Positive Money describes itself as “the UK branch of a global movement to democratise money so that it works for society and not against it.” It was started by blogger and author Ben Dyson in the wake of the finance crisis of 2008.
There were two or three fringe groups campaigning for monetary reform in the UK for a couple of decades before the finance crisis but they achieved relatively little.
Positive Money brilliantly uses short videos and social media to put out its basic message to a much wider audience. It argues there is a fundamental problem with our monetary system:
Right now most of the money in our economy is created by banks. Banks create up to 97% of money, in the form of the numbers in your bank account, when they make loans. This means that they effectively decide a) how much money there is in the economy, and b) where that money goes.
The control of the creation of money, in the hands of banks, has contributed to the problems of:
Positive Money proposes a solution to these problems:
We believe the power to create money must be removed from the banks that caused the financial crisis and returned to a democratic, transparent and accountable body. New money must only be created and used to benefit the public and society as a whole, rather than just financial sector.
We have detailed and workable proposals that would allow this to happen.
Positive Money’s proposal would mean in practice that an independent monetary committee would decide how much money is required by the economy and authorize the central bank to create interest-free, debt-free credit to run public services and provide commercial bank loans.
Positive Money is affiliated with the International Movement for Monetary Reform.