Written by John Lounsbury
“For the love of money is the root of all evil”
— First Timothy, sentence one.
Frank H. Grecco doesn’t quote bible in this week’s video, but he does describe well the current global monetary system and one can easily conclude that it has evil intent: Money created only as credit imposes unsustainable conditions on society and its economy that results in much suffering for many and much riches for a few.
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Let me try to reduce Grecco’s argument to a few words, and hope that the paraphrasing is not too much an oversimplification:
Instead of the economy rewarding on the basis of meritocracy, the current money-as-credit system rewards on the basis of power, stifling many worthwhile incipient entrepreneurial efforts, failing to recognize merit of performance in an equitable way, and creating a mass of debt-slave serfs in a money-lorded feudal system.
Grecco proposes as solution a new credit clearing process which is based locally. Such a system was implemented in Switzerland when the banks collapsed there in the Great Depression and has survived to this day. The system, called the WIR Bank, is an independent complementary currency system that serves businesses in hospitality, construction, manufacturing, retail and professional services. WIR issues and manages a private currency, called the WIR Franc, which is used in combination with the Swiss Franc to generate dual-currency transactions. It is essentially a community based credit clearing system that operates without interest charges.
In the above summary I have expanded on the description of the WIR Bank beyond what Grecco describes during his presentation.
Grecco uses the metaphor of the caterpillar turning into a butterfly to describe the transformation of a monetary system which consumes its environment into one which pollinates and nourishes it.
Note: A previous post featured Bernard Leitaer who also discussed uses of local currency to improve the current monetary system: Documentary Of The Week: Our Monetary System Is Structurally Unstable.
Here is a bio excerpt from Wikipedia:
Thomas Henry Greco Jr. (born October 9, 1936) is a community economist, who blogs,[1] writes, and speaks on the subject of free market alternative currency and monetary systems.[2][3]
Greco graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Villanova University, acquired a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Rochester and did additional course work pursuant to a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) at Syracuse University. For fourteen years he taught economics, finance, statistics, entrepreneurship, and forecasting as a faculty member in the college of business at Rochester Institute of Technology.[4]
In 1979 Thomas Greco became a private consultant and community activist, working with local Rochester, New York peace and justice groups. From 1981 to 1990 he served as trustee and then president of the School of Living which promotes “decentralized, ecologically-sound, self-governed and humane communities.” A frequent contributor to the decentralist publication Fourth World Review, Greco organized of the Fourth World Assembly and New Economics Symposium held in San Francisco in 1987.[4]
Greco writes and consults on monetary exchange alternatives, including private credit clearing systems, complementary currencies and local currencies.
Source: YouTube
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