JAK and, 110
Subak, 187
Subprime crisis, 70
Subsidiarity, 69, 231n14
Success, 222
Sufficiency, 80, 222
Superstition, 3
Sustainability, 14, 32, 52–53
decentralization and, 219
demurrage and, 67, 206
leadership and, 222
MHBA and, 128–129
in monetary ecosystem, 199
regio and, 191
self-sustaining system, 208
sustainable abundance, 5–6, 55, 224
sustainable money, 85–86, 192
Terra and, 134, 206
threat to, 216
Sweat equity, 165
Swedish Central Bank, 25–26, 35–36
Taboo: academic, 35–36
money as, 4
Talents, 155
Tally stick, 65
Tax, 26–27, 57–58
changing behavior through, 157
Creative Currencies Project and, 155
exemption, 85
Hub and, 131
paid in C3, 123, 128
paid in civic, 147–148
paid in commodities, 27
paid in Terra, 139
paid in uang kepeng, 189
paid in Wörgl, 177–178
Taxi, 126–128
Technology, 115–117, 120, 192, 218
Tenth Amendment, 231n14
Terra Alliance, 137
Terra initiative, 67
Terra Trade Reference Currency (TRC), 5, 134–135
cash-in, 136, 139–140
circulation of, 136, 138
creation of, 136, 137
as reference currency, 140
Thank-you (T), 132–133, 183–184
Therapy, 17
Third Industrial Revolution, 218
3D printing, 218–219
Three-body problem, 31
TimeBank, 75, 80–85, 81
in Blaengarw, 159–161, 161
Hub, 131
Patch Adams Free Clinic and, 165
Rotating Loan Club, 172
Time currency, 5, 74–75, 78–85
fureai kippu as, 168
Ithaca HOURS, 162–165, 163
in Nyanza, 208
Time Dollar. See TimeBank
Time Dollar Youth Court, 83
Time horizon, 44
Time-slot exchange, 195–197
Titus, 197–198
Token Exchange System, 193
Too big to fail, 96
Torekes, 74–75, 151, 151–153
Total system throughput (TST), 33
Totnes, 75
Trade reference currency. See Terra Trade Reference Currency
Transmutation. See Alchemy Transportation, 126–128, 201, 218–219
Trash, 141–142, 143, 145, 165–166
Treaty of Maastricht, 231n14
Triangle, 171
Trickle-down economics, 217
Trueque club, 182–184, 183
Trust, 19–20, 46
creating community, 171–172
in Friendly Favors, 132
WIR and, 100
Tutoring, 82
Twister, 156–157
Two-body problem, 30–31
Uang kepeng, 189, 237n4, 237n5
Underclass, 216
Unemployment, 15–18
college and, 226–227n13
JAK bank and, 113
LETS and, 76
Nazi Party fueled by, 180
in Rabot, 151
in Weimar Republic, 236n10
Wörgl and, 175–178
UN Happiness Resolution, 131
Union, 16, 119
United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), 144
Unit of account, 58
money defined as, 28
professionals describing, 1–2
time as, 80–81. See also Terra Trade Reference Currency
University, 153–154, 193, 226–227n13
Unused resource, 59–60, 80, 92, 120–121
in Curitiba, 142, 144
Terra and, 137
Upper class, 29, 50
Urban decay, 151
Urbanization, 103
Uruguay, 121, 124, 126–128
Value neutrality, 9, 46–47
Velocity of circulation, 63–64, 68–69, 101–102, 178
Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility (VBSR), 102–103
Vespasian, 197–198, 238n23
Veteran, 171–172
Victim, 78–79
Virtual reality, 57–58
VISA, 192
Visiting Nurse Service, 83
Volunteer, 34, 120
Voting, 147, 193
Voucher currency, 170
Wales Institute for Community Currencies, 160
War, 34
Wära, 175–176, 178–179
War on drugs, 134
Water rights, 187
Weimar Republic, 236n5, 236n10
Whitewashing, 198
WIR, 5, 74–75, 99–102, 235n12
WIR Bank, 100
Wispelberg School, 156–157
Wispos, 156–157
Women, 20, 205, 222–223
Word of mouth, 111–112
Wörgl, 175–178, 177, 180–181
Work, 219–220, 239n10
World War I, 178–179
World War II, 99, 119, 153, 181
Writing, 24
Youth Advocate program, 83
Zeitgeist, 2
Zumbara, 82
Zutu, 207
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Photo credit: Rick Cummings.
BERNARD LIETAER is one of the most knowledgeable people in the world about money and financial systems.
Bernard has been a star since 1969, when he received an MBA from MIT and Time magazine selected him as one of the top-10 graduates of U.S. business schools. His post-graduate thesis, entitled Financial Management of Foreign Exchange, was published by MIT Press in 1970 and received wide attention in the financial world. In his thesis, he discussed applying nonlinear programming to global currency management for multinational corporations. This was considered the first book to explore the applications of systems theory to international finance. It described how to optimize currency management for corporations working in a large number of countries and currencies, and included the techniques to deal with floating exchanges, at the time a rare occurrence limited to some exotic currencies in Latin America. A major U.S. bank negotiated exclusive rights to Bernard’s approach prompting him to start a new career and move to South America. He developed, for the largest mining company in Peru, a new system for worldwide allocation of mining resources, which ended up being used to optimize two-thirds of all foreign exchange earnings of Peru. Subsequently, he wrote the only book (published in 1979) to foretell the Latin American debt crisis that exploded as he predicted in the early 1980s.
Later, Bernard was widely credited with being one of the principal architects of the euro, the single European currency. This came about after he accepted a job offer as the head of the Organization and Computer Department at the Central Bank in Belgium. Because Belgium received the chairmanship of the European Currency Unit (the ECU), his first project at the Bank was the design and implementation of the convergence system, which evolved into the euro in January, 1999. During this period, Bernard was appointed president of the electronic payment system in Belgium, considered the most inclusive and cost-effective payment system in the world. In 1987, Bernard left the Central Bank and cofounded one of the first large-scale off-shore currency trading funds. During his three-year tenure as its general manager and currency trader, from 1987 to mid-1991, the largest of these funds (Gaia Hedge II) was rated by the Micropal survey as the top performer among 75 currency hedge funds and among all 1,800 offshore funds worldwide. In 1990, Business Week n
amed Bernard “the world’s top trader.”
In the mid-1990s, Bernard changed his focus. He has spent the past two decades as one of the world’s leading designers and implementers of cooperative currencies. He has consulted with communities, governments, banks, and businesses around the globe. He has written several books on the topic of money, including the classic, The Future of Money, along with hundreds of articles and interviews. One of Bernard’s current projects in terms of new currencies is the Trade Reference Currency, which is a privately-issued, cooperative, global reference currency that is backed by a noninflationary, standardized basket of the dozen most important commodities and services in the global market. It is poised to drastically change barter and countertrade along with creating stability and predictability in the financial and business sectors by providing a robust standard of value for international trade. Most importantly, it will resolve the current conflict between short-term financial interest and long-term sustainability thereby providing, for the first time since the gold-standard days, an international standard of value that is inflation-resistant. This mechanism would work in parallel with national currencies. Currently, Bernard is a Research Fellow at the Center for Sustainable Resources of the University of California at Berkeley. He is also Visiting Professor at the Finance University of Moscow.
He is a member of the Club of Rome; a Fellow at the World Academy of Arts and Sciences, the World Business Academy, and the European Academy of Sciences and Arts; and a founding member of the Global Futures Forum. He currently resides in his native Belgium. He is fluent in English, French, Spanish, German, and Dutch, and reads Latin and Greek.
JACQUI DUNNE is an award-winning journalist from Ireland, founder and CEO of Danu Resources, and a leader in helping entrepreneurs develop technologies that restore the earth’s equilibrium globally.
Danu Resources is a for-profit organization that brings together and aligns donors and projects that focus on environmental and energy initiatives to move the world to greater sustainability while empowering people with dignity and the essentials of life. Danu’s unique value is its ability to work from a future reference point that draws out the greatness, and builds upon the strengths, of both the donor and the company or initiative, thus creating a flourishing paradigm shift for people and the planet. Where feasible, ventures operate using a multiple-currency ecosystem.
She serves on the board of, or is an advisor to, several U.S. and international companies. These firms are engaged in innovative solutions in the domains of green energy (the Swedish corporation Mimer Energy and Blue Energy in Canada), decentralized local food production (Perpetua in the United States), and a natural resolution for nuclear and other waste streams, Amo Terra. She is a principal strategist with the launching of the business-to-business currency, the Terra, that is designed to create more stability and predictability in the financial and business sectors by providing a mechanism for contractual, payment, and planning purposes worldwide.
In terms of philanthropy, Jacqui sits on the board of A Human Right, which is dedicated to providing free basic Internet and phone access to developing countries and underserved regions internationally, using spare satellite capacity.
An award-winning journalist, she started her career in her native Ireland. While still in college, Jacqui reported on a freelance basis on Spain’s transition to democracy in the late 1970s for both the Irish Times and RTE (Irish Radio). Later, she joined the Sunday Independent as a staff reporter and features writer and covered a variety of stories from the political unrest in Northern Ireland to famine in Ethiopia. For several years, she wrote a monthly column for the Irish Tattler and codesigned special events for the magazine to encourage women’s entrepreneurship.
In New York, she wrote for Interview Magazine, Elle, and the Daily News, then headed west to San Francisco, where she wrote for Grass-roots/Dresdner RCM Bank, compiling investigative reports on companies and industry sector analysis. She produced radio interviews with thought leaders and was an occasional on-air host for New Dimensions Radio, syndicated to NPR and community radio stations nationally and overseas.
In order to gain experience in how business really works, Jacqui conducted market research for multinational biotech and pharmaceutical companies. She was vice president of a former boutique technology public and investor relations company, ContentOne, which handled media and investor relations for firms ranging from start-ups to publicly traded companies.
Lately, she has worked as a content editor for Money and Sustainability—The Missing Link, A Report from the Club of Rome, which reveals the hidden dynamics among the conventional money system, climate change, and ecological sustainability. This report was addressed to Finance Watch, an independent European public interest association tasked by the European Union with reporting on the causes of the current banking and financial debacle.
Rethinking Money is her first book. She currently resides in Colorado.
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