Positive Money’s history

Positive Money was officially founded in the UK in 2010 as a response to the 2008 global financial crash. We gained support from people who sought to understand the drivers of the crash, and who wanted to explore proposals that could reform the banking sector. 

Our early blogs exposed the fundamental role private banks played in collapsing financial systems around the world, through their power to create money and private debt in our economies. Positive Money quickly built a following of ordinary people, economists and experts, who all recognised that it is impossible to understand the unjust dynamics of our economy without looking at who holds power to create and allocate money. Our work explores the fact that the financial system is a key pillar of power that drives and upholds structural inequalities, and that leads to unaffordable homes, climate change, cost of living crises, racial injustice, financial exclusion and more. 

Since 2010, our staff has grown to a team of 21, with offices in London, Brussels and the US, as well as an online following of over 100,000 people and a long-standing network of local groups around the UK. Since 2020, we have built anti-oppression into our foundational analysis, and since 2023, we have been building out our international brand identity, culture and strategy.

Highlights

• We’ve pushed understanding of the money and banking system out of the fringes and into the mainstream debate, with over 1,000 media hits, including many live interviews. 

• We got money creation debated in the UK Parliament for the first time in 170 years in 2014. Our work is regularly cited in parliamentary meetings and hearings.

• We have mainstreamed the idea of monetary financing and the need for central banks and treasuries to work together. We mainstreamed the idea of a dual interest rate policy that would encourage investments in green over projects that damage the natural world.

• In 2020, the head of the ECB, Christine Lagarde, committed to prioritising the climate in response to our cross-NGO letter and meeting.

• In 2021, following our groundbreaking report: ‘A green Bank of England’, together with our coalition partners, we won a green mandate for the Bank of England. 

• Our ‘Green central banking scorecard’ has been cited by several central banks, including the Bank of France and Bank of Italy, and in over 50 media outlets around the world, including in India, Korea, Spain, Brazil and the US.

• We held the Bank of England to account on its response to COVID-19 in 2021, pressuring it to provide more transparency around its financing schemes for private firms, and to adopt environmental conditions for future schemes. 

• In 2021, we coordinated the European Citizens’ Bank – an initiative involving citizens’ assemblies in five European countries, which empowered citizens to express their recommendations directly to the European Central Bank.

• In 2022, we partnered with a UK local council to empower a representative group of citizens to shape the council’s cost of living strategy, via the People’s Panel on the Cost of Living.

• We put the US Federal Reserve under pressure to protect the planet with our 2022 report: ‘Tackling fossilflation: a toolkit for price stability and a just transition’, and by coordinating letters from hundreds of educators in 2023.

• Our incredible network of supporters have run hundreds of local group meetings and actions at festivals and outside banks in the UK, Brussels and the US.