Product Description

Based on the four mega-trends of monetary instability, global greying (an ageing global population), the information revolution, and climate change and species extinction, Bernard Lietaer looks at different scenarios of what the world might be like in 2020.
1. The Corporate Millennium: governments are disbanded, central banks close down and the world is run with Big Brother control by huge corporations with their own currencies.
2. Caring Communities: people retreat into small, self-sustaining communities, like tribes.
3. Hell on Earth: in which the breakdown of life as we know it is followed by a highly individualistic free-for-all, resulting in an ever more obscene gulf between rich and poor.
4. Sustainable Abundance: envisages a world where we take better care of the environment, re-arrange the poor and the unemployed in mainstream society and give back time and fulfilment to the over-worked, while providing the elderly with a high level of personal care.

A society of sustainable abundance is achievable – but only if we are willing to re-invent our money system and create new currencies.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #316230 in Books
• Published on: 2002-01-17
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Stephen Denning, Program Director, World Bank
'...really opened my eyes as to what money is about, and what its future is - or is not.'

The Rt. Hon. John Redwood,MP
'I thoroughly disagree with it.'

Dee Hock, Founder and CEO Emeritus, VISA International
Read this thoughtful,penetrating,readable book and you’ll understand how profoundly present monetary systems and the people who control them affect your life.

Customer Reviews

One of the best books I've ever read
this book is a superb, thought provoking look at money, what it is and what it represents. You do not need a degree in economics to understand this (in fact such a grounding is probably a disadvantage to some of the theories presented!)

From looking at a range of possible futures we could face, to a look at the past and how poorer communities have tried to build their future with alternative currencies, you will never see money in the same light again.

Whatever your political leanings, you will agree with many of his theories. On the one hand he promotes a strong work ethic and self reliance as part of the solution to problems, but on the other, he gives many examples of community-based currencies as a way of people improving their own lot.

It helped me understand many of my own views on how the world works, and how it could or should work. If you believe in freedom and people being responsible for their own lives then you'll love it, if you are a fan of big government and the level of interference/obstruction that brings to our lives then you probably won't!

I also recommend "How to Invest in Gold and Silver" by A Dunwiddie, and "Empire of Debt" by Bill Bonner.

Think I might not need my pension after all?
The Future of Money
By
Bernard Lietaer

Most if not all of us can not ignore the mega trends that are impacting on all of our lives. You only have to watch the news on any day to get an update; the author Bernard Lietaer of my book review this month has condensed these trends into four key areas:

Pensions Crisis: The rising imbalance in our population age demographics resulting in more people not working versus those in work. This author refers to this as the “Age Wave”, hard to imagine that there just might not be anyone to look after you when you need a Zimmer frame or a wheel chair?

Climate Change: Is it simply better reporting from global communications , or indeed are we experiencing more frequent natural disasters brought about by our population explosion across the planet and our rampant consumerism? Eighty five percent of all insurance claims are paid out as a result of natural disasters. The endangered species list is growing by the month including Polar Bears that may disappear as the Polar Regions shrink.

Monetary Instability: In the last decade we have experienced the South East Asian crisis with deflation a real part of their lives ever since, The Mexican crash, the Russian Crash of 1998 and the well publicised crash in Brazil in 1999.

Information Revolution: The last twenty years have been the “the new industrial revolution” with the same live changing impacts on all of our every day lives. Information has never been so prolific if only we had the time to read it?

What connects all of these trends? ……………………..Money!

The author Bernard Lietaer has spent 25 years working in different areas of the money system. He worked on the creation of the single European currency and was named the world’s top currency trader by Business Week in 1989. He was Professor of International Finance at the University of Louvain, Belgium, and a Fellow at the Center for Sustainable Resources at the University of California, Berkeley. So fair to say, he might just know what he is talking about? Indeed he appears to be one of the world’s foremost financial visionaries.

Having outlined these mega trends the author goes onto suggest the potential outcomes of these trends, many of which we are already experiencing in our daily lives. Big Brother controls go on the increase, this is evidenced in our every day lives, taxation is pervasive from cradle to grave with all activities even our personal lives being watched at every corner. Britain is the most watched nation in the world. We have the most CCTV’s per head of population. Who said the North Koreans had it bad? Caring Communities, spread rapidly: small communities isolating themselves from the global tide of lowering values and institutional intrusion, to maintain basic cultures of caring and sharing. Gated communities around the globe are becoming ever more popular, religious groups already practice this across the globe and are seeking better and better ways to isolate themselves from the rest of us. Hell on Earth, a general systematic decline in law and order and an increasing gulf between rich and poor. And lastly Sustainable Abundance, in which he envisages the world in which we take better care of the environment, re-arrange the poor and the unemployed in mainstream society and give back time and fulfillment to the over-worked, while providing the elderly with a high level of personal care. The cynic or perhaps the realist in me thinks that this last outcome is way outside of our abilities as a race to achieve due to the nature and future of money. A thoroughly “heads up” read for all of us in business, and as it was written in 2001, even more so unsettling, maybe I need to save a little less in my pension?

Available from all good retailers and etailers from 9.99 or less. (Do your bit for the planet and get a used one from Amazon)

Bold attempt to tackle global problems by monetary reform
The Future Of Money is a bold and ambitious attempt to show how root-and-branch reform of the global monetary system can help to solve some of the most pressing problems facing the world. The author's particular focus is on complementary currencies: local, relatively informal exchange systems which operate within a given community, and which are not necessarily created by bank debt, but by everyday transactions between members of the community. For example, you might agree to mow a neighbour's lawn: simultaneously creating a credit for yourself and a debit for your neighbour. You might then choose to spend your credit on another neighbour's home-baked cake.

Complementary currency systems are so called because they are intended to run in tandem with national (and multinational) currencies, not to replace them. Mr Lietaer's thesis is that such currencies can help society in two ways: by bringing people closer together, and by reducing what he sees as an artificial shortage of money, a shortage that encourages competitive behaviour and short-term thinking. "[T]he current monetary system obliges us to incur debt collectively, and to compete with others in the community, just to obtain the means to perform exchanges between us."

As a former currency trader of the year and senior Central Bank executive in Belgium, who has taught finance at several leading universities, Bernard Lietaer is no anti-capitalist prophet railing in the wilderness. Far from it: here is someone who has worked at the heart of the international financial system and found it wanting. Mr Lietaer's personal background is reflected in the tone of the book, which is always constructive and sympathetic to business. He has clearly conducted extensive research into complementary currencies, and also seems to have direct practical experience of setting up such systems: at one point, he offers a series of tips on how to set one up yourself!

While the author clearly knows his stuff when it comes to financial instruments and alternative currency systems, the book can feel rather unsophisticated, theoretically speaking. The emphasis on money as, if not quite the root of all evils, certainly a major cause of society's problems, ignores the deeper social roots of these problems. Why do we use the money system that we do? To my mind, there are two broad classes of answers to this question: one, that money is a technological solution to the globalisation of society; the other, that money is a tool of powerful interests in society. Neither type of answer is given by Mr Lietaer, who never really asks the question of why our money system is set up the way it is; but whichever is the case (and, of course, it's probably a combination of both), fundamental reform of the financial system is likely to be impossible without fundamental reform of the society that it serves.

Any criticisms, however, pale into insignificance beside the book's strengths. Mr Lietaer has written a very accessible book about a hugely complex and difficult subject. I myself have no formal economic training, yet I found his ideas very clear and easy to follow. There is a chapter explaining the workings of today's money system, an appendix ("A Primer On How Money Works") for financial novices, and a glossary of financial terms. (I particularly appreciated the discussion of how discounted cash flow analysis encourages short-term economic thinking in Chapter 9, as I had heard a lot about this technique without knowing quite what it was.)

At the same time there is plenty of more specialist information, particularly on the global reach of complementary currency schemes, for those who are more experienced in financial matters. One of the real strengths of The Future Of Money is the way that the author reaches out to diverse groups of people: for example, he stresses the business opportunities that could arise if the government monopoly on issuing currencies were ended, rather than railing against the evils of big business. Mr Lietaer is a highly constructive thinker, so there are plenty of four-point plans, schematic diagrams and the like, which should also appeal to managerial types. His argument is helped by his writing style, which is very clear and readable throughout, and lightened by a few amusing cartoons and stories.

What really sets this book apart, though, is the range of different ideas about money that it synthesises, and the unique insights that appear in its pages as a result. I came to it quite sceptical about how useful local currencies could be: I saw them as a kind of turn-the-clock-back denial of globalisation. I now realise that in the 21st century they have a lot to offer as part of a holistic solution to the world's economic problems and the erosion of community. So, for me at least, this book has succeeded in its task.