The Pope is Onto Something

Monetary Reform 101

“Somewhere in our history we took a wrong turn and today we are reaping the consequences. If we don’t step back to evaluate the root causes of the rolling economic crises, our civilization is in danger of collapse.” – Clive Menzies

As a follow-up to the Pope’s recent condemnation of the global “cult of money,” someone has sent me an astounding video by an extremely forward thinking financial analyst named Clive Menzies, president of British Fund Building and member of the Free Critical Thinking Institute.

Eighteen months ago Menzies entered into an ongoing dialogue with the London Occupy movement. The result is a radical monetary reform proposal to fix the global economic mess. In the film below, he is presenting it to the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment (translation: a high-powered group of investment bankers and stock brokers).

In his presentation, Menzies attributes the current crisis, as well as capitalism’s recurrent boom and bust cycles, to the alienation of the vast majority of the global population from the commons (i.e. land) and the prohibition of any discussion of this catastrophic event in contemporary economic discourse.

Most of his talk focuses on the urgent need to eliminate interest from our current economic system. He argues that our interest (debt)-based monetary system needs to be abolished because interest

drives systemic inequality by allowing those with more money than they need to exploit those who need money.
drives unsustainable, exponential debt growth because the interest cost rises faster than society can create wealth to pay it.
discounts the future, driving environmental destruction – a forest is worth more as sawed timber than preserved for future generations
it demands exponential GDP growth, rapidly depleting finite resources – 3% GDP growth means the economy doubles every 24 years which means extracting resources at twice the rate and throwing twice as much away
it drives inflation

He also demolishes the prevailing myth that a person’s existence on this planet is only justified by paid work. In a way it’s deliberate falsehood more than a myth. There is only enough “productive” work for 50% of the adult population and the vast majority of income in contemporary society is generated via “rent-seeking” (i.e. charging interest or rent or extracting and exploiting publicly owned natural resources).

Menzies lays out a monetary reform proposal that would abolish interest exploitation through the creation of interest-free government currency (which would most likely be land based and funded through rents), which would be supplemented by local currencies, as is currently in happening in countries like Greece and Cyprus.  

Please watch. I certify the following presentation to be totally jargon-free and painless, no economic expertise required.

 

photo credit: Christus Vincit via photopin cc