Dominic Frisby, the presenter and producer of Frisby’s Bulls & Bears – an internet radio show in which he discusses financial and economic matters with leading lights of the sector has interviewed Ben Dyson, the founder and director of the Positive Money campaign, and the co-author of the forthcoming book Modernising Money.

They talk about the economic, social and environmental consequences that arise when money is created out of debt and discuss our proposal for monetary reform.

Listen here:

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They point out that our monetary system relies on the continuous extension of debt in order to keep functioning. However, only little of this credit is being provided to businesses (13%), while the bulk of it went into mortgages (40%), consumer finance (10%) and financial markets (37%) in the decade running up to 2008. Ben also shows how this is deleterious to wealth creation and also causes redistribution mechanism benefiting those who are close to the issuers of money on the backs of to those who aren’t. They also discuss the environmental consequences of this debt money system.

Finally they talk about Positive Money’s proposal for monetary reform, which involves the transfer of power over the money creation from banks to a newly established, transparent, public monetary body which decides how much money should be added to the economy through the government to pay down existing debt.

They also discuss the viability of using metal as money again, the emergence of alternative currency systems and whether an authority can really be trusted with managing the money supply.

Listen here: