Positive Money Conference London – Part-2

Some practical alternatives to aspects of banking mentioned at this valuable 1-day event included (this does not aim to be a comprehensive list) –

In the UK

www.uk.zopa.com
peer to peer lending, with a less than 1% default rate

www.abundancegeneration.com
launching shortly, with the same founder as UK Zopa

www.bankofthefuture.com
launching in March 2012, will offer 4 different options of service and will embrace all the elements an ideal banking system would presently contain

Internationally

Hong Kong’s Octopus Card
highly successful, adopted by another province in China

Vodafone’s M-pesa (m=mobile, pesa=Swahili for money)
adopted by users for money transfers, it caught almost Vodafone’s African subsidiary by surprise to find itself become one of Africa’s largest money institutions, and aims in partnership with Citibank make this a world-wide payment service

Vodafone UK
making charity-giving via the mobile phone very easy (to charities that register with them)

Facebook Credits
nobody at Facebook is denying the existence of peer to peer banking plans

Google Points
Google does not deny working on its own payment system

Twitpay
Twitter is rolling out this service

www.PayPal.com

All above systems are however linked in one way or another linked to the banking system. The following 2 are genuinely independent –

www.bitcoin.com
genuinely has no links with banks

www.kiva.org
is another peer to peer lending system, concentrating on small loans to poorer countries

For UK readers of this blog there is an interesting offer on the table – contact your MP and ask whether s/he knows where money comes from, revealing that a survey has shown that only 4 out of 600 do and offer to provide them with a copy of the book “Where does Money Come From” co-authored by one of the day’s speakers, Josh Ryan-Collins (with Tony Greenahm of NEF), and published by the New Economics Foundation, www.neweconomics.org. If your MP has the courtesy to respond in the affirmative, NEF has offered to send them a complimentary copy of this eye-opening book (which to my mind ought to include the phrase “… really come from ….”

This Old Warhorse recommends you register with http://www.positivemoney.org.uk so that you are kept abreast of their work and have an opportunity to attend their next annual gathering – or invite them to something you are organising and for which you seek speakers.

The issue of what money is and how it may be made more relevant was briefly touched upon by speakers as the day’s focus was very much on how to remove the near monopoly powers we have given banks, which they have consistently misused to the detriment of most of the world, and about which governments simply have no idea what to do. The entire day was marked by the absence of any strident attacks on any parties, rather there was a sombre recognition that as a global society we had allowed a monster to develop that none of the parties threatened by it know how to control.

The bigger issue that this Old Warhorse considers will need to be addressed soon, but was outside the scope of this one-day event and still lies in the future, is agreement on what money is and how the currencies in which money is expressed can be given value objectively. One of the MP speakers at the event made reference to money as a commodity, which is precisely where our problem lies – we need to agree that money is a unit of measure, nothing else, and then start treating it as such. Coupled with the practical solutions offered by the event here reported on, the role of banks would quickly become redefined as a service industry to the real wealth generators of modern society.

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