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>> next, bernard lietaer and jacqui dunne argue our monetary system is an fix -- antiquated. this is an hour and 15 minutes. >> good evening greenwich. >> good evening! >> good evening to you, too. there was a man who -- very august and very knowledgeable english economist who actually really understood about money. he thought for a moment and said, well, i know three people,

there's a colleague of mine at the university, a student of mine, and a junior clerk at the bank of england. tonight, i give you a fourth person, my esteemed colleague and friend, bernard lietaer. [applause] >> this is a recipe been going on for the last four our five years. the central banking terms, the chairman of the fed is known as helicopter ben. you know why that is? there were articles written about the deflation, about the deflation and n china -- sorry -- in japan during the 1990s, and seven of those were written by bernanke. so he really has focused on that

issue. publish -- and in one of the several mayorals -- several articles he found the -- to stop deflation. anyway, my store on the euro is rather personal one, because actually i am being involved at the very beginning of all this. and how this happens is, quite innocently, through a book which i rather and published in 1979, which has been written in three languages, actually. this is he french version and that's the english one. the -- talks about latin america and the only book that actually forecasts the major debt crisis that happened in the early

'80s, and saying this this beginning of a series of -- there's a structural problem in the global monetary system, and the first place that will blow up is latin america, but' we'll find it in other places over time. by the way, for a little history, we have had enough of those since. we have had 425 systemic crises in country, according to the imf, since 1970. that more than 10 per year. a country somewhere in trouble because a systemic problem. just every finished that book, i got a call from a head hunter, offering me a job at the central bank of -- so i decided to accept it because i thought it

was a dish just had written a book announcing the systemic problem in the monetary domain, and here i thought a time and place where i could do something about it. so i did that. i accepted the job. i was two weeks in that job, when these two gentlemen, president of france, the chancellor of germany, had a big love affair, had regular meetings, and in one of the meetings they announced something that says, europe needs a zone of monetary stability. okay? and numbers in the central bank, what did they mean? okay. the next thing was, that went to paris and said, do something

purely european. while mr. smith went to the german bank andaid do something that doesn't upset the americans. these two ideas are not compatible. so, at the bank of international settlement, the central banks, weapon they have a problem, they create a committee. and they put in charge of the committee the chairmanship of the committee, a country that doesn't have the illusion of running the world. belgium qualifies. so, that's how my colleague from the foreign department, and myself, as a technical -- in charge of the computer, planning, and the organization department of the central bank -- he was in the diplomacy. let me immediately say that all thele -- for the simple reason

that we can invent extreme monetary systems but if we sell one in your life, that's the real thing. so, is the one who sold it. now, here's the result. you know the map of europe. just to show you what really the eurozone is. the light blue areas are parts of europe that are not part of the eurozone but are part of the eu, the european union. so all the dark blue ones are the countries that are part of the system. there has been a big love affair around that in europe. this is actually the way poland presents its entry of poland into the eurozone.

and so in this picture, because the first time i met this gentleman, paul voelker, in my central banking days, he -- he is a good head taller than me and always smokes a cigar, right? and he dominates the scene kind of spontaneously, like you see here. i remember the cigar ashes, and his first question was, what the hell are you europeans about? that was saying hello. so, it was interesting. the next step for me happened in the same place, in the -- i had lunch there will the

then-secretary general of the central bank, and he said, bernard, i read your book on latin america. what are you doing in the central bank? nobody had asked me that question while i was in belgium. i said, i am in the central bank because i thought it was appropriate place to find out whether it's possible to do something about the system. and he said, bernard, you don't understand. we exist, the bank of international settlement, every central bank in the world exists, the imf and world bank only exist for one purpose, to keep the system going exactly as it is, not to improve it. that -- suddenly understood why any one of the proposals i had been making of anything that

would be out of the box was immediately dropped. so there's truth to it. and the truth from a banking viewpoint, it's true, can be approved. just imagine microsoft has the government enforcing the monopoly for microsoft, and the government itself will buy the services from you. in other words, not only the government doesn't use the -- what it has but enforces the monopoly. so that's what happened: i went to brussels and resigned. they didn't ask me why. i didn't tell them. now, here are the things that went well in the euro process. the conversion went surprisingly

well. the biggest operation in host. at the same time, the same day, same hour, replacing all their currency in one block. i was involved. that happened much later. there are three mistakes that are not easy to resolve. the first one is, the european central bank did the opposite. in the system, the countries were presented the weight of the currency was proportional to the gdp of the country, which means the big players had a lot less to adapt than the smaller ones. in the european central bank,

malta, has the same quantity of votes as germany. not a good idea. and i don't know how we'll ever recover from that one. so that's one central problem. the second one is, they kind of went halfway. in other words, had a single currency but the banks at the international level, and the bank responsibility remains at the international level. big mistake. as you can see, in 2008. and the final one is, the banking system has been very clever of using the integration to the european euro as a reason to actually strengthen their position. the central bank can only help banks, governments cannot be helped by the central bank. that's know the case in history, and it wasn't the case in america.

so, these two gentlemen the president of france and his then minister of finance, who we saw later becoming the president, and what they did there was a law introduced in 1973 that for the first time since napoleon, because the central bank in france was operated by napoleon in person. the government could not discount at the central bank. in other words, could not get funding from the central bank, like happens here. when the government needs money, it goes to the feds and it's automatic. so, that little war means that -- let's take 1979, the percentage of debt of

governmental debt in france, as proportionat to -- is 51%. today -- in 1979 it was 78% so we're going straight up, and we were to be thinking, of course, this has to do with government spendthrift, right? that was the motivation. well -- well, in fact, without the law it would be be 8.6%. from then on basically the government went to the private sector and borrowed money at market conditions, instead of conditions of the central bank. so, that is what was part of the problem. and i -- that's my favorite picture coming from the economists of -- of europe.

and this is, again, words from the economist -- been talk can about at it few times so definitely living in an interesting period. but it could also mean this. okay? now, europe. everything depends on germany. when germany stops supporting the euro, it is done a half an hour later. and there's going to be three possibilities. the slipping up -- i don't think we'll go back to 37 currencies. and the question will be about france. and the final thing is a magic wand. this is not coming from europe. this is actually coming, not from -- from the imf.

i would describe that document as the pope inaugurating a buddhist temple. it is not a buddhist temple. this is coming from the people who are supposed to -- and they're really doing some remarkable things. basically what it would mean is the end of the capacity for banks to create money. on only governments would be able to do that. and that would change completely the game. the biggest change. and this is currently being seriously talked about. the media won't say a word about it. there are problems that are not become addressed by the whole thing and that is the -- just on

aging, if you don't take anything else into account, france will get -- and by the way, the u.s. is in the same situation. so, the aging of the population is enough to make it over. so, that's it. >> here we are this evening faced with extraordinary problems, like how are we going take care of our aimed. how do we educate our children? how do we clean up after the terrible hurricane sandy, for example? when you saw that box of cereal called crisis, i think every single morning you wake up we hear nothing but crisis, and we're here today to tell you that a number of people are coming together and they're rethinking money, and coming up with the most exciting and

innovative solutions to the crises that we face. these are people not necessarily with much education but coming together within their community and creating their own money that runs in parallel with the national system. money is a tricky thing. it's very difficult for us to even talk about it because it's so hot-wired in our psyches. we're embarrassed about it. and we fear that subject that is way over there that should be dealt with by economists, for example. we swim in it. we're born in it. we're like fish in water. we live and die in it. but we never really get the perspective to know what truly it is. so, tonight, -- well, for example, economists will tell you what money is. it is a unit of account, something you can add up,

subtract. and it has value. what we say here tonight is money is not a thing. as your mom -- as your children come up to you and ask you for something, you say, well, money does not grow on trees, and they're right. it's not a thing. it's not a thing of nature. it lives in the state of an agreement. and when you think about itful right through hoyt, all types of things have been used as money. cocoa leaves, coe tobacco, during the second world wore women's nylons were used in prisons they used cigarettes. it's whatever one other person accepts as a means of exchange. with that understanding a whole new world opens up for us, and how many people here in the audience use a complimentary currency or know what that is? one person. okay. two people. how many people use frequent flyer miles?

most of the audience. that is a complimentary currency. it is a form of money that is not national currency. for example, it started off 40 years ago as a gimmick to breed loyalty to use a certain airline, and they had spare capacity, which were unused seats, and they wanted to get loyalty. and why it is possible to link an unused resource with an unmet need, as in the case of frequent flyer miles, it's now possible to take the technology whereby they process billions and billions of miles every single month to use that for something that is a social purpose. also what is interesting about these frequent flyer miles is it changes people's behavior. you're now loyal to a certain airline because you can get the benefits of frequent flyer miles. not only can you buy a seat on

your next trip to cancun or whenever you want to do but you can do other things like represent hotel -- like rent hotel rooms and cars. so it is a form of money. let's look at some interesting examples of -- well, complimentary currencies are currencies that work in tandem with the national currency, be it the dollar, euro, peso, and in 1984 there were only two major systems and over the intervening years, right up to 2005, when we stopped counting, there were over 4,000 mature systems all over the world and since the recent crisis of 2008, it's off the charts and these are mostly for social purpose needs. so what interesting about this picture of a botanical garden.

what is interesting is it's in a developing country and what is even more interesting, it's actually now sits on what was the dump site of a town in brazil. and what happened was the mayor of the town -- this is going back 25 years ago -- hadn't got the resources to sell or to level the shanty towns that has grown up. and when we realized he could not deal with the problem, re realized he had a garbage problem. so garbage was everywhere. the streets were so anywhere rove that the garbage trucks could not travel up and there were terrible problems as a result of diseases and rats and the mess. so, he said, hmm, i've got a very interesting situation.

i've got spare capacity on my bus service. so, the bus service -- this is the bus service today. probably one of the best in the world. but everybody gos into the tube and they actually prepay their ride by using a token, and something like eight doors open up and 100 people can get on to the bus in a matter of three minutes. rather than going in one-by-one and paying the fares. so it's a very eexhibit system. so he sent out a career-deck career, putting different colored bins around the circumference, and for every bag of garbage the children brought in that was sorted out between cans and papers and glass, they would get a token to ride on the buses. these tokens were then used, given to parents, go downtown,

and you can see here -- how do you pronounce this -- literally means garbage that is not garbage. so, basically, a number of different currencies grew up on the fundamental idea that the spare capacity of the buses and the cleanup of the area could be -- could create this complimentary currency, and this is another example of everything single month, each family gets a box of staples, such as rice and oil and other vegetables and things. my favorite example from this is -- a great story. the fishermen, when they go out

into the bay and there's days when there's no catch and the fish are not biting, they actually troll for garbage and it is then recycled. what is interesting about the story is after five years of not only the token currency but other currency which were very inventive. people who lived in the town had a standard of living that was once higher than other people living in other parts of brazil. so this is not some cute little, nice little interesting project, side project. this actually brought real change and a real increase in the standard of living. and this is the botanical garden that now stands, built by local money that stands there in the middle of the town today.

this is another favorite story of mine that comes from the book, and actually is designed by bernard. they have a problem with a neighborhood in part of belgium, and it has some of the poorest people. there's about 20 different languages spoken, mostly turkish, very depressed and a community that feels ostracized. so they decided to send out a survey and fine out, what would get this community excited? what would make them feel part of the greater city? and they said, we would really love to have a little garden. that way we can plant our vegetables and fruit skis can spend time with my children and teach them gardening skills. so lo lo andbe hold they found s factory lot.

the factory ills is not there. but these little plots of land have been sorted out and you cannot buy that land. you can only rent it. and you can only rent it in a complimentary currency of the town, which is called gorkos. this is the example of the turkish currency. you see a one and a ten and you can earn them in all kind of ways, maybe by changing light blubs into something more energy efficient. getting rid of graffiti. these are not actors. these are real people doing their jobs. and here they are beautifying by planting flowers, putting flower pats in their windowsills. what is really interesting about this is that they were able to take a small euro budget and leverage it three times to 20

times more results in a period of two years. three times at the beginning of the program and up to 20 times in the life of the program over the last two years. and it is so successful. they now have more volunteers, they actually have jobs. and the other issue that is very, very prevalent is the issue of health care, and bernard has some very interesting designs he is working with the irish government. >> this little statistical table is -- on the vertical you have the percentage of satisfaction of the customers, and on the horizonal level, expenses per cap tamp -- cap a. that's where the united states is. in other words, at the same level of greece or italy, it's been about a third or a quarter

of the money in the united states per capita. the other way of looking at it is denmark, the winner. the people are very satisfied. and they are spending less than half of the united states. so, the problem is not how much money is spent. it is something else. what is it? i'm going to make a radical claim. no country in the world has a healthcare system. they all have a medical care system. that is not the same thing. now, in the medical care system, the statistics coming from johnson & johnson was one of the providers of the medical carry that prevented medicine over a period of two or throw years, pays off to 300 to a thousand

percent, and a deceiving three million to ten million. in three years time but we don't do that. there's a massive market failure going on... >> think out of the box on this one. the irish have -- the irish

prime minister has announced -- if you want to know, that ireland cannot afford its medical care system anymore. of course, they are in crisis, but they have actually have to do something else. what are we talking about? creating a wellness system. we with change behavior patterns by giving the reward, okay, or what you talked about, a series of behaviors that you win something, and with that, you have to get it, that might be starting with kids, 50,000, they want to help you think, but

losing whaight, whatever, you get points,and thets can buy you more preventative medical care. preventive stuff. people who provide their medical preventative care can go, just like in the airline alliance. they flew cashing in for dollars. you know, for example, if you lose 20 pop, the probability of a heart attack or diabetes have dropped significantly, 20, 30, 40%, okay? that gives you the statistical margins that we know someone is going to be, and if someone in this country or corporation, businesses, and local governments, and insurance companies. nay should be sustained at the

appropriate rate for the wellness donors. that's being implemented in ireland. we needo think of another way. >> we have to think of how to care for our elderly reaching our golden years, a great deal of concern and they were talking about caring friendship tickets r and it works very, very simply, say i have a a letter to write to the insurance company, whatever it might be, but every hour i spend helping this hour, i get an electronic credit in my

account, and this i can say when i get the flu or save when i need help or when i'm older, more interestingly, i can send my credit to another part of the country for someone to come in and look after my aunt. the beauty of this system is that older people stay in their home with dig dignity for longe. they are not isolated. then the person don't go to hospital. what the elderly reported when surveyed is they absolutely loved the system because they have younger people in the coming in and visiting them of

various ages. furthermore, the government does not have to pay for this. there's a neighbor's time and talent used for an unmet need, which is how to care for the elderly, creating a currency to bridge the two. there is an example of this, probably the best, and most widely known and used compliment system here in the united states is time banking founded back in 1980 by a very imminent attorney called edgar con here in washington, d.c., and basically, for an hour of service, i get a time dollar, which then i can use for another service or for

another product, and probably the best known system in the united states is down the road in new york, for example, the visiting nursing system. the largest time banking network there is about 2 # ,000 people. there are about 400 throughout the country, and it's so popular it's actually going by one to two systems every single week. it's useful for a variety of different services such as bicycle repair. in the state of arizona, for example, when you get free aid, you get the free legal aid and advice scene the attorneys suggest that they go into the community and do something for the community by earning time banking, thus paying it forward. and a story about switzerland.

>> [inaudible] they have been using two corp sighs too, since 790 years. there's a second corp sigh called w-i-r, which is standing for us in jeer -- german. it's from a longer title. this is an electronic card for the system. you open -- this is for small businesses, typically. today, initially what started with 17 peage, 17 business people. today, 20% of all businesses belong to this system, and it is the secret for stability, which is a very surprising and why is

that? because if you give the choice to the normal swiss business guy to pay something, one to one, you can also buy stuff from china and take vacations, and the other one, spends in 60,000 businesses in switzerland; however, when you're in a boom period, you may actually not accept it easily. when it's a recession, and you stand partially idle, it's affecting the currency, but it stabilizing the economy. when there's a boom, it reduces. when there's a recession -- [inaudible] actually, that is the secret for the stability of the swiss economy. there's three articles. my colleague can start it. >> there's another interesting piece to add what was said, and

it's not creating a currency today, and the reason they got together and what are we going to do is because they all have their lines of credit cut from their banks, and they put heads in the hands saying how do we pay our employees? how do we pay our suppliers? when we realize that 20% of the bank of switzerland is occurring in the other currency called the wir. this is probably one of my favorite stories, and, yet, another design by bernard, and it's called from lithuania, they

have a female president, and set up an interesting agenda for her country. they want everybody under the age of 40 to be trilingual. moat peek in lithuania and russian, but shements them to learn other languages and to be proficient in the use of the internet because that is the future, and he wanted to encourage this intergenerational connectivity, you know, how there was connectivity between the older generations and younger generations. shemented toe -- she wanted to make that foremost in what her country does for one another. they have advantages. this is how it works.

everyone in lithuania has a dream. i think in america you call it the dream bucket? bucket? the bucket list. thank you. everybody has something -- has a bucket list, a dream within themselves, and so each citizens writes dwown what their dream is, and it may be to go live with the warriors in -- kenya or go learn buddhism, whatever, come to new york and experience the stock exchange, whatever the dream is, and so they then make a contract with the lit lithuania learning foundation and say, okay, i speak english, and i agree to give a thousand r's of english teaching in return for a trip to kenya to live with a masigh for a month. they make the agreements, and so they issue doras, this learning currency, and interestingly, we

will see that, oh, the dora account is actually the account of the mobile phone, very streamlined all together. whatever they do, whatever the agenda, there always is a learning component with every single nonprofit. for example, it might be interested in permaculture, but there is a learning quotient to permaculture, learning how to do permaculture, however. anyway, the citizen goes off, i go off, i spend -- i teach, i earn my doras, and then i may earn the nonprofit, i may teach somebody on staff, english, whatever it may be, and i go back up to the learning foundation and say, gee whiz, i completed my thousand hours of education -- of teaching english, and the lithuania

foundation then puts the package together, and i get to package together to fulfill my dream? what is really interesting about this is there's two aspect >> there's young people over the age of 12 to teach us older folks how to use the internet and social media. >> sound familiar? >> so you have a young person who will earning doras teaching the facebook and how to twitter, and the older the older person learning earns the doras as well. there is a lifetime of learning, and you may take online and take

courses online as well. this is my favorite part of doras. they take children under the age of 12, and they have an assignment, and their assignment is to go to an older person within the community and ask them a very, very important question. what have you learned in your life that would help me now? that would benefit me to know? the young person can either write an essay about it, they can do multimedia, they can make a film, and, again, the person's time who is giving the wisdom, sharing the wisdom, earning doras, and the young person writing the essay, doing the interpretive dance, whatever they do, earns dorass, and, again, we see the collective wisdom of the people is handed down generation to generation and bonds are forming between the different generations.

i think there's a super prize at the end of the year, $10,000 for the best story of wisdom. >> there are many, many, many examples, but we won't give you all of them. just for flavor, jobs, jobs need small businesses, 80% to 90% of jobs are in the small businesses. they are all starving from cash flow. it's never been developed. in brazil and into hawaii. the software's available as an open sowter to start this, create a network of small businesses and use invoices, but the biggest businesses, and you have toik make sure to provide the cash that is usable immediately before the invoice is paid, and that is for the

entire. the purpose is to make it profitable for big businesses, multinational businesses to think long term. we need that dramatically to have a survival plan in the long term. brazil, has had one experiment going on for 50 years, and they have a bank with dual currencies, a national currency and local currency. it's been so successful they are in the process of funding the implementation of # 00 systems, 103 of which are operational. >> the beautiful piece about the currency, bernard, can you imagine a community taken from the seashore because hotelsmented to come in and build resorts, and they found themselves in the middle of the desolate march area, i mean,

very little infrastructure. people asked the question, why are we poor? everybody sort of scratches their heads saying, i don't know why we're poor. they went off, added up, and realized there's money in the community. there's about over half a million dollars, but where does the money go? they realize because it was national currency, in the village and going to other parts of brazil, as pointed out, they created a currency designed specifically to be spent in the area, and the bank was called, and what is fascinating about this is it became successful in a short time creating 3,000 jobs in the town. the central bank of nervous, upset, and brought a lawsuit

saying you a fraudulent. you are creating, you know, monopoly money, rubbish money, stop this. it was a big court case, and the final day, the judge is sitting there ready to give his verdict, and the judge turns to the bank of brazil and says, you know, guys, what have you done for the poor people? complete and utter silence. the jiewj ruled in favor, and as bernard said -- >> the legal aspect of all of this, and the woman who is the head of the central bank, okay? so there's a breakthrough here, okay? it's possible, and, by the way, brazil is the country where

china that reduced most poverty in the past 15 years, and it is because of this keep of system. as we say, it's not the amount of money you throw at the problem, but the type of money, and if you take the bank example, by creating a currency only used in that particular town, there's a flowering in their particular area, and as we love to say, never doubt that a small group of citizens can change the world. >> you people. >> indeed. >> today. >> it is the only thing that ever has, and as we said, these are just very ordinary people coming together, engaging in conversation in the community, and thinking outside the box, and by rethinking money, they have brought about incredible and wonderfulble and prosperity in their towns and villages, and

regions. >> that concludes, but i have a couple of pictures. that's an image for the global monetary system. you can look at it from the top down or from the right or from the left, but, actually, it's a fair low cohe'sive image. secondly, this is not coming from the french leftist journal. this is coming from the economist. it's been coming for a long time, not stopped, and it's not working. it isn't working. we really need to look out for additional ways of trying to solve our problems.

finally, if you put it in one box, greece, rome, to the renaissance, the western world, you have afirely consistent situation, all have in common to impose a monopoly of a single currency. interest was invented with the consumer. writing was invented for legal contract with loans with interest. not for love letters, unfortunately. i don't want to beat it because they made it possible the industrial age which is beneficial. without the monopoly, we would not have had the industrial age. however, it generated booms and

busts, constitutes well dray -- dramatically, provides money from people who have to borrow to people who have more than they need it. whether we are and whether we are in a society, the image is to look at the divine. if the image of the divine is a man with a beard who did it all without a girlfriend, you are in a pay tree yart call society. [laughter] now, there are other societies where -- >> sorry. >> there are focus societies, and, again, look at the image. egypt, the nice lady saves him

repeatedly out of low. in the central middle ages, the 10th to the 13th century, we have those built for a lady and they are built for a figure which is very unpush figure, but it's feminine in the power, and in these you have one identical to save people you don't know and a second one to trade with the people that are in your community, there's the opposite, bottom up, has no interest, and a more sophisticated case, in other words, a penalty for the money, a change, --

[inaudible] these periods have also been extraordinarily economic periods of well being, particularly for the lower level of society. about 20% of society turns out to be the 12th century, not today. we know this by the form of the bones. they were healthier, taller than we are. in london, women today are one shorter than they were in the 12th century, okay? we all know that we grow. it happens to be with the standards of living when you grow up. anyway, what's faze enating to me is in fact, the capital system use the same money

system. in the communism system, the only difference was the banks were controlled, owned by the development. you have a society that only happens when the banks are in trouble, but that is the only difference, the system is the thing, the creation of money is top down with interest and monopoly, and so i think it's time to look at it from another perspective. we've. talking about it, and it doesn't fit in any one of the boxes. it's at the point, look at it from another perspective. it's another dimension. last time i lookedded, it was a nice plant. it's actually an extraordinary beautiful planet, and it is in our hands. we have become responsible for. humanity will decide what is tied into the planet, and it is deciding it already, and i think we need masculine and feminine

energy to do that, and a new balance, and that's what we are talking about at a deeper level. you can talk about the currencies, that is the more feminine currency compatible with relationships or operations rather than juxtaposition. we need both. let's be clear. we need both. not just the new one or old one or ridding competition. we need both types of energies. thank you very much. >> thank you. [applause] >> can you decide what a gift economy is? >> yes. >> you painted a rosy picture of all these, and can you tell us

the bumps along the road that anyone's incutterred in setting -- encountered in setting them up? >> okay. the gift economy -- i don't know whether to use the vocabulary that sounds exotic, but it's very, very old, prehistoric in chinese, but we don't have the words in the western and european languages. okay, yen and yang, the masculine side, and the pure yen currency is a gift, and then talking about is educational tools that are compatible with the gifts, and dollars are not compatible with the gift, and if you want to make that a text, next birthday party of your husband or your wife, give a hundred dollar bill and say, please, okay. that's not going to work, okay?

it won't work. by the way, it's another thing, take a million dollars, put it in any normally constituted family, two weeks later, everybody's fighting. it's a competitive game, all right? that's what we are getting rid of, and that we are couldn't balancing. we're not, you know, we need a counterbalancing mechanism. now, the question on the driftties to create the systems depends on which systems. the criteria is you need to have around the table the people affected by the system you are zing. define what's missing. define what are the resources that are accessible and create the bridge between it. now, that is very different for business environment. in germany, it takes three to five years if you don't have any support from government.

in the case of brazil, you now allowed to do a currency bank. okay? because you have support from the government. it depends. there's no universal answer. there's a lot of the examples in the book. >> yes, yes. the other thing i say it's an early years of flight. it's a miracle they fly at all, but they are starting. it will take time before we have a 787, i suppose, taking into the air. yes? >> the microphone here for the next one. >> yes, please. >> uh, yes, what do you think of hayek's belief in eliminating central planning, eliminating central banks, and allowing for free market money for gold coins, whatever the market decides is money, and allowing

that instead of any type of central planning and one other point, eliminating fractional reserve banking or allowing for free banking with personal liability. >> okay. >> there's several layers in the question. let me first start what i eluded to the chicago plan. the fraction of the national reserve banking, okay? however; it still maintains a monopoly in favor of the government now, okay? so that's one answer, okay? one direction things are going. we are not going that direction. they will compete with each other. we are broader than that. anyway, you could have business too business currencies like the

system in brazil, and that's what we mentioned in the list. there is a possibility for cities to issue currencies and request a tax payable currency. one of the things not understood included, unfortunately, is that the purpose -- the systemic purpose of taxes is not to fund the government. it's to give value to a corp sigh -- currency that otherwise has none. if the government did not require that you need to pay your taxes in dollars, nobody will bother using them. okay? in other words, there is a role for government in choosing which currencies it wants to honor for payment of sanction. that will be the dominant currencies in that country or society. that's the piece that i --

hayek did not get. of course, all that money would be acceptable payment, but that's not where he was going. he missed that point. as they said, that's not way we're talking about. the hayek argument is pure capitalism at one extreme, and we are seeing, really, look at it from another angle including it, but not limited. hayek was not concerned about elderly care, okay? we are. yes? please wait. do we only have one microphone? >> no, we have one over here.

given the news on cypressand the problems there. >> yes. >> and understand the governments are contemplateing freeing the banks, taking 10% of the holder's money, something drastic as that, meeting now to figure out what to do. if they were to possibly ask you for help or advice, what do you suggest? >> actually, i dealt with greece in the university of athens about that very question, and what i have been recommending for the case of greece is that you allow cities to issue a currency that they hire to pay for the people, like we do, but for things that need to happen, incoming, you know, taking care of the park, whatever else, and have facts only in that currency, create a local group. don't do this at the national

level in the case because the level of corruption is too high there. okay? so and cities are now dying 50% unemployment, what do you do? what can you do? that is the kind of solution i recommend in that environment. now, the case of cypress, two reactions, first one, okay, that's the next step; right? sorry, they are the issues, 63, this is 64, there's going to be 65, 66, and a 67 as long as you don't change the system, we will repeat it again. it keeps repeting. the other point, and that's peculiar to me, the biggest depositors in cypress is the russian mafia. that is not talked about, but

that's the reality. in other words, you have another dimension here, okay? it doesn't explain what's behind the seans here, okay? that's been the biggest purpose. okay? >> question from the back. >> yes, sir. >> is this working? >> yes. >> i'm intrigued by the people who left brazil to go to the swamp and not suddenly, but were prosperous because they used their own currency then only bought and sold monk each other. that's exactly the hop sit of what economists have been teaching for over a century that a big market is benefit allowing special evasion, and it intrigues me because i find it difficult to believe that if you apply this doctrine to a small

rural community in west virginia and said, okay, you people have your open currency, buy and sell among each other, but you can't deal with the bigger economy around you, in my opinion, i mean, that impoverishes them rather than make them wealthy. >> well, let me make one correction about what you are saying. there's no question of o tar ky. national money circulates also in this system, and the bank has two currencies, the national currency to make a loan, obtain a loan to start a business in the national corp sigh and part in the local currency. in other words, there's two systems. you're assuming that the other system is disappearing, and that's not the case. the town, for example, what you're saying, happened in america, all over the police, are the big boxes, the big box things that emptied down, and it is not impoverished in the neighbors. the money goes straight to the head quarters, very efficient

capital, okay, and it is not helping the local employment at all. the question of balance here. it's not 100% only one thing, but the big plays are dominating, and it's not in what the only small ones are perfected. it's about what happened, and that's what happened in brazil. >> what we talk about is a mop tear tool box. taking the national corp sigh, which we need is like a hammer, and the hammer is brilliant for hammering into the wall, but we need the monetary e qif lance of a screwdriver, a saw, a chiz l, and what we only have at the moment is one type of too many, which is a hammer, which is hopeless when you want to paint the room. it's not excluding the hammer. we say let's have a tool box

that's a wide array of functionality so we have in the per specttive a currency to look after the elderly, currencies for education, and currencies, for example, for relief when there's a disaster. you name it. we have a wide variety so we don't depend op one type of money, and we say the dollars or the euro or pesos, all the same type of money is scarce. it has to be scarce in order to maintain its value so there never is enough money. what the other currencies, they bring in the prosperity into a society, into a community be it a b2b community as seen in the wir, be it a town organization state level, and regional level, be it on a national level.

>> what changes need to be put into place to secure its future? >> there is a future for the euro, probably not in the current shape. i highlighted three points to be fixed. two of them are fixable. the board issue is probably not i have trouble imagining that you're now going to have, you know, germany will stop saying, look, we're in a minority of 26-to-1, sorry, guys, okay, we're not playin anymore. that's the risk we run, okay. now, fortunately, germany needs the euro, okay? germany has a huge advantage from the existings because it

keep the year row at a lower level, whatever the mark or equivalent would be, and the boom period of germany would be threatened. we're dealing with a political issue here. i think that there will be changes. they may come from the chicago plan if this is implemented internationally, which it would be. it's not implemented just in one country, and, which would be in the u.s. too, okay? if that happens, there's a new game. there's a new playing ground. i can choose to be optimistic that we kind of muddled through and -- but it won't be the same rules. the current rules are not sustainable in the long term, but we will change the rules. we can change the rules, and that's happened in the past, but it will occur in a messy situation. let's call it caution, optimistic, but i don't see it

with the current structure that has too many holes. >> [inaudible] >> well, let me be clear. there's a saying in the good old days that you are the only male in the cabinet. distinguish feminine energy and women. [laughter] it's not dramatic. >> okay. one more question, and then our speakers will say answer questions some after. >> yeah. in this rethinking money, have you done examples in reanying greed, which is a universal characteristic? how's that fit into rethinking money and people's desire to acquire -- >> you're asking a much deeper

question than you believe you suspect. [laughter] >> might be a good subject for the next book? >> well, no, no, it is dealt with, okay? when i mentioned the multifocal societies, okay, how many of you have only -- would understand the language of market types, is that the language you can understand? a few? all right. the beginning of one of the project i worked on, where there's greed and fear, those are the two emotions that exist in final markets, now. they happen to be occurring in societies, okay? the reason is when you have a market repressed, the great

mother has one of the attributes, money, fertility, life and death, and mortality. when you suppress, it doesn't go for vacation. it keeps ongoing. you will attract it. you'll reel it in. we have created the money system that includes the shadows. we created a money system to be scarce of what you mentioned. if you have anybody have enough money, it's worthless. the kinds of money we have today, bank that money, okay? if everybody has enough money of that type, it would be worth he is. scarcity and greed built in because of interest. the solution is to include the shadows of the great mother in

the money system. i know this is probably not clear for many people here, but there's a whole book about it. it's called "mystery of money" existing in eight languages, but not in english. the origin original published in german. i'm working on the english edition for those who want to get into that piece. human nature, i claim, does not include risk. it is a shadow from repression of a major architect. >> after three on interest, we explain how the greed is fabricated in the mop tear system and goes into it -- monetary system and goes into it in some detail. >> for those of yows who would like to purchase the book outside, the author will autograph them for you. >> oh k thank you. [applause]

♪ i tell my kids, i said, look, it's two cars full of love, one car has a stranger, the other car has dick cheney you get in the car of the stranger. >> if you took all the money republicans spent to stop health care, all the money democrats spent trying to get health care, you know, we could have had health care. >> it's amazing to be in washington, d.c., all the history, the amazing buildings, and yet, here we are at the hilton. >> it's hard to be funny with the president of the united states sitting right next to you looking at you, and yet, somehow day in and day out, joe biden manages to do it. >> the white house correspondence dipper, president obama, and