Written by John Lounsbury
One of the most unique monetary economists of the last century died a little over a year ago. Bernard Lietaer proposed that global economies would be much more stable if there were a currency (or possibly a number of currencies) parallel to the existing sovereign fiat currencies. The unique characteristic of the currency is that it would be strictly a medium of exchange and be completely separated from store-of-value function.
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Prof. Lietaer explains the parallel currency concept in a 13 minute lecture from 2012, below.
From Wikipedia:
Bernard Lietaer (7 February 1942 – 4 February 2019[1]) was a civil engineer, economist, author and professor. He studied monetary systems and promoted the idea that communities can benefit from creating their own local or complementary currency, which circulate parallel with national currencies.
Lietaer’s post-graduate thesis published in 1971 included a description of “floating exchanges”.[4] The Nixon Shock of that same year eradicated the Bretton Woods system by unhinging the US dollar value from its gold standard and inaugurated an era of “universal floating exchanges” (prior to that time the only “floating exchanges” involved some Latin American currencies) Litaer’s thesis attracted the financial world’s attention.[citation needed] The techniques which he had developed for marginal Latin American currencies were for a time the only systematic research which could be used to deal with the major currencies of the world. A major US bank negotiated exclusive rights to his approach which required that he begin another career.[5]
In 1987, he co-founded a large and successful currency management firm called GaiaCorp, and managed an offshore currency fund (Gaia Hedge II) which during the 1987-91 period was the world’s top performing managed currency fund.[6]
Business Week named him “the world’s top currency trader” in 1992.[8]
From 2003 – 2006, he was a visiting scholar at Naropa University, USA where he designed and implemented the University’s Marpa Center for Business and Economics.[6] Litaer was also a research fellow at the Center for Sustainable Resources of the University of California, Berkeley.
Source: YouTube
If you want to hear more form Prof. Lietaer, he was also featured in earlier presentations of Documentary of the Week:
- Documentary Of The Week: Money Is Manipulating Us (28 February 2019)
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