From the Back Cover
A VISIONARY CASE FOR A NEW MONETARY SYSTEM
We can create a money system that is the ally, and not the enemy, of all that is precious in the world. We can make money into something we can truly embrace as ours. That, I think, is the heart of the call to occupy money. These are hands-on solutions that are available to every citizen, without having to wait for those in power to make changes from above. -- CHARLES EISENTSEIN, from the Foreword
Inflation and compound interest have caused our monetary system to balloon to the point where bailing out banks, large corporations, and even entire countries will not prevent a complete breakdown of the global economy - unless we make some fundamental changes. It's time for a grassroots movement to knock conventional money off its pedestal and replace it with a fresh paradigm that puts people before profits.
Occupy Money makes the case for a stable and sustainable monetary system that reflects real wealth instead of the smoke and mirrors of speculative profit. This hopeful vision can be realized through such creative initiatives as:
- Eliminating interest through interest-free loans and "demurrage", which rewards currency circulation
- Re-localizing economies through regional currencies
- Establishing time banks and complementary currencies geared to specific services such as health and education.
For many years financial insiders have hidden economic truths by describing them in arcane terms that no layperson can understand. Occupy Money cuts through the confusion and clearly and succinctly explains how, rather than favoring the 1% at the expense of the 99%, we can restructure our monetary system to meet the needs of us all. In so doing, this revolutionary manifesto issues a challenge to the very foundations of conventional economic doctrine.
Margrit Kennedy's timely book provides a geography of hope for practical new money systems ... these are the seeds that need to be planted in the new economic spring of well-being that is emerging. -- MARK ANIELSKI, economist and author of The Economics of Happiness
Margrit Kennedy is the author of the international bestseller Interest and Inflation-Free Money , an outspoken critic of the current global economic system and a renowned advocate of alternative regional and complementary currencies.
Margrit Kennedy , born in 1939, is an architect and an urban and regional planner with a doctorate in public and international affairs. As the head of the Research Department Ecology and Energy at the International Building Exhibition in Berlin from 1979-1984, and in her teaching and research as a professor for "Building Technology and Resource-Efficient Construction" at the University of Hanover from 1991-2002, she came to understand that the monetary system is a primary cause of our ecological and economic problems. In 1987, she wrote the bestseller "Interest and Inflation Free Money," which has been translated into 23 languages, revised and updated in 1991 and in the expanded German version in 2006. Her book Regional Currencies: A New Path to Sustainable Prosperity , 2004, written in cooperation with Bernard Lietaer, has become a standard of the regional money movement in Germany. It has also become a point of entry for such models in other parts of Europe, owing to its translation into Spanish and French. Triarchy Press in the UK (triarchypress.com) is publishing the first English-language edition, edited and abridged by John Rogers, in 2012.
For almost 30 years, Margrit Kennedy has been explaining in lectures and seminars how to overcome "economic illiteracy" so that money can finally serve people rather than vice versa, as is the case today. Currently her work focuses on introducing and testing complementary payment media.
