The City and the Common Good – Good Money (video)

An interesting event took place on 7th May 2013 at St Pauls in London, organized by the St.Paul’s Institute. At the seminar entitled “The City and the Common Good – Good Money”, money creation by the banks was identified to be the key problem by some of the speakers and Positive Money was mentioned several times in the questions at the end, however the answers were based on misunderstanding of our proposals.

• Lord Robert Skidelsky – Economic Historian (Keynote)

• Tarek El Diwany – Senior Partner, Zest Advisory LLP

• Ann Pettifor – Director of PRIME (Policy Research in Macroeconomics)

• Paul Sharma – Deputy Head of the Prudential Regulation Authority

Chaired by Stephanie Flanders, BBC Economics Editor

“Modern banking has carried usury to new heights: not only do banks make money by charging for the use of money, they charge for the use of money they themselves create!”

Lord Skidelsky

“We have a system where the bulk of today’s money is loaned on the interest-bearing basis. Half of the costs of your home purchase over 20 years goes to the bank in the form of interest. 

The money that the banking system is lending to you – most people have the idea when they go to the bank to borrow money, that the money they’re being loaned is money that someone else had put in the bank beforehand – Actually the bulk of our money is created by our banking system – the Lloyds, the HSBC, the Barclays… when you go to a bank they literally create out of nothing the money they lend you.

To allow banks to create money out of nothing, is to allow fraud at the heart of our financial system. And it gives banks an enormous power – they can choose who to finance, who not to finance…

The problem is that we have institutionalized fraud – and what the ordinary people sense, but probably don’t understand is that this fraud of money creation – is at the heart of the problem. Unless we address this fraud at the heart of the banking system, nothing else will be right.” 

Tarek El Diwany

“The creation of money out of thin air is an immense power… the problem is that we’ve taken this enormous and wonderful power, which is actually our own power, and we’ve given it to a small elite…”

Ann Pettifor

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The 3rd part of the series of The City and the Common Good – Good Banks will take place on Wednesday 12th June at 6.00pm with

• Justin Welby – Archbishop of Canterbury (Keynote) and

• Antony Jenkins – Group Chief Executive, Barclays

“The relationship between banks and society has been described in the aftermath of the financial crisis as a ‘social contract’, but what is the objective of the contract? What is the purpose of banking and how do we foster a culture that helps that purpose be realised?”To register for tickets visit: http://goodbanksstpauls.eventbrite.com