Expert contributions (Blog)

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Since meeting Margrit Kennedy in 2004, our network expert Stephanie Rearick from Wisconsin, USA, has been working with complementary currencies and building, from the ground up, a social and solidarity economy that is true to its name. To take local learning and tools into the world, and being ever curious about what work elsewhere, she […]

Since 2011, the international research association RAMICS has organised the largest bi-annual congresses about complementary currency systems worldwide. In September 2019 the second-but-last congress had taken place in Hida-Takayama, Japan. Only a few months later, most our scheduled events were brought to a complete halt by the Covid pandemic. The following 6th RAMICS congress […]

This article was published on our German site in September 2020. Now, in January 2022, we mourn the passing of Edgar Cahn, father of timebanking across the US, distinguished professor of law in Washington D.C. and most-valued and tireless advocate for social justice globally. Since this article calls for the idea of timebanking in times […]

Special Issue “Monetary Plurality and Crisis” in the Journal of Risk and Financial Management (JRFM) In addition to our commitment to the implementation of innovative currency ideas and the ongoing educational work on money and monetary reforms, it is above all the academic treatment of these two fields of activity that will ultimately pave […]

“The other day you said on the phone: Give me a problem and I’ll develop a complementary currency with which you can solve it. And I have to tell you this: Your imagination, your inexhaustible ideas on how to design, invent and transform money, simply amaze me every time. ” Margrit Kennedy in a letter […]

I gave this article that title on submitting it, on May 5, 2020 – 20 days before the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and the subsequent steps to both revolution and violent crackdown. I can no longer say something that light, but I can say that current circumstances make it all the more […]

Good news for all who remember our late founder Margrit Kennedy: Her biography, written by Peter Krause, is now available in English – and of course its a valuable read for all who were not familiar with her before, too! Based on interviews, and many autobiographic texts, the book covers all aspects of […]

We are mourning for Bernard Lietaer, who died from cancer on February 4th. He was a friend, colleague and mentor to us for many years, who blessed us with extraordinary insights and invaluable inspiration. Not only has the world now lost the person with the most far-reaching knowledge about money, but also a head and […]

We talk a lot about the ‘money system’. In what sense does money form a ‘system’? Does it have a function or purpose? Does it have interconnections? Does it have identifiable elements? 1. Elements of a money system The elements of a money system include the structures and institutions that create it – governments, […]

A constant in the history of money is that every remedy is reliably a source of new abuse. John Kenneth Galbraith, Money: whence it came, where it went For as long as money has existed in its two most popular forms – either as debt-based accounting systems or as notes and coins – it has […]