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23 December 2014

Highlights from 2014 – Positive Money campaign

Merry Christmas from Positive Money! 2014 has been an eventful year for the Positive Money campaign.
Merry Christmas from Positive Money 🎄 What a year it’s been!

Merry Christmas from Positive Money!

2014 has been an eventful year for the Positive Money campaign. Thanks to the incredible activity and momentum of our supporters, we have managed to achieve a lot more than we could have ever predicted this time last year.

Below are some of our highlights from the past year – What were yours? We would love to hear your Positive Money highlights from 2014. Share them with us on Facebook and Twitter.

Spring was kicked off by an amazing supporters conference which focused on developing the Positive Money local groups network. This was swiftly followed by a huge and unexpected breakthrough: The Bank of England released a bulletin confirming that banks create money when they issue loans. In April, Martin Wolf, Chief Economics Commentator at the Financial Times, wrote an article entitled ‘Strip private banks of their power to create money’, referring directly to Modernising Money.

In Summer we got the results from a Dodds Monitoring poll we commissioned. This confirmed our suspicion that the money system is poorly understood by our political representatives. An incredible 4,317 supporters emailed their MP alerting them to the poll results and asking if they could confirm that they understood how money is created.

During Autumn we hosted the first ever Positive Money retreat in the Lake District. 20 supporters, 5 directors and the staff team hiked through beautiful scenery and discussed how to grow and develop the network. We also hosted events with Martin Wolf, and Lord Adair Turner, former Chief of FSA.

Winter began with money creation being debated in UK Parliament for the first time in 170 years. In just two weeks, 3,060 emails were sent by our supporters to almost every MP in the UK asking them to attend the debate. The backbench debate saw a high level of discussion from MPs across the political spectrum and concluded with several MPs calling for a commission to be set up to further investigate the issue.

In 2014, we saw mainstream journalists talking openly about the way money is created as debt by the banks, the dangers of this and the alternatives to get newly-created money into the real economy. This is a big step forward in our campaign. In addition to the amazing Martin Wolf’s article in the Financial Times, Positive Money has been mentioned in the Guardian, Telegraph, Independent and Open Democracy. Interviews with Ben Dyson appeared on BBC World Service, Max Keiser Show and Sky News TV. (more here)

We released 2 animated videos in 2014: ‘Could these 3 simple changes to banking fix the economy?’ (which has over 55,000 views) and ‘How to waste £375 billion? – The Failure of Quantitative Easing’ and a number of presentations from the 2014 conference and other events. On youtube, our videos have been viewed over 1 million times!

We’ve published 2 new reports: ‘Creating a Sovereign Monetary System’ which outlines in plain English, how we can prevent commercial banks from being able to create money, and move this power to create money into the hands of a transparent and accountable body. It also outlines the transition and responds to common critiques. We recently submitted the report ‘Increasing competition in payment services’ to the Competition and Market Authority.

This year, the number of people who joined us on Facebook has more than doubled from 17,000 to over 38,000. Our posts are being shared by thousands of people, e.g. this image was shared over 5,500 times. Thank you to everyone who shares, likes and comments on our posts – it is essential for growing our campaign and reaching new people.

The grassroots Positive Money movement in the UK has gone from strength to strength during 2014. 30 local groups are meeting regularly up and down the country and the number of supporter events more than doubled this year – with over 200 Positive Money events taking place!

The movement to democratise money and banking is spreading all over the world, with new campaign groups being set up in more and more countries – including Spain, Portugal, Italy, Albania, Slovenia & Puerto Rico in 2014 – check out the International Movement for Monetary Reform.

We have had an amazing year. With your support, we are confident we will be able to make 2015 even more of a success.

If you’d like to get more involved in the coming year join a local group or become a regular donor to help us keep growing.

Thank you for your continued support and Merry Christmas from the Positive Money team.

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