Rethinking Money How New Currencies Turn Scarcity into Prosperity

Many of the world's economic ills-- short-termism, compulsory growth pressure, cyclical recessions, unrelenting concentration of wealth, and erosion of social capital --can be traced to our competitive money system, in which there is built-in economic scarcity and never enough money for people to pay off their debts. We need an economic system that is both cooperative and competitive, with each balancing and complimenting the other. Lietaer and Dunne tell how such a balanced system can be created and, in fact, how it is already being built in many places around the world. Individual citizens, entrepreneurs, businesses, communities, and governments are creating new cooperative money systems that link unused resources with unmet needs. Over the past 30 years there has been a tremendous growth of cooperative currencies- from fewer than 100 in 1980 to over 4,000 today. But we need many more of them spread more consistently all over the globe. We also need more large-scale cooperative currencies. The emergent cooperative currency movement needs to grow up. Dodging the dogma of both left or right Rethinking Money provides the roadmap for this to happen.

Bernard Lietaer has been a leader in the field of money for more than thirty years as a central banker, a fund manager, a university professor, and a consultant. In 1992, BusinessWeek named him “the world’s top currency trader.” A codesigner of the European Currency Unit—the precursor to the euro—he is currently a research fellow at the Center for Sustainable Resource Development at the University of California, Berkeley.
Jacqui Dunne is an award-winning journalist and founder of Danu Resources, an emerging leader in helping entrepreneurs develop technologies and initiatives that restore the earth. The company is an interface between donors and projects. Danu’s unique value is its ability to work from a future reference point that draws out the greatness and builds upon the strengths of all parties, creating a flourishing paradigm shift for a quadruple bottom line: people, planet, profits, and power within.

FOREWORD
INTRODUCTION: FROM SCARCITY TO PROSPERITY WITHIN A GENERATION
PART ONE SCARCITY
CHAPTER 1: THE FAILURE OF MONEY: THE COMPETITIVE SOCIETY
CHAPTER 2: THE MYTH OF MONEY: WHAT IT REALLY IS
CHAPTER 3 A FATE WORSE THAN DEBT: INTEREST’S HIDDEN CONSEQUENCES
PART TWO PROSPERITY
CHAPTER 4: THE FLYING FISH: A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON MONEY
CHAPTER 5: THE FUTURE HAS ARRIVED BUT ISN’T EVENLY DISTRIBUTED… YET
CHAPTER 6: STRATEGIES FOR BANKING INSTITUTIONS
CHAPTER 7: STRATEGIES FOR BUSINESS AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
CHAPTER 8: STRATEGIES FOR GOVERNMENTS
CHAPTER 9: STRATEGIES FOR NGO’S
PART THREE RETHINKING MONEY
CHAPTER 10: TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES: LESSON LEARNED
CHAPTER 11: GOVERNANCE AND WE , THE CITIZENS
CHAPTER 12: OUR AVAILABLE FUTURE: THE COOPERATIVE SOCIETY
CHAPTER 13: RETHINKING MONEY: FROM SCARCITY TO SUSTAINABLE ABUNDANCE
NOTES
Bibliography
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INDEX
ABOUT THE AUTHORS