Our Wish List for 2012

Although the things we wish for the coming year we are unlikely to get in just 12 months, let’s remind ourselves at the beginning of a new year what are the results we are actually aiming for…

• reduce poverty and excessive indebtedness

• raise the standards of living year on year

• damaging cuts in public services to be avoided or reversed, money to be freed up for schools, health care etc.;

• taxes to be reduced

• the looming pensions crisis to be avoided

• the majority of the national debt to be phased out over the next few years, saving up millions per day on interest payments

• stable economy – the currently-inevitable cycle of boom and bust to end

• the best environment for business

• free market to start really working without special privileges for few (and with reduced negative distortions)

• improving job security for ordinary working people, restored incentives for employment

• make the monetary and banking system more resilient, to reduce the risk of a banking collapse leading to breakdown in social order

• redirect resources away from short-term profit seeking by banks towards the investments we need to make to deal with the very real challenges we’re facing over the next few decade

• the financial sector to facilitate the creation of real wealth and value in the economy

• banks’ investment portfolios to reflect the interests of society (as opposed to short term profits)

• lending and investment to be naturally channelled to entrepreneurs and productive businesses

• democratised investment priorities of banks by requiring them to disclose to customers how their money will actually be invested

• realign risk and reward, so that those who stand to get the upside also stand to get the downside

• no bail-outs of bad banks funded by taxpayers

• the removal of the state guarantee on deposits

• reduce the unfairness of those who add little value being able to extract wealth from those who do add value

• strengthen democracy and prevent democracy being superceeded by plutocracy and the interests of finance

• the transition to green economy to be possible

• the pressure on economic growth to cease

• to unlock the funding required to shift towards a green and sustainable economy

• wider percentage of population to have savings available for investments

• the pressure for cheap goods to decrease– the production of more durable goods

• the businesses to have more own funds – could afford to produce less, more ecologically, invest into more eco-friendly technologies, renewable energies

• local and smaller enterprises to have a fair chance to strive – less transport

• end the illusion of scarcity caused by a defective monetary system

• prevent the riots or wars that could arise from a sudden breakdown in our financial and monetary system

• create a monetary system that allows human society to progress and allows everyone to live at a decent quality of life

All these objectives would be enabled in a Positive Money system, where money will not be based on debt anymore, when money would be created debt-free and banks would operate without subsidies and privileges as any other business.

These objectives are impossible to achieve under current money system in which all the money represents somebody’s debt, in which someone always has to go into debt just in order to have the medium of exchange in circulation. In fact, until we tackle the problem of money creation by highstreet banks, everything else that we are trying to do will be unachievable – we simply can’t create the society that we want to under the current monetary system.

By attacking the root of the problem, we can solve social and economic problems that have been unsolvable for decades.