Complementary currencies, the future of money.
Our modern monetary systems share in common the fact that they consist of a nationwide, government-enforced monopoly of a single type of currency, created by banks through loans attached to positive interest rates, and naturally or artificially kept scarce. While these particular features of our money system have permitted the accumulation of capital that enabled rapid industrialization during the modern era, they also have a number of hidden but far-reaching counterproductive side effects.
Complementary currencies are agreements within a community to accept something else than national currencies as a means of payment. They are sometimes called community currencies, local currencies or “common tender.” Not all these common tender currencies are local, however, and some have purposes other than community building. Because they are designed to function in parallel with conventional money — not replacing but complementing national currencies–we will use the terminology of “complementary” to describe them.
In this 18 minutes presentation Bernard Lietaer explains in a brilliant and systematic way the idea of complementary currencies and how introducing this new way of thinking can make the financial system and employment more sustainable and ready for the 21th century. Read the full post »