Bernard Lietaer

GM/caw 2020 Bernard A. Lietaer used to suggest that the best way to understand a currency was to issue one. He wasn’t joking, he played his part in creating the Euro, so his tagline goes, without adding that his (significantly different) version of the “common currency” ECU got dropped with him. Lietaer represents the drop out banker who ends up cancelled, published by small exotic publishers, featured on RTV and marginalised off the orthodox campus. Though endowed with his money market earnings, he had to commodify himself as expert extra mures and  leaves a you tube library of his performances. I can see the left ignoring bankers, but greens should be paying attention too “green money” and I am not sure why libertarians haven’t embraced him as a conceptual pioneer of disintermediated, even spontaneously emerging, digital currencies?  Maybe he was too “anti bitcoin”, or rather as impressed by its “architecture” (ie blockchain) as he was dismissive of it as a currency. He was a “fundamentalist” economist in that he believed in the real stuff on the other side of the price equation. Rather than making virtual gold he would have prioritised applying block chain to, say, creating inventory based commercial currencies, or any  peer2peer exchange platforms focused not on monetarised units of account but on what’s currently fashionable as ETF’s. However, Lietaer’s complementary currencies were all about disintermediation from the status quo, albeit on an(at least intially) complementary basis. He was pleased to realise his narrative of money diversity complied with the most advanced scientific metaphors of complex systems, demanding diversity to be sufficiently resilient etc. I wonder if  Nassim N Taleb ever met him?

medium.datadriveninvestor.com 1-2021 The Day I Met Money Miracle Bernard Lietaer and the Bancor People – Remembering my beautiful journey so far – by Desiree Driesenaar

researchgatee.net 2012 Money and Sustainability, The Missing Link by Bernard Lietaer, Christian Arnsperger, Sally Goerner, Stefan Brunnhuber

Here is a review by Graham Barnes originally published by Feasta, Feb 1, 2013.Here is the appendix D. This appendix presents the theoretical framework on which the proposed scientific approach towards sustainability used in this Report is based. resilience.org/

blog.bancor.network 2019 Bernard Lietaer, A Financial Justice Warrior Who Fought for Freedom of Currency by Galia Benartzi

…”….Bernard’s diverse career in money — as a central banker, fund manager, university professor and consultant to private and public institutions alike — opened his eyes to the merits and flaws of different financial systems. In 2010 he wrote:

“I sometimes feel like a flying fish who has had the opportunity to take a ‘bird’s eye view’ of the water in which we swim, and is now trying to report back to its fellow fish and explain what it has learned about what we usually cannot see.”

His ideas about money were often ahead of their time. As a graduate student, he developed the first in-depth research on “floating exchange rates” a year before President Nixon took the United States off the gold standard and initiated a worldwide shift to floating exchange. Later, as a central banker, he designed the European Currency Unit, the precursor — and what many have said was a superior approach — to the Euro we have today.

As the Great Recession wreaked havoc in 2012, and austerity measures constricted the flow of national currencies in debt-saddled nations like Greece, Bernard urged Greek cities and towns to adapt and create their own parallel currency system. And long before blockchain technology emerged to offer a new set of tools for currency development, Bernard advocated for an alternative, multidisciplinary view of money which drew on findings from history, psychology and ecology to expose untruths about the global monetary system, inspiring discourse, debate and global action by entrepreneurs and activists to redesign money from the ground up…”… read whole article here

… A key feature of the ECU allowed individual nations to devalue their currencies in the event of a downturn — a tool which disappeared after the Euro was introduced in 1999. A 2015 paper examining the ECU’s replacement by the Euro found that the ECU was a “superior approach to monetary union“ which could have been “less economically and politically damaging than the Euro.”

Bernard later wrote:

“It took me several years, and a most revealing conversation with the then President of the BIS (the Bank of International Settlements in Basel, or the Central Bank of the Central Banks, which coordinates the monetary activities of the eleven key monetary countries of the world), to understand that Central Banks exist to keep the system going as is, not to improve on it and that therefore any initiatives of reform would have to come from the private sector.”

He departed the Central Bank of Belgium in 1987 to launch GaiaCorp, one of the first large-scale offshore currency trading funds…

terra.money   2001 Terra is a programmable money for the internet that is easier to spend, and more attractive to hold. Available on all leading blockchains. The concept was proposed by Bernard A. Lietaer in 2001, based on a similar proposal from the 1930s.

B. A. Lietaer –  books  obituaries  reviews  pdfs

amazon.de  2002  Bernard A Lietaer – Das geld der Zukunft

The Future of Money

goodreads.com 2002 The_Future_of_Money – Today’s financial system is seen by the most as having a fixed size. Bernard A. Litaer challenges this perspective by showing that there were different economic systems in history and that our present system has arisen from a tacit and problematic collective acceptance. He sees the future in the development of complementary currencies. He explains which money is necessary for which needs and how we can commonly create it. Money only exists because of trust — where trust has been destroyed, money is loosing its value; chaos and poverty are sad consequences. Lietaer has written an exciting and informative book for anyone who is aware of economic problems, from interested laymen to bankers.

Das Geld- und Finanzsystem, wie wir es heute kennen,wird von den meisten als feste Grösse, ja als gottgegeben betrachtet. Bernard A. Lietaer zeigt dagegen, dass es im Laufe der Geschichte ganz andere Systeme gegeben hat und unsere derzeitige Finanzordnung einer stillschweigenden — inzwischen höchst problematischen — kollektiven Übereinkunft entspringt. Die Zukunft sieht er in der Entwicklung von komplementären Währungen. Er erläutert, welches Geld wir für welche Aufgabe benötigen und wie wir es gemeinsam erschaffen können. Denn Geld besteht nur aufgrund von Vertrauen. Wo dieses Vertrauen zerstört wird, verliert Geld seinen Wert; Chaos und Armut sind die traurigen Folgen. Lietaer hat ein ebenso spannendes wie informatives “Enthüllungsbuch“ geschrieben, das sich vom interessierten Laien überneugierige Banker an alle wendet, die sich der Geldproblematik bewusst sind. (less)

langelieder.de 2002  Zwei Billionen Dollar fließen täglich zwischen den Währungen hin und her. Nur 2% davon dienen ihrem natürlichen Zweck, der Bezahlung von Waren und Dienstleistungen. Die restlichen 98% sind Spekulationsgelder, die immer bedrohlichere Krisen auslösen. Der Top-Finanzfachmann Lietaer erläutert die Funktionsweise unseres Geldsystems, erklärt den Zins- und Zinseszins-Mechanismus und erläutert die Wirkung von Komplementärwährungen.

getabstrakt.com  Rezension :  Unser Verständnis vom Geld wird selten hinterfragt. Bernard Lietaer übernimmt diese Aufgabe – und stellt fest, dass das bisherige Währungssystem die Konkurrenz fördert und den Gemeinsinn unterbindet. Er plädiert daher für eine Koexistenz unterschiedlicher Währungsformen. Manches, was Lietaer da schreibt, klingt erst mal absurd. Das Befremden legt sich aber rasch und es ist dann geradezu erfrischend, scheinbare Selbstverständlichkeiten radikal in Frage gestellt zu sehen: Warum haben wir das Geld, das wir haben? Warum funktioniert Geld so, wie es funktioniert? Pädagogisch führt Lietaer vom „Ist“ zum „Soll“. Überzeugend legt er dar, dass jede Gemeinschaft als System subtiler Abhängigkeiten funktioniert. Alternative (Tausch-)Währungen helfen, solche Gemeinschaften aufzubauen und der Entfremdung in den westlichen Gesellschaften entgegenzuwirken. Da Lietaer ein hochrangiger Finanzfachmann ist, wabert selten der Ruch des Esoterischen durch seine pointierten Ausführungen. getAbstract empfiehlt dieses Buch allen, die sich der Meinung anschliessen mögen, dass der Kopf rund ist, damit das Denken die Richtung wechseln kann.

Über den Autor
Bernard A. Lietaer unterrichtet an der Sonoma State University archetypische Psychologie und am Institute for Sustainable Resources and Agriculture der Universität Berkeley nachhaltiges Wirtschaften. Lietaer war fünf Jahre bei der belgischen Zentralbank beschäftigt und dort zuständig für die Einführung des ECU, des Vorläufers des Euro. Anschliessend wurde er Präsident des elektronischen Zahlungssystems in Belgien. Ausserdem arbeitete er als Währungshändler und Geschäftsführer eines erfolgreichen Hedge-Fonds sowie als Berater internationaler Konzerne und lateinamerikanischer Länder.

Zusammenfassung – Eine Ahnung von Geld
Geld ist kein Ding, sondern eine Übereinkunft. Wenn heute beim Wort „Geld“ die meisten Menschen an Banknoten und Münzen denken, ist das zu kurz gedacht: Was ist eine Kreditkarte anderes als Geld? Oder Bonusmeilen für Vielflieger? Oder, historisch gedacht, Kaurimuscheln? Es ergibt sich folgende Arbeitshypothese: Geld ist eine Übereinkunft innerhalb einer Gemeinschaft, etwas als Tauschmittel zu verwenden. Das derzeitige Währungssystem ist ein Produkt des Industriezeitalters und seiner Weltsicht, es formt und verstärkt die entsprechenden Werte und Befindlichkeiten. Zugleich wird es von den meisten als selbstverständlich angesehen.

Umso wichtiger ist es, darüber nachzudenken, was wir als Geld akzeptieren. Unsere Währungen sind so angelegt, dass sie Konkurrenz fördern statt Kooperation. Geld ist verantwortlich für das ständige Wachsen-Müssen. Aber die Zeit des Kapitalismus läuft ab, die Welt steht vor einem massiven Wandel. Was kommen wird, ist noch völlig ungewiss. Schlagworte wie „Informations-“ oder „Wissensgesellschaft“ deuten zwar an, wohin die Reise geht, zeigen aber noch kein Ziel an. Viele Menschen sind skeptisch – dabei gibt es durchaus Anlass…

worldbusiness.org/fellows/   Bernard A. Lietaer  (1942 – 2019)

Bernard Lietaer is the lead author of the paradigm-shifting new report by the EU Chapter of the Club of Rome, “Money and Sustainability: The Missing Link.”     He is also the author of The Future of Money, which was translated into 18 languages, and is an international expert in the design and implementation of currency systems. He has studied and worked in the field of money for more than 30 years in an unusually broad range of capacities, including as a Central Banker, a fund manager, a university professor, and a consultant to governments in numerous countries, multinational corporations, and community organizations. He co-designed and implemented the convergence mechanism to the single European currency system (the Euro) and served as president of the Electronic Payment System at the National Bank of Belgium (the Belgian Central Bank). He co-founded and managed GaiaCorp, a top performing currency fund whose profits funded investments in environmental projects.

A former professor of International Finance at the University of Louvain, he also taught at Sonoma State University and Naropa University. He was a Research Fellow at the Center for Sustainable Resources of the University of California Berkeley, a member of the Club of Rome, a Fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Fellow at the European Academy of Sciences and Arts.

2019  bernard-lietaer-a-financial-justice-warrior-who-fought-for-freedom-of-currency/

May 13, 2019 –  We are deeply saddened by the loss of our dear friend, Bernard Lietaer, who passed away recently at his home in Hoherhagen, Germany with loved ones.

Bernard was a financial justice warrior; a fierce advocate, sharp businessman and revered educator who dedicated his extraordinary career to exploring global monetary systems, uncovering truths about their effect on civilization and shaping their evolution through rigorous research, eloquent writing and heartfelt lectures around the world.

Bernard’s diverse career in money — as a central banker, fund manager, university professor and consultant to private and public institutions alike — opened his eyes to the merits and flaws of different financial systems. In 2010 he wrote: “I sometimes feel like a flying fish who has had the opportunity to take a ‘bird’s eye view’ of the water in which we swim, and is now trying to report back to its fellow fish and explain what it has learned about what we usually cannot see.”

His ideas about money were often ahead of their time.  As a graduate student, he developed the first in-depth research on “floating exchange rates” a year before President Nixon took the United States off the gold standard and initiated a worldwide shift to floating exchange. Later, as a central banker, he designed the European Currency Unit, the precursor — and what many have said was a superior approach — to the Euro we have today. As the Great Recession wreaked havoc in 2012, and austerity measures constricted the flow of national currencies in debt-saddled nations like Greece, Bernard urged Greek cities and towns to adapt and create their own parallel currency system. And long before blockchain technology emerged to offer a new set of tools for currency development, Bernard advocated for an alternative, multidisciplinary view of money which drew on findings from history, psychology and ecology to expose untruths about the global monetary system, inspiring discourse, debate and global action by entrepreneurs and activists to redesign money from the ground up.

Bernard believed that communities could design complementary currencies, alongside and in support of their national currencies, which would better serve their needs, and better protect and stimulate local, national and global economies through the kind of diversity that generates resilience in nature. The main barrier to this reality is that most people don’t understand that an alternative financial system is even possible. The choice of currency, he said, has long been obscured by money’s tradition of secrecy and mystery:

“This mystery has an extraordinarily long history: for thousands of years it was of a religious nature, now money remains enchanted just as effectively by a spell of academic jargon and esoteric equations. Our challenge will therefore be to bring the ideas down from the academic ivory towers while remaining conceptually sound.”

Bernard ventured beyond the corporate boardrooms and government corridors to advance new ideas about currency and initiatives that shared his vision for systemic reimagining. He sensed that the evolution of money would have to bubble from the ground up, rather than be prescribed from the top down — and his optimism in this eventuality strengthened with the advent of accessible connective technologies such as cellular networks and the Internet.

In his 2010 book, “The Future of Money”, Bernard wrote:

“Below the radar beams of many official monetary experts, fundamental change in our money systems is in fact already well under way, irresistibly driven by the social and technological forces of the Information Age.”

“The real issue is not whether widespread changes will happen or not, but how much awareness there will be about where these changes are leading us. The real question is whether we are even conscious that we have a choice in the matter.”

A Star From Early On

As a student at MIT in the late 1960s, Bernard gained notoriety for his postgraduate thesis on how to optimize currency management for multinational corporations. His research was among the first to shed light on “floating exchange rates”, which change a currency’s value based on supply and demand in the market. The year after the publication of his thesis, President Nixon took the United States off the gold standard, initiating a global shift to floating exchange rates. Bernard’s research became extremely valuable, and a major U.S. bank negotiated the exclusive rights to his methodology.

Bernard went on to take a position as the head of the Organization and Computer Department at the Central Bank in Belgium, where he was one of the principal architects of the European Currency Unit (ECU). The ECU was based on a “basket” of national currencies, each weighted as a percentage in line with the country’s share of the EU’s gross product and its internal trade. A key feature of the ECU allowed individual nations to devalue their currencies in the event of a downturn — a tool which disappeared after the Euro was introduced in 1999. A 2015 paper examining the ECU’s replacement by the Euro found that the ECU was a “superior approach to monetary union“ which could have been “less economically and politically damaging than the Euro.”

Bernard later wrote:

“It took me several years, and a most revealing conversation with the then President of the BIS (the Bank of International Settlements in Basel, or the Central Bank of the Central Banks, which coordinates the monetary activities of the eleven key monetary countries of the world), to understand that Central Banks exist to keep the system going as is, not to improve on it and that therefore any initiatives of reform would have to come from the private sector.”

He departed the Central Bank of Belgium in 1987 to launch GaiaCorp, one of the first large-scale offshore currency trading funds. The company quickly grew into one of the largest and most successful currency management firms in the world, leading BusinessWeek to name Bernard “the world’s top trader” in 1990.

In the mid-1990s, Bernard left the currency trading firm he founded and embarked on a decades-long mission to teach and consult worldwide on the merits and shortcomings of different monetary systems in an effort to help society make more conscious choices about the financial architecture that governs our collective collaboration.

An Urgent Message For Economics From Nature

In his last book, “Rethinking Money”, published in 2013, Bernard argues that monetary systems function similar to natural ecosystems in that both require a balance between efficiency and resilience in order to be sustainable.

In 2013, as the world grappled with the lingering effects of the Great Recession, Bernard and journalist Jacqui Dunne explored the origins of the current monetary system — built on bank debt and scarcity — revealing the surprising ways its limitations give rise to serious problems, and a potential path forward.

Viewing both monetary and natural systems as complex flow networks, he defined efficiency as a network’s capacity to process volume of whatever flows through it in an organized and streamlined manner. In nature, efficiency may be the flow of water or energy; in economies, the circulation of money. Resilience is a network’s capacity to handle and adapt to changes, such as withstanding droughts in nature or shocks to the financial system. “However, this dependency operates in opposite directions: efficiency tends to be increased by streamlining, i.e., by reducing diversity and interconnectivity. In contrast, resilience increases with diversity and interconnectivity.”

For instance, an ecosystem that has one type of animal which survives off one type of food is an efficient ecosystem, but if the food becomes unavailable due to blight or illness, most likely the animal will die and the ecosystem will collapse. Science shows us that natural ecosystems with different types of life and high connectivity between them have a greater capacity to handle changes in their environment (i.e., more resiliency). This is also the case for economies, Bernard argued, and with too little diversity or too little connectivity (and vice versa), both natural and monetary systems will suffer breakdowns.

Bernard believed that today’s global monetary system was too efficient and therefore too brittle, as evidenced by its repeated instability — including 145 banking crises and 208 monetary crashes between 1970 and 2010 alone. The excessive efficiency is caused by the fact that only one type of money, national currency, flows within a country, created by bank debt and interconnected only at the global level via international exchange rates. While a single type of currency increases efficiency by optimizing price formation and exchange within national markets, there are no other options to sustain trade when a downturn hits and the flow of national currencies slows.

“Monetary sustainability requires a diversity of currency systems, so that multiple and more diverse agents and channels of monetary links and exchanges can emerge,” he said. Bernard compared today’s national economies to ecosystems where only one type of plant is tolerated and artificially maintained, and any manifestation of diversity is eradicated as an inappropriate “competitor” because it would reduce the efficiency of the whole.

The mantra of forever increasing efficiency has become “misguided and counterproductive,” Bernard wrote in 2010. “The quest for greater economic efficiency, for example by downsizing or by ‘just in time’ deliveries or other ways to continually optimize value chains, has reduced the stability of the overall economic system.”

“The urgent message for economics from nature is that the monoculture of national currencies, justified on the basis of market efficiency, generates structural instability in our global financial system. Complementary currencies of diverse types of money enable the economy to flow back towards greater sustainability. While this process clearly reduces efficiency, that is the price to pay for increased resilience of the whole.”

Making Complementary Currencies Work

Following his years in the currency trading world, Bernard emerged as an ardent supporter of complementary or “cooperative” currencies that supplement and complement the national currency.

He battled beliefs that complementary currencies were defective and that the coexistence of different forms of money hindered the efficient functioning of exchange and price formation. He researched and promoted numerous examples of complementary currencies across the globe — from the Brixton Pound in England, to Torekes in Belgium, the C3 in Brazil and the WIR in Switzerland. “A quiet revolution is happening that has, for the most part, gone under-reported. The number of contemporary cooperative currencies operating in the Western world has grown exponentially from two in 1984 to more than 4,000 mature systems today,” he wrote in 2013.“Evidence has accumulated in dozens of countries that complementary currency systems can be designed, for instance, to successfully improve solidarity among neighbours; to support cooperation rather than competition in a community; to encourage intergenerational elderly care; or to induce a consumer lifestyle that reduces carbon emissions,” Bernard wrote.

Number of Social Purpose Complementary Currencies Operational in a Dozen Countries (1984–2007). “These estimates are purposely very conservative. They include only systems that were operational during the corresponding year and whose existence was verified by one of the authors through the net or in personal contact. Many more systems exist that don’t feel the need to advertise their existence.” Source.

Yet Bernard conceded that the vast majority of complementary currency systems were too small, too young and relatively unproven on a wide scale to offer a viable alternative to the existing system. Despite the ability of complementary currencies to increase connectivity within small populations, a mechanism did not exist to easily connect complementary currencies to one another, much less to the traditional economy. This lack of interconnectivity between the currencies themselves frequently led to their eventual stagnation, as rarely is economic life contained within a single community over time.

“One of the main barriers for the use of complementary currencies is that their acceptance is limited and therefore their liquidity is low,” Bernard wrote in a 2017 paper, preventing such systems from realizing their full potential. Our early work in monetary design proved the same — while our digital community currency pilots were successful at first, usage eventually tapered off, because the currencies were not usable outside the communities that launched them.

Years before blockchain technologies entered the public discourse on monetary reform, Bernard had already expressed enthusiasm for decentralized digital money systems and their capacity to break the monopoly of currency. Drawing on ideas from John Boik, a medical doctor who applied his knowledge of natural systems to governance, Bernard predicted in 2015 the emergence of a “mass online democracy” and “local currency system” that is decentralized and relies on “built-in design elements that ensure efficiency, transparency, and effectiveness.”

In Rethinking Money, Bernard applauded Boik’s proposal for a “crowdfunding-like mechanism, which pools small amounts of resources and money from a diverse group of people, usually via the Internet. This generates investment funds for business, as well as a steady stream of donations for funding social services such as schools, nonprofits, clinics, universities, and other groups.”

Bernard began researching blockchain technology, and soon enough, discovered the Bancor Protocol. After reading the Bancor whitepaper three times to verify its accuracy, he concluded that the protocol could be used to liberate new forms of currency and break through the liquidity barrier that had previously hindered their use and widespread adoption.

The main issue preventing interconnectivity across complementary currency systems is the difficulty of performing conversions between such currencies. Historically, changing one type of currency into another requires a trusted intermediary who matches two parties with opposing wants. Since national currencies are highly liquid for one another, finding a party that is willing to exchange is a relatively simple process performed by for-profit matchmakers. However, this reliance on matching creates significant barriers for small-scale currencies to be valued against and thus traded for other currencies at market-determined exchange rates.

Bernard believed that the Bancor Protocol could serve as a public good that facilitates convertibility and liquidity for complementary currencies. Within weeks of discovering Bancor, he was delivering lectures on the protocol to his students and at conferences, as well as publishing research on the innovation.

In a 2017 paper, Bernard explored using the Bancor Protocol for delivering “unconditional basic income” to impoverished communities:

“The main idea is to allow complementary currencies to be issued by users at the condition that the token issued is holding one or more reserves, such as digital or conventional currencies as well as other assets. This will enable any currency using this protocol to be exchanged for any other currency which is part of the ‘Reserve Basket’, without needing a counterparty to do so.”

As the protocol evolved and the Bprotocol Foundation was established, Bancor was honored to have Bernard join as its President and Chief Monetary Officer. Bernard played an instrumental role in advancing the fundamental convertibility technology, researching its implications, and advising the first Bancor-powered community currency pilot network, the Sarafu Network, deployed last August in Kenya in partnership with local non-profit Grassroots Economics. The Sarafu Network has already had a tremendous impact on the communities in which it operates, increasing local commerce by more than 40%, according to initial transaction data.

Kenyan communities trade as little as one tomato on the blockchain using Bancor-powered community currencies. Will Ruddick, co-founder of Grassroots Economics, which is deploying the currencies, said: “Bernard’s vision of diverse monetary eco-systems that support communities and the environment rather than extract from them, as they continue to do now, is the spark that moved me from physics in the US into economics in Kenya.”

As data streams in from the Sarafu Network, showing community members transacting in blockchain-based local liquid tokens, forming diverse channels of monetary links, the Bancor team is continually inspired by Bernard’s remarkable legacy and his bold vision for freedom of currency as we work to enable adoption at scale.

Last summer Bancor attended an event at the historic Bretton Woods hotel, site of the infamous monetary conference in 1944 where much of the international financial infrastructure as we know it was established. The aim was to catalyze a conversation around how we might transition to a more equitable global system, perhaps benefiting from technologies newly available since WWII, such as computing, the World Wide Web, and blockchain among others, as well as new insights and social perspectives on inclusivity, gender balance, competition, growth and environmental protection and regeneration.

At this special gathering, Bernard was presented with an award in the name of the late economist Elinor Ostrom, for his courage and leadership in monetary innovation. The other recipient was Hilda Heine, the first female President of the Marshall Islands who recently announced plans to create a sovereign digital currency for the nation. While Bernard was already battling his illness, a friend, colleague and advisor John Clippinger, who co-authored with Bernard “From Bitcoin to Burning Man and Beyond” (a work conceived at a similar gathering he hosted, at the same historic location), warmly accepted the award on his behalf. It is with poetic synchronicity that Bernard, like his heroine Elinor, was similarly able to only briefly enjoy this recognition for his work. It is with great sadness and also fierce determination and deep gratitude, that we continue to share his ideas and research with the world, and to innovate towards fair, free and fluid financial systems that serve people — just as resilient, natural ecologies serve the planet.

books   obituaries   reviews  pdfs

15814042

Bernard Lietaer and Jacqui Dunne   Rethinking Money  – How New Currencies Turn Scarcity into Prosperity – excerpt     page 44 Kindle loc 767

Discounted cash flow analysts know that interest is one of the three factors in discounting any future cash flow . ( The other two factors are the intrinsic risk of the investment project and the cost of equity capital . )

With the issue of interest , however , an entrepreneur , for example , can put her capital in a bank instead of investing it . If she deposits $ 61 in the bank at an interest rate of 5 percent , she will have $ 100 after 10 years . 5 Thus , any investment of $ 61 today that will have a value of $ 100 in 10 years is only worthwhile if the money market interest rate is lower than 5 percent . Otherwise , she can make the same amount of money with less risk by leaving it in the bank.

To put it another way , say the same entrepreneur has a choice between two different forestry investments : planting a pine or an oak . With the same interest rate , the short – term thinking process becomes clear when one compares the two . To keep the numbers simple , it is assumed that all numbers are inflation adjusted and that the risk of specific investment projects is independent of the time frame.

A pine tree can be felled in 10 years and would then bring a yield of $ 100 . An oak , on the other hand , cannot be harvested until it is 100 years old , and it would then be valued at $ 1,000 per tree . With these assumptions , and if one doesn’t have to take interest into account , the two investments could be seen as equivalent , as one could harvest and replant the pines every 10 years , ending up with the same $ 1,000 in 100 years .

Now , the investor asks : “ What are these two investments worth as seen from today ? ” We saw that with an interest rate of 5 percent , the investment in a pine that will produce a yield of $ 100 in 10 years is equivalent to $ 61 today . Similarly calculated , with the same interest rate of 5 percent , the value today of the $ 1,000 oak tree in 100 years is only $ 7.60 ! This difference in value of $ 61 versus $ 7.60 is due only to the interest feature of the money used.

This demonstrates that , while there is a lot of commercial interest in harvesting old – growth forest , there is none in planting trees that will take a long time to mature and be harvested . More generally , this difference also describes why , in a society using an interest – bearing currency , financial investments are focusing mainly on the short term .

books   reviews  pdfs

https://dokumen.tips/reader/f/bernard-lietaer-mysterium-geld-part-1

bkconnection.com  Rethinking Money    praise reviews

Peter Ferrara  forbes    review  of  Rethinking Money  : “The Rise Of Hayek’s Private Competing Currencies”

Review of “The Future of Money”, by Bernard Lietaer   Reviewed by Dick Distelhorst, AMI Burlington, Iowa Chapter leader

In this book Lietaer defines the problem of bank created debt-money, quite well. Unfortunately, his solution is to ignore the problem and use local currencies to ameliorate the huge problems caused by allowing the private creation of fiat money with an interest charge attached. Nowhere in the book does he even suggest that fractional reserve banking should be eliminated and that the government should create its own money. Instead of proposing monetary reform, he proposes monetary supplement

feasta.org/review  Brian Leslie

The power and profit banks derive from their privilege of controlling the issue of money must be removed. The sole power to create or destroy national money should be in the hands of a credit-creation authority under democratic control and mandated to monitor society’s needs and to maintain the money supply at the level needed to allow trading, saving and investment without serious inflation.

A vital point, however, is that all the money in circulation should have been spent, not lent, into circulation. This means that all new money should be credited to the Treasury’s account so that the seigniorage – the profit from issuing it is gained by the nation rather than any individual or business.

What gives national monies their special advantage over complementary currencies is the fact that only they are acceptable for payment of taxes and legally recognised for the settlement of debts. As long as they function tolerably well, they are the preferred medium of exchange. The only way to eliminate the debts that have built up as a result of the present way of issuing currencies as interest-bearing loans is by creating and issuing enough debt-free (and therefore interest-free) national currency to retire all the debts. If this was combined with the payment of Citizens’ Incomes and switch from income tax and VAT to land-value, pollution and resource taxation, there should be little need or demand for local or alternative currencies. However, until then, or in the absence of reform, these currencies are likely to become of increasing importance to survival.

visit here for Bernard Lietaer’s  bullet list of reality-checks extracted from  The Future of Money   2001  scroll down for PDF’s

books  obituaries  reviews  pdfs 

researchgate.net  PDF   2012  Money and sustainability : the missing link ; a report from the Club of Rome – EU Chapter to Finance Watch and the World Business Academy   by Bernard Lietaer, Stefan Brunnhuber

THE FUTURE OF MONEY  PDF    B Lietaer

Click to access 09_10_24_-_Texte_-_The_future_of_Money_-_B._Lietaer.pdf

REHTHINKING MONEY  excerpt PDF from:  Rethinking Money by Bernard Lietaer and Jacqui Dunne   Published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers

Click to access Rethinking_Money_EXCERPT.pdf

More praise for Rethinking Money
“You have no idea what money is. Read this book and fi nd out how simply changing our money system will lead to a more sustainable and peaceful society.”
—Jurriaan Kamp, Editor-in-Chief, The Intelligent Optimist
“Bernard Lietaer and Jacqui Dunne’s clear and potent voice tells the story of our
distorted and dysfunctional money system and how we can fi nally free ourselves
from it and fi nd our way to the future we yearn for. This stunning book should be
required reading for every person who wants a world that works and a sustainable future for all of life.”
—Lynne Twist, author of The Soul of Money
“Rethinking Money does a brilliant job of eradicating the concepts and stories that
our economists and other professionals in the fi eld hold dear. The authors write
that ‘money is our last taboo,’ but they don’t recommend abolishing the fi at zeitgeist. Rather, they wisely call on the various new currencies and other monetary
innovations to complement the existing system.”
—Nigel Seale, former worldwide Chairman, Earth Day International, and founder of
Earth Day Canada
“Rethinking Money is required reading for anyone who is serious about transforming
our current unsustainable economic system to one where people and planet can
prosper. This is a brilliant analysis of our current monetary system and its pitfalls.
More importantly, the authors strategize the way forward with solutions that not
only rethink money but revalue human beings, long-term planning, and our planet.”
—Georgia Kelly, Executive Director, Praxis Peace Institute
“In the midst of the confusion created by today’s crises, there are few people who
can provide viable solutions that not only serve our local communities but also
address the global economy. Bernard Lietaer and Jacqui Dunne are such a brilliant force for good.”
—Mariana Bozesan, PhD, integral investor and author of The Making of a
Consciousness Leader in Business
“The mission of business—the mission of civilization—is to further the path of development that began in nature. We must develop a human ecosystem where we
use less and have more. The monetary ecosystem proposed in Rethinking Money
makes it possible and provides long-awaited solutions to the crises we face such
as climate change, worldwide violence, and the chasm between rich and poor.
This book is a must-read.”
—Tachi Kiuchi, Chairman, E-Square Inc. and Future 500
“The portrait of an emerging world where issues of lack, intolerance, degradation,
and war are replaced by sustainable abundance and economic justice for all is balm
for the soul. This shift is brought about, in large part, by simply rethinking money.”
—Sherry Ruth Anderson, coauthor of The Feminine Face of God
“The authors have expertly revealed new distinctions in the monetary domain
but without the usual economic explanations of dry theory and abstraction. This
book is for anyone who wonders why the system is failing us and, perhaps more
importantly, what to do about it.”
—Julio Olalla, founder of Newfi eld Network and author of From Knowledge to Wisdom
“An instant classic! Lietaer and Dunne explain how and why our monetary system
fails to put supply and demand together, subsidizes and promotes intolerable and
unnecessary disparities of well-being, entrenches unearned privilege, undermines
democracy, creates boom-and-bust cycles, and rewards unsustainable, destructive
growth…Without undermining or vilifying all that money presently contributes, they
provide a guided tour to an array of actual alternatives like time banking and complementary currencies to create a sustainable, more equitable monetary ecosystem.”
—Edgar Cahn, creator of Time Dollars, founder of TimeBanks USA, and cofounder
of the National Legal Services Program
“Rather than just blaming somebody—dumb politicians, greedy corporations, and
banksters—Lietaer and Dunne show us the real issue: a system and a technology
that are just built on agreements. And they show how we can change them to fi t
our real needs, live well, and save the planet in the process.”
—Paul H. Ray, PhD, coauthor of The Cultural Creatives
“In a time in which money has become a form of madness, this remarkable book offers profound understanding and guidance to the creation of a monetary ecosystem
that can build both a better self and a better world. The rethinking of money is one
of the most important things we have to do, and the authors succeed brilliantly.”
—Jean Houston, PhD, author of Jump Time and A Passion for the Possible
“New currency systems will not solve all the problems generated by physical growth
on a fi nite planet. But we will have zero chance of creating a more satisfactory global future if we do not create new mechanisms for facilitating commerce. Rethinking
Money is an incredibly practical and inspiring guide for how we could do that.”
—Dennis L. Meadows, coauthor of The Limits to Growth
“The new understanding this book offers is critical because economics has become the dominant—and increasingly only—discipline with which important decisions are being made. This is a must-read for anyone who wants to be part of
the timely conversation on how to move forward to create the just, sustainable,
and equitable world we all desire.”
—Thom Hartmann, internationally syndicated talk show host and author of twentyfour books
“Lietaer and Dunne describe the many thousands of innovative currencies in use by
communities worldwide and how these currencies are facilitating the needed transition
of human societies to more peaceful, sharing, prosperous, and sustainable futures.”
—Hazel Henderson, President, Ethical Markets Media (USA and Brazil), and author
of Ethical Markets, Planetary Citizenship, and Building a Win-Win-World