Author Govert SchullerPosted on Categories Monetary Reform
The Basics
The American Monetary Institute (AMI) will conduct its 18th international monetary conference on Friday till Sunday, October 7-9, 2022. It will be on-line on Zoom.
The provisional list of presenters and the schedule are here.
Times are in US Central Daytime. In India the Friday session starts 4:30 am IST; the Saturday starts at 6:30 pm IST; and Sunday starts 7:30 pm IST.
If you would like to participate in the October AMI conference, please register. If $35 is too much, for interested participants of developing countries, we will request a 1,500 INR donation. Even if that’s too much plead your case here.
About AMI
Since its founding in 1996 AMI was involved in monetary history, theory and reform. Its highlight was helping to draft legislation (the NEED Act) with Democrat Rep. Dennis Kucinich from Ohio for a radical change of the US monetary system in 2011. Unfortunately it stalled in committee.
The basic analysis of the problem is that the current monetary system is based on the fact that almost all that we use as money is created and allocated by commercial banks. Banks are not intermediaries between savers and borrowers as most people think, including economists and politicians. And we are talking about 90-97% of the money supply. It is banks which create money when originating loans and destroy it again when the principal is paid back.
As counter-intuitive this might sound, as of today, many commercial banks, central banks, economists, and other social scientists agree with this ‘credit creation theory of money and banking’ and have said so in peer-reviewed papers and official documents. The truth of this claim is not an issue anymore. The dialogue is about how dangerously dysfunctional this system is and what possibilities there are to reform, even, transform it.
This set-up creates many problems. First, it gives the banking community enormous economic and political power; 2) it creates inequality in the population; 3) it creates an unsustainable debt-burden; 4) even the state has to borrow from them as it believes it cannot create its own money; 5) it creates systemic problems like often recurring financial crises; 6) it creates a cruel profit-seeking, international system fueling corporate capitalism and globalization dependent for its return on investment on cheap labor and cheap resources while waltzing over human rights, political sovereignty and ecological integrity.
Proposed Legislation
Though this system needs multiple pieces of legislation to make it serve humanity and not the upper crust of the population, the pivotal legislation is monetary reform, the specific aims of which are:
1) Nationalize the central bank and institute a monetary authority to manage the money supply such that it is neither inflationary nor deflationary;
2) Allow the state to spend debt-free money into circulation on projects society really needs;
3) abrogate the prerogative of banks to create the money supply and let them be intermediaries in society’s flow of sovereign money.
Once this is accomplished the people will have the necessary tools to re-direct the flow of money towards 1) tackling now crippling budget deficits; 2) greening the economy; 3) repairing and building-up necessary physical, educational and health infrastructure; and 4) tampering destructive financial crises.
One point of detail maybe should be mentioned to make clear how this system would work as far as the creation and allocation of new, debt-free money would work. It will be the mandate of the Monetary Authority (MA) to research and analyze the national economy’s developments. Based on that research it calibrates the amount of money to be issued such that no deflation nor inflation would occur (or maybe allow for a functional and benign 2% inflation). In a growing economy the money supply should grow proportionally and the MA would create the adequate amount, then pass it to congress, which then allocates this extra money through democratic deliberation.
International Scene
AMI also inspired the founding of sister organizations all over the world, some of which were instrumental in putting the issue of monetary justice on their national political agenda. Especially Iceland, the UK, The Netherlands, Switzerland and New Zealand have to be mentioned.
The Swiss monetary organization was even successful in making monetary reform the subject of a nation-wide referendum. Though the measure did not pass, it generated international attention. Struggling against deception by the authorities and bankers, and dealing with general ignorance of the public, it still garnered 25%.
If you are interested in systemic change on both national and global level, and perceive the central importance of how our monetary system is designed, we invite you to gain monetary literacy through the many sources mentioned below.
Sources
| American Monetary Institute (AMI)
The Alliance For Just Money (AFJM) Money Reform India (MRI) Positive Money – UK (PM-UK) International Movement For Monetary Reform (IMMR) |
Introductory Bibliography (here)
Educational and Promotional videos (here) Weighted Bibliography (here) Extended bibliography (here) Conference Page 2021 AMI Conference (here) Video List 2021 AMI Conference (here) |