Correlation of US stocks highest since 1987 crash. Ellen Brown on economic, financial and monetary transformation. Book of the Week: Charles Eistenstein’s Sacred Economics is out! Every new epoch needs its adapted spirituality. A good candidate for a positive affirmation of a p2p spirituality is this book from marvelous author and speaker Charles Eistenstein, whose earlier The Ascent of Humanity offered a most profound critique of the current system. Here, he describes the positive alternative. “Why is it that whenever I investigate the causes of any phenomenon that bothers me, whether it is nuclear waste, the prison industry, or the dissolution of community, I dig down one or two levels and I get to money?
Why is money a force for evil in the world? Finally, the book explores the personal dimensions of this transition. “The purpose of this book is to make money and human economy as sacred as everything else in the universe. Today we associate money with the profane, and for good reason. From at least the time that Jesus threw the money changers from the temple, we have sensed that there is something unholy about money. And what is the sacred? Bernard Lietaer and Christian Arnsperger on reinventing the financial system. Via: What is the structural cause of the financial crisis and what is its structural solution? 1. Watch the video from monetary transformer Bernard Lietaer, from TedX Berlin: 2. Listen to the audio podcast interview here. ” Dawna Jones talks to Bernard Lietaer, author of “The Future of Money” and the forthcoming “New Currencies for a New World”, about the root causes of financial uncertainty and what practical steps businesses can take to insure against it.
So just how can small and medium size business reclaim control over financial instability? In this special half hour interview, we’ll also how local innovations in currency serve to stabilize cash flow, local and regional economies.” But how do we get from “here” to “there”, how can monetary transformation be implemented in the current world-system? Here is the thinking of Christian Arnsperger: But how would local complementary currencies be put into circulation? The Bitcoin Epoch: It is Akin to the Printing Press Revolution. News has been filtering in about the problems that are besetting a virtual currently called Bitcoin. The day to day rumblings of its story are fascinating enough but it is the evolution of the underlying idea that I think is important. This is one of those events that we often miss at the time and look back on as ushering in a new epoch in its long-term implications for the world, as for example the printing press did it its day.
So what is Bitcoin? It’s a virtual currency that can be used to buy and sell with much as you can with a normal currency. The difference is that while virtually all other currencies on the planet are backed by a central bank and so a nation state, Bitcoin is backed only by its users. It is a peer-to-peer currency developed for the networked age. The Bitcoin Image Before I get much deeper into what Bicoin is, its also important to consider what it is not. To better understand we do need to spend a little time looking at what a currency is. L019: Bitcoin P2P Currency: The Most Dangerous Project We've Ever Seen - Launch - Solid discussions of this piece on BoingBoing.net, Hacker News, Slashdot and Reddit.
Rob Tercek has a follow up to this piece here. by Jason Calacanis and the LAUNCH team A month ago I heard folks talking online about a virtual currency called bitcoin that is untraceable and un-hackable. Folks were using it to buy and sell drugs online, support content they liked and worst of all -- gasp! -- play poker. Bitcoin is a P2P currency that could topple governments, destabilize economies and create uncontrollable global bazaars for contraband. I sent the 30 or so producers of my show This Week in Startups out to research the top players, and we did a show on Bitcoin on May 10. After month of research and discovery, we’ve learned the following: 1. What Are Bitcoins? 1. Each owner transfers the coin to the next by digitally signing a hash of the previous transaction and the public key of the next owner and adding these to the end of the coin.
The benefits of a currency like this: Edgar Cahn - 2 impulses of human nature and corresponding money systems. Kevin Carson on Bitcoin and the Phyles: dystopia or utopia? “Neal Stephenson’s “The Diamond Age” was set some years after encrypted currencies and e-commerce removed most economic transactions into darknets beyond the government’s capability of monitoring and regulating, and thus caused tax bases around the world to implode. This was followed, in short order, by the collapse of most nation-states. In the ensuing Interregnum, the defunct nation-states were replaced by city-states and by networked global civil societies called “phyles.” The major phyles leased enclaves in most major city-states around the world, much as the Venetian merchant guilds leased “Venetian quarters” in the major port cities of the Mediterranean.
Membership in the phyles was voluntary, and the provision of the kinds of public services and social safety nets formerly associated with states was generally tied to voluntary membership subscriptions of some sort. This is, incidentally, the model of service-provision in some unions like the Screen Actors’ Guild. The minimum wage, demurrage and the economics of labor. The minimum wage, demurrage and the economics of labor Sepp Hasslberger 17th June 2011 What I am about to summarize or, more or less faithfully record, here is a discussion on facebook which should be available for future reference … temporary as they are those traces that remain of our social networking interactions and exchanges of ideas and views. Michel Bauwens started the ball rolling by pointing to an article that argued that “Even in Hard Times, Boosting Minimum Wage Makes Sense”. The article’s discussion was about some US State legislatures proposing to increase the minimum wage over and above the federal minimum, and doing so in times of economic hardship.
Several voices affirmed that increasing the minimum wage would not be costing jobs, as has traditionally been said it would. . Edward Miller intervened somewhat forcefully, saying that “it doesn’t [make sense]. This elicited another response by Edward Miller: Prices are set by supply and demand. P2P Foundation. Book of the Week (2): The History of Stamp Scrip. This very well written introduction to why we need differently designed currency has an interesting review of historical experiences, in particular how evolutions after the meltdown of 1929 could help find solutions for the meltdown of 2008. Chapter 1 has a history of ‘stamp scrip’. “During the Great Depression, the esteemed Yale economist Irving Fisher came to a stark realization.
In the midst of this grave economic crisis he observed that not only were the majority of Americans su! Ering as a consequence of poor monetary policies, but also in large part they were su! Ering needlessly. Black Tuesday may have started on Wall Street but its impact was deeply felt globally. By 1933, Fisher had come to understand that millions were experiencing intensified financial pain because they did not have access to a sufficient money supply.
In plain language, the US Federal Reserve was not printing enough money to meet the needs of the people. The Miracle of Wörgl The Science behind the Miracle. Is Ripple the Future of Money? « webisteme. Ripple is an open source project to create a new type of decentralised currency based on trust between friends. While Ripple’s technical development is ongoing, many of the core ideas are in place, as well as some prototype implementations. As I’ve studied Ripple over the last couple of weeks, the project has excited me more and more. It has similar disruptive potential to Bitcoin, whilst retaining the advantages of abundant, credit-based money. In this post, I want to explore what Ripple is, and why it might be the next great leap in monetary innovation. Detour: Mutual credit To understand the point of Ripple, we have to go back and look at an old story about money: credit.
Not all money has been based on credit, but many monetary historians believe that debt-based, ledger money predates commodity money. Under such systems – the first examples of mutual credit arrangements – money was created as debt whenever somebody received a good or service from someone else. Ripple Payment routing. The Ripple mutual credit and payment system: Will It Work? Should it work, its consequences would be great. A mutual credit system which could scale around the world would put people in control of the money supply. It would create a decentralised source of credit money freely available whenever individuals and institutions were prepared to trust each other, and immune from the monetary abuse and fiscal policy decisions of governments. Money which was backed by trust between people, rather than the threat of force or the fear of bankruptcy, would be a profoundly disruptive monetary leap.
Excerpted from the excellent open money blog of ‘Webisteme’, this is one of the better analytical pieces we have seen on Ripple: By ‘webisteme’: “To understand the point of Ripple, we have to go back and look at an old story about money: credit. Under such systems – the first examples of mutual credit arrangements – money was created as debt whenever somebody received a good or service from someone else. I think there are a number of reasons to be optimistic: What Bitcoin Is, and Why It Matters. Unlike other currencies, Bitcoin is underwritten not by a government, but by a clever cryptographic scheme. For now, little can be bought with bitcoins, and the new currency is still a long way from competing with the dollar. But this explainer lays out what Bitcoin is, why it matters, and what needs to happen for it to succeed. Where does Bitcoin come from? In 2008, a programmer known as Satoshi Nakamoto—a name believed to be an alias—posted a paper outlining Bitcoin’s design to a cryptography e-mail list.
Then, in early 2009, he (or she) released software that can be used to exchange bitcoins using the scheme. That software is now maintained by a volunteer open-source community coordinated by four core developers. “Satoshi’s a bit of a mysterious figure,” says Jeff Garzik, a member of that core team and founder of Bitcoin Watch, which tracks the Bitcoin economy. How does Bitcoin work? The Basics A Bitcoin address looks something like this: 15VjRaDX9zpbA8LVnbrCAFzrVzN7ixHNsC.
Security. Can Ripple credit routing develop into an actual currency? The world of alternative currencies is abuzz right now with discussions of the pros and cons of Bitcoin, a peer-based currency that is being “mined” using the capability of computers to solve a complex mathematical problem. A good summation of the discussions is on Quora, in the different answers to the question: Is the cryptocurrency Bitcoin a good idea?
There is also speculation on how bitcoin, or rather the development of crypto-currencies, will influence and profoundly change our economic thinking, especially our way of taxing. Rick Falkvinge, the founder of the first Pirate Party, has a very interesting article on this on his blog, titled: The Information Policy Case For Flat Tax And Basic Income(I snatched his picture with all those golden coins for this article) Ripple But my idea today was not to add to the already rather heated discussion around Bitcoin. Ripple is an internet based protocol for p2p exchange that is actively under development. Square Tries to Make Wallets Obsolete.
Square's new apps allow consumers to pay their bills without swiping a credit card. But the company has competition. On Monday, Jack Dorsey, Square’s co-founder and chief executive, announced a way for shoppers to pay by simply giving their name to the merchant. Mr. Dorsey, who also co-founded Twitter, said customers would use a new feature on Square’s or apps, called Card Case, to make payments.
Merchants would use one called Register to ring up and track purchases. Using cellphones to ease offline purchases is a crowded corner of tech investment. Most companies are tackling one aspect of purchasing, like mobile payments or coupons. The start-up faces formidable competition. Square’s new payment services are available at only 50 merchants in New York, San Francisco, Washington, St.
Shoppers can use the Card Case app to search for those businesses, pay their bill and store receipts. Rethinking taxes and welfare in a cryptocurrency world. The relative early success of Bitcoin in the world of hackers, means that cryptocurrencies will be coming in a decade or so. It’s urgent to rethink taxes and welfare, thinks Swedish Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge in this excerpt: “From a political perspective, this development means that taxation and welfare systems must be rethought and rewired considerably and immediately.
Cryptocurrency brings new challenges to the table. The government can’t see the wealth of an individual, nor their inflow or outflow of funds, not with any amount of applied force. I know a lot of individuals in government will react with normalcy bias to this statement and say “but we have to!”. It doesn’t matter if you have to. You can’t. This means that neither taxes nor social support systems can be based on income or wealth. We’ll arrive at this point within a decade. So taxation first, then. This leaves us with a couple of other things we can tax. Oh, and we can tax consumption. Sean Corrigan On The Inflationary Diabolus Ex Machina, And Bernanke As The Modern Incarnation Of Shiva, the Shatterer of Worlds. Meet the System That Will Collapse the U.S. Dollar (Part 1)
Over the last few articles, I have explained the reality of peak oil. However, this is just one factor of America’s looming energy crisis. Another major component that is vital to understand is something known as the breakdown of the Petrodollar system. Today, I will begin explaining exactly what this system and why you should understand it. In the early 1970’s, the international gold standard had collapsed, and America was beginning to live far beyond its means. And despite facing unemployment and inflation, America displayed few signs of the kind of fiscal discipline that could prevent future complications. But what exactly is the petrodollar system? A petrodollar is a U.S. dollar that is received by an oil producer in exchange for selling oil.
Despite the seeming simplicity of this arrangement of “dollars for oil,” the petrodollar system is actually highly complex and one with many moving parts. Today, virtually all oil transactions are made in U.S. dollars. Finally… Franz Hoermann – “The death of money – electronic money” (This is a long, unbroken excerpt from “The End of Money”, about as long as I dare go in one unbroken stretch, out of politeness, and despite the author's generous permission, but this is a passage I personally found very helpful.
It covers a lot of important ground quickly and clearly, and links with many other aspects of our money predicament. I hope you get as much out of it as I have. Now over to the Professor...) “In 1993, Joel Kurtzman, former editor of The Harvard Business Review, authored “The Death of Money: How the Electronic Economy Has Destabilized the World's Markets and Created Financial Chaos”. In this work he points out how investment bank business practices themselves have changed in the electronic age. But do moral considerations impinge on us when we trade anonymously? If the person at whose loss we are making a profit is totally unknown to us, can there then be any moral restraint in pursuit of profit?
The ephemeralization of value. Bitcoin in the real world – supply and demand. Hyperinflation: The Story of 9 Failed Currencies | Mint.com Blog | Personal Finance News & Advice. Social economic networks and the new intangibles. Peer-to-peer currency takes banks out of the picture - Springwise. 15 Things They Don’t Tell You About Money | Positive Money - Fixing Social & Economic Problems by Ending Fractional Reserve Banking.