Ditto Eisenstein! Also, BERNARD LIETAER, who is speaking Sunday, May 6th, in Santa Barbara, Calif, at the Fe Bland Auditorium, Santa Barbara
City College West Campus, 721 Cliff Drive -- no reservations required; $10 admission ($5 students) ---- sponsored by
permie folks --
http://sustainability.sbcc.edu/
i]According to Bernard Lietaer, scarcity doesn't need to be a guiding principle of our economic system. He also suggests that money should work for us, not the other way around, and unlike the weather, wasn't created by Nature, it was created by us!
Monetary systems have existed throughout human history, and with the centuries-old model that currently exists, has been
the culprit for many of the negative economic and environmental issues we face today. But what most have forgotten is that money is a "human designed construct" that we absolutely have the ability to redesign for a more abundant and
sustainable future.
Join the SBCC Center for Sustainability for a talk with Bernard Lietaer, author of the newly published book, "New Money for a New World" on *Sunday, May 6, 6:30-9pm, as he discusses radical but proven ideas about complementary currencies and their ability to strengthen
local communities and their economies, while buffering them from the ups and downs of the global economy. Using innovative "new systems of exchange, along side existing national currencies", Lietaer suggests we move away from single currency monocultures, with their inevitable boom and bust cycles, to multiple and diverse systems of exchange. When one exchange system goes down, another one is in place for welcome stability, with a resilience and diversity that mimics natural ecosystems.
Sharing compelling examples of successful complementary currencies used around the globe today and those from past eras of history, Lietaers ideas are less revolutionary than they appear. Using creative initiatives such as airline frequent flyer miles (a form of complementary currency promoting customer-loyalty in exchange for free travel), Time Banks, commercial barter,
carbon currency and mutual credit systems, communities can empower themselves and flourish in spite of the current economic crisis, by simply rethinking how money works.
For learning institutions such as colleges that currently leave many students in enormous debt and others left out of the system altogether, an exemplary complementary currency model is the Brazilian Saber, where funds from a small tax on cell phone usage is used to create "sabers" officially redeemable for teaching other students or tuition payments, thereby creating a "learning chain and learning multiplier" effect. The University of Missouri, Kansas City, introduced an innovative complementary currency called Buckaroos, that students can earn while performing community service activities.
Bernard Lietaer is a former Belgium banker and the author of several highly acclaimed
books including "The Future of Money: Beyond
Greed & Scarcity"; and "Creating Wealth; Growing Local Economies with Local Currencies", and his most recent, "New Money for a New World". He has been active in the realm of money systems in a wide variety of functions for almost 40 years, including being one of the principle architects of the European Euro. Formerly a professor of international finance at the University of Louvain, Lietaer was a fellow at the Center for Sustainable Resources at the University of California, Berkeley. Lietaer co-founded one of the largest and most successful currency management firms, GaiaCorp. He is co-founder of ACCESS Foundation, an educational non-profit organization whose goal is the re-alignment of sustainability and global financial interests. Business Week magazine named him "the world's top currency trader" in 1992.[/i]
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-Art Donnelly
