Money Justice Collaborative

Vision:

Governments create and control their currencies in ways that support wellbeing for all – socially, economically, and environmentally. 

Mission:

Align the management of national currencies with the public good.

What motivates us:

The way nations create and manage their currencies is powerfully intensifying inequality, poverty, debt crises, and environmental destruction. Today, nearly all nations create their money supplies through their commercial banking sector. They do this by granting private for-profit banks an exclusive legal privilege to create new money whenever they make a loan. Money created in this way makes up around 95% of the money supply in most countries. This way of creating money has several drawbacks:

• Indebtedness. Money only comes into existence when a household, government, or business goes into debt. If all debts were paid off, there would be no money.
• Undemocratic. Commercial banks are not democratic institutions and lack significant accountability. For example, since governments signed the Paris Climate Agreement, commercial banks lent $6 trillion of newly created money to fossil fuel companies, many with expansion plans.
• Profits over people and planet. When lending (creating money), commercial banks prioritize profit maximization rather than public wellbeing or environmental sustainability. For example, commercial banks regularly lend money to tobacco companies, weapons manufacturers, and major polluters.
• Economic control. It gives commercial banks enormous power over the direction of economic development, influencing our job options and consumer choices. For example, in recent years 93% of bank lending to the energy sector has gone to dirty energy sources while only 7% has gone to clean renewable energy projects and firms. This limits access to clean energy and green jobs while expanding fossil fuel jobs and infrastructure. 
• Fairness and inequality. Bank shareholders and employees make massive profits from exercising the legal privilege to create money. They frequently lend for speculation, mergers, and other activities that pump up financial markets but lead to job losses and unaffordable housing. They also lend in ways that are costly and predatory for lower income households.

It doesn’t have to be this way. This way of creating money through commercial bank lending is only about three hundred years old. Over the millennia, humans have invented many other ways of creating the money they use. That means we have real-world alternatives we can choose from, including ones with track records of promoting social welfare, economic prosperity, and ecological protection. On many occasions, such as during the Great Depression and the 2008 crisis, countries have used elements of these better alternatives to provide broad and fast-acting relief, such as debt cancelation, public employment programs, aid for those that cannot work, and funding for environmental protection. Frequently, positive transformations in national currencies do happen in times of polarization and crisis, like today. That is why we believe now is the perfect time for social movements to include demands for the transformation of national currencies in their advocacy and campaigns. Such transformations are winnable and can provide trillions in funding for the implementation of much-needed solutions.

What we do:

• Research. We study the social, economic, and environmental consequences of the way nations create their money today. We also evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of different ways of reforming and transforming the current system. Building on the work of many others, our research has identified many alternatives proven to promote wellbeing in diverse contexts, from large, modernized economies to local and regional settings. Further, we study how currency systems have changed over time, for better and for worse, mapping the power players and key narratives that are frequently successful in bringing about change.
  
• Education. We provide presentations and popular education workshops that help groups and individuals coming from diverse backgrounds quickly gain an understanding of:
  • How nations create money today through bank lending
  • Why today’s system of money creation is powerfully intensifying many social, economic, and ecological problems
  • How colonization led to the system we have today and how it is reinforced through the international financial system
  • How money creation is “re-making” our economy each year by determining which industries, households, and local economies receive investment, or not.
  • What options we have for creating money in ways that are reliable, scalable, just, and capable of sustaining wellbeing for all. 
  • How money systems have been successfully transformed in the past and how they can be transformed again today.

• Strategy. We empower social movement organizations to advocate for reforms to money and banking that match their values and visions for a better world. We help groups identify power players, strategic points of leverage, and allies that can help them win beneficial reforms within their political, economic, and cultural context. We offer expertise that can cut through the complexity and misinformation that surrounds national money systems. 

Contact Us:

in**@***********************ve.org