Weekly Update 16th July

1. NEXT WEDNESDAY: MEETUPS IN GLASGOW & LONDON

2. A guide to how banking really works

3. Clarifying the Consequences of our Debt-Based Money System

4. New DVD & talk released

5. Help us spread the word

NEXT WEDNESDAY 20th JULY: MEETUPS IN GLASGOW & LONDON

Starting this month we will have monthly meetups for all supporters of Positive Money and all interested people. The first Meetups are this Wednesday 20th July:

LONDON
GLASGOW

We also want to have monthly meet-ups outside of London, but we can’t organise them all, so if you want to organise a meetup in your city or town, see this map to find out how many Positive Money supporters are in your local area. If you want to organise a meetup in your city or town, reply to this email and we’ll let everyone who’s near you know about the meetup. All you need to do is reserve an area of a convenient bar, pub, café, park or wherever.

A Guide to Money and Banking “Where money comes from”

There is significant confusion about banks. Many textbooks used in economic courses teach a model of banking that has not applied in the UK for a few decades, and unfortunately many policy makers and economists still work on this outdated model.
So, to clear up the confusion, over the last 6 months we’ve been working on a study alongside NEF (the New Economics Foundation) and Professor Richard Werner. We had to piece together information that was spread across more than 500 documents, guides, manuals and papers from central banks, regulators and other authorities.
The guide is almost finished, in the stage of last corrections. For the first time, we have a fully fact-based description of how the UK monetary system really works, all in one document! This is in fact the first study about the money creation based on the facts (rather than on theoretical assumptions) in the world! Nobody has done it in this depth and extent before.
The New Economics Foundation will be releasing the guide as a book shortly, and we’ll relay the findings in video on the website as soon as they do.

Clarifying the Consequences of our Debt-Based Money System

On the 6th of July five new volunteers, including Masters and MBA students, started to work on a large-scale complex research project. They will collect the evidence to show which impact has the way money is created on the areas of “Poverty, Debt, Inequality” and “Destruction of the Environment” and to show which benefits in these areas the new reformed system will bring. So, by the end of august we will have the evidence to show that our current monetary system is at the root of these serious social and economic problems.

This will help us significantly later this year, when we will start working with other charities and NGOs dealing with poverty, social and environmental issues to show them the fundamental role of money as a prime cause of those problems that they are trying to solve.

There are currently 8 of us working in our small office, so it’s quite tight now in the summer, but there’s a lot happening. (If you want to help us by making a monthly donation, you can give    £5, £10 or £20 a month, or choose your own amount or method of giving. And a very big thank you to everyone who is already making a donation – it really does make the difference between this happening or not.)

New DVD

After a few delays, we’ve just released a video – and DVD – of a talk that we gave in April 2011. Watch the 3 minute taster here:

This talk, delivered by Ben Dyson of Positive Money, explains why almost everyone is in debt, why the financial crisis continues, and how the current banking system (which the Governor of the Bank of England described as the worst possible) is at the root of most of the social and economic problems that we face today.

Discover the few simple changes to banking that would reduce debt, poverty and economic instability and that would ensure that the reckless behaviour of banks could never threaten the global economy again.

You can watch the whole talk online for free or buy the DVD for just £10, with free postage (or £14 if you’re outside the UK).

Help us spread the awareness!

In these very interesting times when the whole countries are at the risk of default (and not only small ones as Greece but also those big as Italy) and when economists and politicians have no idea how to respond (except delaying the inevitable) we encourage YOU – one of those rare persons who already know that a solution exists to this whole crisis – we encourage you now even stronger to help the campaign grow faster.

We’ll only get change in the banking system – and consequently in the quality of our lives – when enough people understand how it really works. There is really a lot what you can do even with only very small action. Just imagine: if everyone of us brings one person to join the campaign today, the number of people who will be aware of the problem and who support the campaign will double overnight!

Please ask your friends to watch this three minute video and join the campaign. Post the link on Facebook or Twitter, or simply send them an email.

…and if you have a little bit more time:

• Spread the word commentating on current events in some of the prominent news (Guardian, Telegraph, etc) – this is very efficient in attracting new people to our website, especially if you succeed to post link to our website or mention the name Positive Money.

• Organize a local meetup …and possibly set up a local campaign group. Our vision is that local groups will arise and grow organically, organizing their own activities according to their own preferences to raise awareness about the problem with our flawed debt-based system, about the solution that we are proposing and to generate pressure on the government and politicians demanding a real change.

Thank you for your support!