Critics of quantitative easing highlight the absurdity of creating money from nothing to paper over terrible investment decisions. Yet, what about all of the money created by banks before 2008? Incorrect narratives of money have misdirected and befuddled our thinking on finance and currency, limiting our responses to the global financial crisis. Can we learn about the internal dynamics of financial and monetary regimes in enough time to develop a positive response to the next financial crisis?
In Extraenvironmentalist #75 we discuss our global systems of money and finance with Ben Dyson of Positive Money UK and the themes in his new book Modernizing Money: Why Our Monetary System is Broken and How it Can be Fixed. Ben tells us why journalists, academics, economists and citizens have so much difficulty talking in an intelligent way about our money system. Then, Brett Scott joins us to describe the ways he was able to apply an anthropologist’s approach to work as a derivatives trader. Brett discusses his book, The Heretic’s Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money as he describes leverage points where activists can disrupt global financial flows to support ecological and social initiatives.
