites where you can access information on Social Credit(supplied by Wally Klinck):

[link to social-credit.com]
[link to www.mondopolitico.com]
[link to social-credit.blogspot.com]
[link to www.douglassocialcredit.com]
[link to www.ecn.net.au]
[link to en.wikipedia.org]

Social Credit stands for Freedom, Abundance and Leisure.



*********************************
I believe Mr Klinck lives in Alberta Canada and was born in 1935

(links above supplied in 2011)

*****************************

Here is an archived discussion from 2005:
[link to www.elistas.com]

Here is a discussion with the subject line of:
"Repudiation before Default"

[link to constitutionalgov.us]

The Economic War Archives ended one year ago in October of 2011
[link to constitutionalgov.us]

Previously I brought up Mondragon and binary economics and pointed out that Mondragon cooperative was the very best example in the whole world of binary economic principles.

However, author Robert Ashford never mentioned the Mondragon cooperative in his book. The guy credited as "co-author" Rodney Shakespeare of England (I believe he functioned more as a proof reader of the manuscript) has corresponded with me on the matter of the coop. Rodney Shakespeare subsequently wrote another book - SEVEN STEPS TO SOCIAL JUSTICE that also discusses the monetary system.

Jeff Gates also wrote a similar book THE OWNERSHIP SOCIETY and there was an online discussion about the principles of binary economics. In a similar vein the Mondragon cooperative seemed taboo on the discussion forum.

Here is the point; what we are using for money is already a system of mutual credit - but the bookkeeping is incorrect. Essentially, it is a question of seigniorage. When the money was presumed to be a gold or silver coin about 75% of the seigniorage was vested in the coin. Paper printing was somewhat constrained because of the belief in redemption in coin.

Silver was lawfully replaced as the "backing" in what was characterized as "the crime of 73" (1873) and that was the story associated with the presidential contest with William Jennings Bryan who opposed gold backing and supported a return to silver backing for the dollar. Then, in 1933 under Roosevelt, the gold backing was removed for united states citizens although redemption was available to foreign entities and persons. That was stopped by Nixon (197x).

The defacto default backing for the federal reserve note became the credit of the people.

Essentially, the fifth plank of the communist manifesto was implemented through this series of changes. The fifth plank says that the credit of the people is the property of the government. The government in turn assigned the people's credit to the banks via license. We have given uncle Sam a credit card, and now uncle Sam is complaining because we are failing to keep up the payments. Who knew that Uncle Sam was a profligate gambler who liked to start fights, and that his word was no good?

Anyway, the point I tried to make to the speaker (name expunged) was that the only way a system of mutual credit was if we the people owned the banking system and after cost profits were returned to the people in annual or semi-annual rebate checks - or possibly a retirement fund could be created and managed for the people's future. Much like the Mondragon system is administrated.

It is essential that everyone acquire and read Griffin's MANDRAKE MECHANISM which is easily found many places on the net; that chapter out of his book explains the process of hypothcation of the promissory note and the creation of money.

I wasted a lot of time pondering the 11th marble phenomena (also called the 11th hour and the parable of the cards) without recognizing the seigniorage problem.

The 11th marble problem involves the loan of 10 marbles and asking the return of 11 marbles - it is the usury problem - serious enough itself, but the larger problem which I characterized as the tyrannosaurus rex in the room - "eating everyone alive" involves the bookkeeping problem.

The bank loans credit - BUT IT IS NOT THEIR PROPERTY IN THE FIRST PLACE!

Purging America Out From The Matrix:

[link to xa.yimg.com]

Dr. Ellen Brown on Student Loan Forgiveness

Less than 4 minute video: [link to www.youtube.com]

Dr Ellen Brown; money as credit: [link to www.youtube.com]

Dr Brown favors a system of publicly owned state banks patterned after the North Dakota model. Her speeches are often found on you tube; she speaks on all aspects of banking and monetary system design.


I suggest you also read the piece by Richard Cook: "Credit as a Public Utility: the Key to Monetary Reform" which is found here:

[link to www.globalresearch.ca]

Video series; Richard Cook; Credit as a public utility (six part series):
[link to video.google.com]


Credit As A Public Utility: The Solution to the Economic Crisis “The Collapse of the Financial System” Written and Produced by Richard C. Cook Summary: The collapse we are seeing today began in the financial system, not the producing economy. The trigger of the 2008 bank meltdown was refusal by European banks to purchase any more “toxic” U.S. debt based on mortgages and sold as securities. Now, with the decline in equity values, the burden of debt in our economy has grown even larger. Thus a renewal of bank lending will not solve the problem, while the economic stimulus program of the Obama administration is likewise insufficient to restore economic health. Richard C. Cook is a former U.S Treasury analyst who also worked in the Carter White House and for NASA and writes on public policy issues. His new book is We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform (Tendril Press 2009). His website is [link to www.richardccook.com.] He is a member of the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network and has been an adviser to Congressman Dennis Kucinich and the American Monetary Institute. Purchase the DVD at Richard C. Cook’s website

I'm enjoying this guy's writing; two pieces from 2010:

Economics is an Ersatz Religion [I agree]:
[link to gonzalolira.blogspot.com]

I especially enjoyed and agree with this brief explanation of why mathematical modeling of an economy is difficult to impossible:

"Human invention cannot predict all the moves in a game of chess—and chess only has six classes of pieces moving on a mere 64 squares." - and they expect to model something as complex as an entire economy?

Why hyperinflation is a certainty:
[link to gonzalolira.blogspot.com]

My solution is considerably different from that of Gonzalo who suggests - just let it all fail.

This quick and dirty analysis and solution was written mid July of 2002 and suggests the solution lies in Gesellian economic models.

******************************************************

Written in humor and jest. Michael Linton magical gas mentioned also. (See btm)

Try to picture money as soap bubbles with dollar signs inside, or whatever currency symbol is in use in your locality.

These soap bubbles are lawfully created by use of expanding gas that expands at an exponential rate.

The soap bubbles are kept in containers of various sizes and composition but resemble barrels, pails and buckets, and sieves, and are moved from container to container by men with pails.

The containers are labeled "trusts", "stocks", "endowments", "off shore accounts", "investment funds", "demand accounts", "pension funds", etc.

Each container is tended carefully by one or more persons according to the size of the container. Some of the largest vats have hundreds of people tending them.

People all over the world are working long hours gathering soap bubbles to put into the containers of their choice. They work at telephones and desks calling other people in efforts to gather soap bubbles. Some merely dig ditches and stewards assigned to care for these less endowed individuals carefully gather worker's soap bubbles and insert them into the large vat labeled "social security."

It has been noticed lately that the soap bubbles are bursting.

Congressperson Butler calls out "The soap bubbles are bursting! Surely we must add certain polymers to the soap mixture so that these bubbles cannot burst."

Congressperson Smiley says "The internal surface of the containers is too rough, we must create a law that says the internal surface be created of the smoothest material known."

Member of Parliament Perfidious Albion yells: "Watch that guy! I just saw him running off with a bucket of small suds!"

Duma member Noxious Nyet notices the sieve: "Who is pouring bubbles into the sieve? Are you prozhektërstvo? (hare-brained schemer)

United Nations representative Au Grande Serieux submits a resolution that the barrels must be assigned Centurions to watch for theft.

All is naught as the bubbles that have been inflated with the magical expanding gas continue to burst.

Economic philosopher Levi Philos points out: Inflate the bubbles instead with magical Gesellian contracting gas */1, */3. When everyone notices the bubbles shrink over time and if left too long completely disappear, then an urgency develops in the care and handling of these bubbles. Some will notice that one or more barrels are merely being poured into while others are extracting and these barrels can be removed from the cycle. Others will notice that stealing buckets of bubbles doesn't work very well because of the shrinkage so that less guards are needed. Entire boiler rooms full of telephone solicitors empty as their managers notice that no shortage of bubbles exists, but smart people are needed to direct and employ these bubbles back into circulation.

Written by Levi Philos */2; This item was prepared with some help from the webpage insultmonger.com (site no longer exists) CopyLeft Document. Please feel free to copy and post this item anywhere you want to. Take my name off as I do not care to catch any more spam than I do now.

*/1 Named after early 1900s economic philosopher Silvio Gesell who noticed that money was a symbol system for exchanging real stuff by proxy and it would work better if it symbolically displayed the same or greater entropy that real stuff displayed. Unfortunately, Gesell went on to write a book of 450 pages duration as was the common practice of the era, and nobody ever read it because big books were only meant for display in fancy home libraries.

*/2 Levi Philos, infamous compatriot of Ferdinand Feeghoot.

*/3 Conveniently forgetting magical Linton gas, where the bubbles once inflated neither inflate further nor deflate. However, the bubble inflation crew themselves deflate, become flaccid, and finally lie down on the job.

Max Keiser ( [link to www.youtube.com] ) says bankers are going the way of Twinkies:

[link to www.youtube.com] (26 minutes)

Blurb: "In this November 20 episode, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert present a success story for the three year anniversary of the Keiser Report and that is that the banksters are going the way of Twinkies, Ho Ho's and Ding Dongs - OUT OF BUSINESS! And just as the junk food and fake bread of the Hostess products caused obesity and diabetes in Americans, so too did the junk bonds and toxic derivatives of the bankers and central bankers cause a flabby, obese and diabetic finance sector in London and New York. In the second half, Max Keiser talks to Ross Ashcroft, writer and director of FOUR HORSEMEN, about why many people didn't see the financial crisis and what can be done to regain control of the financial system."

Disintermediation anyone?

Lets go back to a barter system!!!

I will be good as i can cook, decorate, have collectables and know law!!

Bring it on!!

What If We Adopted A System Where The Banks Did Not Create Our Money?

By Michael Snyder of the Economic Collapse Blog

What if there was a financial system that would eliminate the need for the federal government to go into debt, that would eliminate the need for the Federal Reserve, that would end the practice of fractional reserve banking and that would dethrone the big banks? Would you be in favor of such a system? A surprising new IMF research paper entitled “The Chicago Plan Revisited” by Jaromir Benes and Michael Kumhof is making waves in economic circles all over the globe. The paper suggests that the world would be much better off if we adopted a system where the banks did not create our money. So instead of a system where more money is only created when more debt is created, we would have a system of debt-free money that is created directly by national governments. There have been others that have suggested such a system before, but to have an IMF research paper actually recommend that such a system be adopted is a very big deal. At the moment, the world is experiencing the biggest debt crisis in human history, and this proposal is being described as a “radical solution” that could potentially remedy some of our largest financial problems. Unfortunately, apologists for the current system are already viciously attacking this new IMF paper, and of course the big banks would throw a major fit if such a system was ever to be seriously contemplated. That is why it is imperative that we educate people about how money really works. Our current system is in the process of collapsing and we desperately need to transition to a new one.

One of the fundamental problems with our current financial system is that it is based on debt. Just take a look at the United States. The way our system works today, the vast majority of all money is “created” either when we borrow money or the government borrows money. Therefore, the creation of more money creates more debt. Under such a system, it should not be surprising that the total amount of debt in the United States is more than 30 times larger than it was just 40 years ago.

We don’t have to do things this way. There is a better alternative. National governments can directly issue debt-free currency into circulation. The following is a brief excerpt from the IMF report… [link to www.imf.org] [71 pages and the impetus for this article - the fact that two guys working on behalf of the IMF have created this paper is itself of significance IMO] The Chicago Plan Revisited (working paper - not official IMF policy), by Jaromir Benes and Michael Kumhof

Go back in this thread just five or six posts; look for this line: Muti-Lateral Barter replaces central banking (Thomas Greco)

Money is in essence a communication. These computers are all about communicating. Multi-lateral barter is one possible solution that leads to the disintermediation also discussed.

Why should banks be allowed to create money?

That is a very good question.

Why should sovereign governments ever have to borrow money from anyone?

That is another very good question.

Our current system is designed to enrich the bankers and get everyone else into debt.

And is that not exactly what has happened?

Taking the creation of money away from the bankers would have some tremendous advantages. A recent article by renowned financial journalist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard described some of these benefits… (UK based)

[link to www.telegraph.co.uk]

There are few things worse than an economist.

Right now, I can't think of anything, but something has to be worse.

A debt-free monetary system is superior to a debt-based monetary system in so many ways.

For example, if the U.S. government directly spent debt-free money into circulation, it could conceivably never need to borrow a single dollar ever again. If the government wanted to spend more money than it brought in, it would simply print it up and spend it.

Of course the big danger with that would be inflation. That is why it would be imperative for there to be a hard cap on what the government could spend. For example, you could set the cap on spending by the federal government at 20 percent of GDP. That way we would never end up looking like the Weimar Republic.

And the current federal debt could be paid down a little at a time using newly created debt-free dollars. This would have to be done slowly to keep inflation under control, but it could be done.

That way we would not hand a 16 trillion dollar debt to our children and our grandchildren. We created this mess so we should clean it up.

Theoretically you could also do away with the federal income tax if you wanted to. Personally, I would like to see the federal government be funded to a large degree by tariffs on foreign goods. That would also have the side benefit of bringing millions of jobs back into the United States.

Our system of income tax collection is just so incredibly inefficient. It costs us mind boggling amounts of time and money. Just consider the following stats from one of my previous articles…

1 – The U.S. tax code is now 3.8 million words long. If you took all of William Shakespeare’s works and collected them together, the entire collection would only be about 900,000 words long.

2 – According to the National Taxpayers Union, U.S. taxpayers spend more than 7.6 billion hours complying with federal tax requirements. Imagine what our society would look like if all that time was spent on more economically profitable activities.

3 – 75 years ago, the instructions for Form 1040 were two pages long. Today, they are 189 pages long.

4 – There have been 4,428 changes to the tax code over the last decade. It is incredibly costly to change tax software, tax manuals and tax instruction booklets for all of those changes.

5 – According to the National Taxpayers Union, the IRS currently has 1,999 different publications, forms, and instruction sheets that you can download from the IRS website.

6 – Our tax system has become so complicated that it is almost impossible to file your taxes correctly. For example, back in 1998 Money Magazine had 46 different tax professionals complete a tax return for a hypothetical household. All 46 of them came up with a different result.

7 – In 2009, PC World had five of the most popular tax preparation software websites prepare a tax return for a hypothetical household. All five of them came up with a different result.

8 – The IRS spends $2.45 for every $100 that it collects in taxes.

For long stretches of our history the United States did not have any income tax, and during those times we thrived. It is entirely conceivable that we could return to such a system.

At this point, the wealthy have become absolute masters at hiding their wealth from taxation. According to the IMF, a total of 18 trillion dollars is currently being hidden in offshore banks. What we are doing right now produces very inequitable results and it is not working.

In many ways, inflation would be a much fairer “tax” than the income tax because inflation taxes each dollar equally. Nobody would be able to cheat the system.

But if people really love the IRS and the federal income tax, we could keep them under a debt-free money system. I just happen to think that the IRS and the federal income tax are both really bad ideas that have never served the interests of the American people.

In any event, hopefully you can see that there is a much broader range of solutions to our problems than the two major political parties have been presenting to us.

We do not have to allow the banks to create our money.

The federal government does not have to go into more debt.

We don’t actually need the Federal Reserve.

There are alternatives to the federal income tax and the IRS.

Yes, it is very true that no system would be perfect. But clearly the path that we are on is only going to lead to disaster. U.S. government finances are a complete and total nightmare, and this mountain of debt that we have accumulated is going to absolutely destroy us if we allow it to.

So somebody out there should be proposing a fundamental change in direction for our financial system.

Unfortunately, our politicians are just proposing more of the same, and we all know where that is going to lead.

Simplify your thread Levi, it's being attacked.

1: The 16th Amendment is fully anti-COTUS and fully Marxist. It would enrage the founders, if they were alive.

2: See the above.

Alternative currency proposals in Virginia and Colorado

I am not familiar with either of these efforts.

Virginia is considering a bill proposing alternative currency:
[link to fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com]

The actual bill in pdf format is just 3 pages, but I barely skim read the bill. Here is the blurb:

America is $14 trillion in debt. The secretive Federal Reserve System — a bastard-hybrid of privately-owned banks that act as America’s central bank with limited government supervision — secretly bailed out foreign banks for a mind-boggling $12.3 trillion. The much-anticipated demise of the dollar is given an extra push by last November’s announcement by China and Russia that they’ve abandoned the dollar and will use their own currencies for bilateral trade.

Now comes news that the state of Virginia is considering adopting its own currency.

A bill has been prefiled for the 2011 session of the Virginia state House with this title:

“Establishing a joint subcommittee to study whether the Commonwealth should adopt a currency to serve as an alternative to the currency distributed by the Federal Reserve System in the event of a major breakdown of the Federal Reserve System.“

After the first couple of introductory pages, the bill gets down to the real job at hand — a proposal for the state of Virginia to create its own currency:

“RESOLVED by the House of Delegates, the Senate concurring, That a joint subcommittee be appointed to study whether the Commonwealth should adopt a currency to serve as an alternative to the currency distributed by the Federal Reserve System in the event of a major breakdown of the Federal Reserve System.”

Here’s the proposed Virginia bill in pdf: [link to lis.virginia.gov]

The interested reader might contact Richard Cook who I know is working in Virginia on some form of alternative currency.
[link to www.richardccook.com] blog: [link to www.richardccook.com]
Currently Cook is running some stuff on "the return of the Aeons" which makes me doubt his wisdom.

Thomas Greco reports

Geneva.

I left Tucson on October 1, arriving in Geneva on the 2nd where I was hosted by Tim Anderson of Community Forge ( [link to communityforge.net]

On October 3, I was one of three presenters on a panel session titled, Solidarity Economy & Alternative Finance, at the United Nations Palais des Nations. The session was moderated by Hamish Jenkins of the UN Non-Governmental Liaison Service (NGLS). The other panelists were:

- Peter Utting, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) who spoke about general trends and issues relating to the solidarity economy, and

- Frederic Lepeyre, who spoke about his research with the ILO.

You can find a full report of the session at the NGLS website: [link to www.un-ngls.org]

On October 5 and 6, I conducted a workshop on moneyless exchange for a group of Community Forge associates.

Thomas Greco report

Crete.

I was on the island of Crete from the 6th to 14th of October, during which time I participated in a two day workshop on Community Exchange Systems and Alternative Currency Systems for Sustainable Communities, led by Prof. Jem Bendell, as part of the International Sustainability Summit that was held at the European Sustainability Academy (Sharon Jackson, Director).


My presentation was titled, The Emerging Butterfly Society: Making the shift to a steady-state economy and a world that works for all.

The 2-day workshop included a sharing of experiences and ideas by leaders of local exchange groups from Crete and from Volos on the Greek mainland. The latter was represented by Giannis Grigoriou one of the co-founders of the Volos credit clearing exchange (called TEM) that has gotten considerable coverage in the international media, including the New York Times, PRI, and the BBC.


A concrete result of the workshop was an agreement to publish The Drapanos Declaration on exchange alternatives. Here is the text of the Declaration in English:

Individuals, communities and environments are the true source of our wealth and well-being.

Therefore we develop alternative means of exchange between individuals and organisations to foster more cooperative and equitable relations.

Although we may focus on our own communities, we share this principle with other communities.

Therefore we commit to work together in Greece and worldwide, to improve our practices, so that more communities connect to their own abundance.

Our efforts are part of a greater movement to make economic activity more accountable, socially beneficial and environmentally sustainable.

Our work must develop ever expanding circles of cooperation, exchange and learning.

We invite others who share these aims to join us in a growing movement and emerging profession on community exchange.

We are asking others to join in endorsing this Declaration. You can do so by adding your name in a comment to the post at
[link to jembendell.wordpress.com] where it is also available in Greek.

Volos.

Following Crete, Sergio Lub and I flew to Thesoloniki where we were met by Andreas Andreopoulos who had helped to organize our mainland tour. The following day, Andreas transported us to Volos where we met up again with Giannis who had arranged for us to conduct a workshop for a dozen or so of the core people in the TEM exchange. He also arranged for me to do a brief interview with a local TV channel, and for us to meet with the Mayor, who has been very supportive of this grassroots effort to cope with the financial austerity being imposed on Greece by the IMF and the EU.

My urgent message to the TEM organizers, as well as to the other groups that I addressed throughout my tour, was this.

In order for a mutual credit clearing exchange to be scalable and successful over the long-run:

(1) it must be anchored in the local business community, especially the small- and medium-sized enterprises that form the backbone of every local economy, and

(2) the allocation of credit lines cannot be arbitrary, but must be based primarily on the level of sales by each account into the exchange.

The fundamental objective of mutual credit clearing is to create liquidity within the local economy, i.e., to provide a means of payment by which associated producers can buy and sell with one another without having to rely on the availability of scarce official money. That liquidity must logically be founded upon local productivity. It is therefore the most productive enterprises that should be allowed to carry negative balances in the system. Because they have demonstrated their earning power, they are the ones that can be trusted to spend before they earn. Except for small credit lines allocated to new members who bring goods or services ready for sale to the market, all others should be required to earn credits before they can spend.

After Sergio’s departure to return to the U.S., I stayed on in Volos for two more days during which Giannis took me to meet with the Archbishop and to do an interview on the Diocesan radio channel. He also took me to visit the twice weekly TEM market to observe the variety of things being offered, and to talk with some of the participants.

Athens. On October 18 I took a motor coach to Athens where I met up with some like minded colleagues and participated in a festival on the Solidarity Economy during which organizers of several exchanges came together to discuss how their local exchanges might be networked together. My thanks to Anthi Theiopoulou for providing hospitality during my Athens stay.

UK. On October 23 I flew to London, then journeyed onward by train to York to give a presentation at the York LETS Conference. I then traveled back to London on the 26th to do a colloquium at the New Economics Foundation (NEF) and two workshops for LETSLink UK on the 27th and 28th, finishing on the evening of the 28th with a presentation in Brixton sponsored by NEF and the Brixton Pound.

I next travelled to Ambleside in the heart of the Lake District to give a presentation, Beyond Money, Banks, and the Left-Right Divide,for executive MBA students at Cumbria University.

The following day (October 31), after joining the MBA group for a boat ride on Lake Windermere and spending a couple hours at the Ruskin Museum in Conniston, we proceeded to Lancaster where I gave a lecture to a mixed audience at the Lancaster campus of Cumbria University, then followed up the next day with a workshop that was supposed to last 3 hours but stretched on closer to five.

All in all, I was quite pleased with this tour. I think we accomplished some significant results, and I was encouraged to meet up with so many dedicated and able people along the way.

I recently posted Richard Logie’s TEDx talk about Complementary Exchange Systems. Richard has operated a successful commercial trade exchange for almost twenty years, so he knows what works and what doesn’t. Exchange organizers at the grassroots can learn a great deal from Richard and others in the commercial trade exchange business so I strongly urge them to watch this.

Please pay particular attention to the method Richard uses to determine the credit lines to be provided to members' accounts, as well as the list of advantages that membership in a credit clearing exchange provides and the elements that need to be standardized in order for exchanges to be effectively networked together.

These are the issues that need to be adequately handled in order for moneyless exchange based on mutual credit clearing to become robust and to achieve significant scale.

Richard Logie on TED:
[link to beyondmoney.net]

Hidden Cures on Money by Richard Walbaum

Natural Law Papers: [link to www.hiddencures.com]

Eric Harris-Braun 10/22/2010 looking forward =>
[link to www.metacurrency.org]

Read the entire piece, but focus on this powerful paragraph: “When I was growing up in Ecuador, I remember being in the marketplace where I saw a man sitting at a table with a pen and paper. He was listening to a customer and was writing away like mad. I remember not understanding what that man was selling. Was he composing a poem on the spot? I couldn't imagine the visibly poor customer wanting a poem. So I asked my parents who told me that he was selling the writing itself; that the customer was illiterate and needed to send a letter and so would pay the man to write the letter. I remember being amazed by this at the time, but then forgot about it pretty quickly. This story comes back to me now that I've come to understand that almost all of us in the world are doing exactly the same thing as those illiterate customers I saw in my youth. We are illiterate and don't even know it. We don't recognize that there is a form of "writing" we hire others to do for us but could learn ourselves. This form of writing is the writing of wealth acknowledgments, and what we call it is money.”

Eric Harris-Braun goes on to describe money as a writing; I have been calling money a communication.

Thomas Greco - Your Money Power: "The vast majority of people remain unaware of it, but the fact is, we have in our own hands, right now, the power to create or completely transcend money. As I’ve been preaching for many years, money is nothing more than credit, i.e., the willingness to trust that the value we provide as sellers of goods and services will be reciprocated when we become buyers. But, as we are now becoming so painfully aware, our trust in conventional political currencies and banks has been misplaced; we have been betrayed. It’s not only a matter of fraud and malfeasance, bad as that is, rather, the entire system was designed from the very start to enable the few to exploit the many..."


[link to lucas2012infos.wordpress.com]


Further down in that piece Greco writes: "It is our own credit that we entrust to the bankers, then beg them to lend it back to us, and pay interest for the privilege." This is what I have been writing; that Roosevelt implemented the fifth plank of the communist manifesto that says the credit of the people is the property of the state. The next step in this theft was to license the banks to loan the people's credit back to the people.

There has been no off-setting account, no administrative practice, nor any writing of law that acknowledges the fact that the credit entries made in the banks is actually based upon the people's credit.

This present monetary system uses interest bearing hypothecated debt as the base model.

The result is an exponential growth of the total debt which is quite impossible in a finite world.

Not only is there the 11th marble problem (search for the parable of the cards), but the overall problem is compounded by the improper assignment of seigniorage.

Essentially, the banks have presumed ownership of the credit when in fact the credit is owned by the people.

This is the critical center of the seigniorage problem.

It springs directly from the fifth plank of the communist manifesto.

The field of political protest known as "redemption of the strawman" is essentially an attempt to correct the bookkeeping.

The federal reserve banking and monetary system is already a mutual credit system, but with incorrect bookkeeping.