Who really benefits from a cashless society? Many of us rarely use cash these days. And the reach of corporations into our lives via cards and apps has never been greater. But what we’re told is inevitable is actually the work of powerful interests: the great battle of our time is for ownership of the digital footprints […]

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A new book by Bernard Lietaer shows the way to a sustainable world and calls for concrete measures from individuals and leaders.
Lietaer calls for a new perspective and three paradigm shifts essential for survival. With unsuitable means we half-heartedly try to repair the complicated clockwork of our world. This gets us nowhere. It won’t get us out of the crisis. The time has come to choose a completely different perspective and to lead ourselves and our world through “three paradigm shifts”.
This is what Bernard Lietaer demands in this book, which he dictated on his deathbed.

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The idea that each country should have one currency is so deeply rooted in people’s minds that the possibility of multiple and concurrent currencies seems unthinkable. Monetary systems contribute to problems of high unemployment and social distress during financial and economic crisis, so reforms to increase the responsiveness and flexibility of the monetary system can […]

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This handbook has been designed by the New Economics Foundation (NEF), on behalf of the Community Currencies in Action (CCIA) EU Interreg IVB NWE Programme, project, to inspire community currency (CC) organisers and help them gain the most from their currency project by learning more about project evaluation and impact assessment. Getting to grips with […]

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The report can be downloaded here. Local Authorities and Municipalities across Europe are facing unprecedented socio-economic challenges in the context of budget cuts and increasing demand. It is in this challenging environment that Local Authorities and Municipalities are looking for innovative approaches and practical instruments that support them to deliver their core aims and responsibilities. […]

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Since the financial crisis, interest in new types of money has surged. Projects like Bitcoin have hit the headlines as communities around the world experiment with their own currencies and methods of exchange. In this new and innovative field, we have only just begun to understand and measure their impact. It is no coincidence that […]

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The book People Powered Money (download as PDF) is one of the results of the project Community Currencies in Action (CCIA), which ran between 2011 and 2015. CCIA, which was part-funded by the European Union through its Interreg program, was the largest transnational project in the area of complementary currencies. It brought together experts from […]

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Nigel Dodd, 2014, Princeton University Pres. Questions about the nature of money have gained a new urgency in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. Even as many people have less of it, there are more forms and systems of money, from local currencies and social lending to mobile money and Bitcoin. Yet our understanding […]

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“Money – The Unauthorized Biography–From Coinage to Cryptocurrencies” by economist and asset manager Felix Martin answers the questions: what is money, and how does it work?The author challenges our conventional understanding of one of humankind’s greatest inventions. Martin describes how the Western idea of money emerged in the ancient world, and was shaped over the […]

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“The Map” describes how to make the rich underused capacity of regional economies more visible. It shows how to engage individuals, businesses, voluntary groups and local government to share their underused assets to meet each others’ needs. The Map is both a vision and a practical action programme. Self-published pamphlet by local currency organizer/activist John […]

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