New Economy, New Ways to Do Money

The measure of a healthy economy is a growing GDP.
Stephanie McMillan for YES! MagazineA healthy economy meets real needs within ecological limits.
Stephanie McMillan for YES! MagazineAll you need is money.
Stephanie McMillan for YES! MagazineYou can’t eat money. What we need is healthy families, communities, and ecosystems.
Stephanie McMillan for YES! MagazineBooms and busts are inevitable in a modern economy.
Stephanie McMillan for YES! MagazineThe boom/bust cycle is a result of letting banks create money.

We usually think of money as neutral—it allows buyers and sellers to make deals, and that’s good. But it’s not neutral when we give private banks the right to create money that we taxpayers have to borrow. It gets worse when banks get entangled in exotic speculation, creating trillions of electronic dollars that inflate financial bubbles. Then—because the paper wealth is disconnected from the real economy—the bubble pops, and finances crash. The banks don’t know how to untangle the mess, and they stop making loans. Even when things are going well, there’s this little problem about interest-based money—it concentrates more and more wealth in the hands of those lending it at the expense of your average home buyer, credit card holder, or tuition-paying college student. In the new economy, there are better ways to get money circulating.

Stephanie McMillan for YES! Magazine
Stephanie McMillan for YES! Magazine

The YES! Take on Money in the New Economy

Money from Nothing
byJames Robertson

How Banks Create Money Out of Thin Air
by Doug Pibel
Yes, the government prints our paper money. But that’s only a small fraction of the money in use. Most of the money in national economies is created when banks write it into their customers’ accounts out of thin air as bank loans.

Dollars with Good Sense: Local Currencies
by Judith D. Schwartz
Local currencies value time, build community, and keep business moving even when credit dries up.



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