WIR/Cooperative Credit and Exchange

Erick B. Hansch was a colleague of Robert Swann and Ralph Borsodi at the International Independence Institute. One of the projects of the Institute was the launch of a currency called "The Constant" in Exeter, New Hampshire in 1972. Borsodi, an economist, was in his 90's at the time and decided to issue the currency as a one year experiment to prove it could be done, rather than just writing another book on the subject.

The Constants were issued by a bank in Exeter and were valued according to a weighted basket of commodities. The intent was to demonstrate how to issue a currency that would not deflate but which instead held "constant" buying potential.

The Institute was also the vehicle for launching the community land trust movement in this country. Erick Hansch was one of the authors with Bob Swann and Ted Webster of "The Community Land Trust: a Guide to a New System of Land Tenure in America" published in 1972, the complete text of which is available online:

http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/clts/clt_book.html

In 1974 the Institute hosted E. F. Schumacher's historic trip to this country. Swann and Schumacher formed a close alliance as a result.

Erick Hansch, Ralph Borsodi, and Fritz Schumacher all died within a month of each other in 1977. Bob Swann continued working with the ideas of his friends and mentors and in 1980 founded the E. F. Schumacher Society in Great Barrington, Massachusetts which has been a leader in the study and application of local currencies and community land trusts. The Schumacher Society's current work with BerkShares local currency (http://www.berkshares.org) has grown from this long tradition of economic scholarship and innovative practice.

Erick Hansch had a gift for languages. In addition to English he spoke Chinese, German, and Spanish. In anticipation of the launch of the Constant, he traveled to Basel, Switzerland to study the WIR currency program (http://www.wir.ch) that has been in circulation in parallel to the Swiss Franc since the 1930s. His unfinished typed report is in the archives of the E. F. Schumacher Library. Thanks to the good work of volunteers, it has been entered into electronic format and is available in full at the Society's website:

http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/local_currencies/wir.hansch.html

Best wishes,
Susan Witt, Sarah Hearn, and Stefan Apse
E. F. Schumacher Society

BerkShares on NBC Nightly News

Dear Friends,

BerkShares local currency was featured on NBC Nightly News on April 26th.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Best wishes,
E. F. Schumacher Society staff

Democratizing Finance

Dear Friends,

The incomparable Hazel Henderson has been campaigning and strategizing for a green economy for the past forty years in her writings and talks, and at board and government tables. Her pioneering work has led to many of the programs we now take for granted in the socially and ecologically responsible investment field. She has worked with both citizen groups and heads of states around the world. She has created a language for evaluating the ethical basis of financial programs. Her name is a trademark.

As a new generation puts its imagination to the task of relocalizing economies community by community, it is important to remember the handful of shoulders on which this work stands. Hazel Henderson's shoulders are broad, her intellect fast paced, her contributions prolific.

Following is her recent "Democratizing Finance" detailing how "local leadership is rising, offering many creative alternatives for communities to nurture healthier homegrown economies . . ." It is distributed by InterPress Service and used with the kind permission of Ms. Henderson.

You will find more of her writings at www.ethicalmarkets.com and www.ethicalmarkets.tv Enjoy rediscovering Hazel Henderson, as we have!

Susan Witt, Sarah Hearn, and Stefan Apse
Staff of the E. F. Schumacher Society

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Democratizing Finance
By Hazel Henderson
April 2009 


© InterPress Service
 and Hazel Henderson, 
www.hazelhenderson.com

The financial meltdown generated by Wall Street and the “too big to fail” culture of global money-center banks and financiers is generating local initiatives and demands to decentralize and democratize finance.



Meanwhile, at the global level, the G-20 countries’ demands to democratize the voting structures of the IMF and the World Bank are essential to reflect the changing balance of economic power. The G-7 and G-8 group of countries are no longer relevant now that the G-20 group (Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States of America, and also the European Union) has taken center stage.

While national safety-nets are unraveling due to budget cuts, local leadership is rising, offering many creative alternatives for communities to nurture healthier homegrown economies:

• Local barter-clubs, like Freecycle.com, Craigslist and LETS, and scrip currencies are proliferating – as they always do when central bankers and the International Monetary Fund fail or apply the wrong remedies and make matters worse. Some of the most successful complementary currencies are Switzerland’s WIR and in the USA, BerkShares, with equivalent to $2 million issued in the first two years and accepted by banks and businesses in Massachusetts. Similar complementary currencies are matching needs and resources and clearing local markets in Britain, Canada, Australia, Argentina, Brazil and other countries.

• People-to-people lending and microfinance projects are booming in many countries. Women’s World Banking, Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, now emulated in many countries, FINCA and ACCION in Latin America, as well as the newer online versions, including Microplace, Kiva, as well as lenders Prosper.com in the USA and Zopa.com in Britain. Credit unions, operated in Europe and North America for a century, are becoming more proactive. They are filling new local needs, reaching out to poorer people and adding microfinance and lending to small businesses.

• Associations of small local banks and businesses are wielding more political clout, as are credit unions. In the USA, they are demanding equal treatment in the government’s TARP, TALF, and other bailout funds currently showered on the big banks whose reckless lending triggered the financial mess. Venture capital and venture philanthropy firms, including the Rudolf Steiner Foundation, Acumen and the foundations of Ebay founders Pierre Omidyar and Jeffrey Skoll, are investing in social enterprises which meet social needs while making modest profits. Such social capital is now creating a new hybrid sector in many economies.

• The Business Alliance for Local Living Economics (BALLE) is such a network in North America, as well as the New Voice of Business, Green America, the Social Enterprise Alliance, the Fourth Sector Network and the Business-NGO Working Group. Entrex.net focuses on helping small businesses with their Private Company Index (PCI) which outperforms most stock indexes. Britain’s New Economics Foundation (NEF) has been generating both local initiatives, such as the Transition Towns movement, as well as its Green New Deal and alternative indicators to correct GDP, measuring wellbeing and ecological sustainability. NEF’s proposal to save Britain’s 11,500 postal offices by adding local banking functions is backed by trade unions, small businesses, public interest groups and pensioners.

• Time banking, a brainchild of Edgar Cahn in the USA (see www.ethicalmarkets.tv), is now helping local people connect and share services in Japan, Europe and other countries. Neighbors contact each other via a local “time banker” to provide meals and help for shut-ins, babysit each other’s children, watch over property, mow lawns and share appliances. Car-sharing has now spawned many new companies such as Zip Car in the USA and others in Canada and Europe where people can make ride arrangements rapidly on Blackberrys and laptops.

• China is host to many such local initiatives, linking small businesses on networks, including Baidu.com, Alibaba.com, as well as Qifang.com which provides affordable loans to China’s 25 million students. Circle Pleasure, a private company selling prepaid consumer cards, has formed a joint venture with Qifang for people-to-people banking, the first private company to receive a banking license from China’s Central Bank. In many countries in Africa, cell phone banking has taken off. Cell phones are the basis for the “phone ladies” in Indian and Bangladeshi villages, who rent out use of their cell phones to other villages. Rural farmers and fishers can consult prices being offered in nearby towns and markets on their cell phones to make sure they take their goods to the best places to sell them.

How far can people-to-people finance go in bypassing big, greedy banks and ethically challenged Wall Street financiers and their political allies? A long way, thanks to all the communications tools now widely available. Using these new information-sharing tools is helping people realize again what money is: just one form of information. Today it is possible to trade using pure information exchange. For example, in rural areas in Florida, radio stations have call-in programs where farmers can say “I have spare time on my tractor to exchange for fertilizer or pepper, melon, eggplant seeds.” The farmer gives her phone number and the trades are exchanged off-line. Similarly, the growth of farmers’ markets and contract-supported agriculture allows local consumers to buy fresh produce directly from nearby farms.

All these local solutions and people-to-people safety-nets raise the question “How did we allow big banks and centralized finance to grow so large that they become predators on the real living economies which produce the world’s real wealth”? Local people around the world are realizing that they can simply bypass big banks, stock exchanges and create all these services locally. The old, bloated financial sectors must downsize, cut their bonuses and take the losses from their reckless bets in their global casino. A truly efficient financial services sector should be less than 10% of a country’s GDP. Those in Britain and the USA grew to 25% of GDP, metastasizing with their “financial engineers” preying on the real economy. Now students are looking for jobs as real engineers, teachers, doctors and entrepreneurs.

In a very real sense, we humans don’t have a financial crisis but a crisis of perception. We are beginning to see our world differently than mainstream media portrays. We see our choices with new eyes. We know that money is not real wealth. We learn as we watch central bankers printing money on TV. Real wealth is generated by productive people using the Earth’s resources wisely. Money is a great invention. When it is managed properly, locally, nationally, globally or electronically, it is a useful medium of exchange. Hoarding money is no longer a reliable store of value. We are all rediscovering the many stores of value in our own communities. We find wealth beyond money. We can change our values for the new times we live in and restore the love economies to their central role in our lives.

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Hazel Henderson, author of Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy (2006), is president of Ethical Markets Media, an independent social enterprise covering local economies, new currencies and the growing green sectors (www.ethicalmarkets.com). She co-created the Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators, updated regularly at www.calvert-henderson.com. She lives with her husband in St. Augustine, Florida.