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Monetary System
1. We believe that monetary management remains a mystery and is one of the most lucrative means of power. The problem is very serious, the U.S. controls the monopoly of global liquidity. The Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) was created in 2008 to buy assets from financial institutions for more than 300 billion US$, money which was printed without any control, without any compensation (gold), with no connection to the production of real goods and services. This kind of monetary policy would generate in other countries a terrible budgetary tension. However, through the Federal Reserve the U.S. can issue the amount of money they want. For example, there are currency derivatives (M4 or M5), that reach 650 billion dollars, an amount much higher than America's GDP, where the money that is created does not have any relationship with the productive system. In Europe, the same recipes have also been applied, with billions of Euros being paid to banks to save them from the crisis.
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2. We believe that any Southern country printing its own currency would be attacked as irresponsible, or if their Central Bank were to lend money to build schools or for programs of full employment or social investment, this would also be considered irresponsible. Countries in the South are subject to such restrictions. What is it that makes it right for the U.S. to issue dollars with no control while the issuing of local currency in small countries is considered a big problem? The U.S. is allowed to indebt itself in dollars and pays in dollars, while other countries have to borrow in foreign currency and not in their own currency.
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3. We believe it is necessary to get to the root of the problem: the authority to grant credits that has been usurped by the global financial system must be returned to society itself, even more than the State. Hence the need for a truly autonomous Central Bank and a National Banking and Values Commission responding to a Social Cooperation Observatory.
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4. The current global financial banking system, a system of anonymous and private corporations, an inheritance from the violent 20th century, is a huge tower of Babel whose cryptic and supposedly universal money language produces human exploitation and environmental depredation, which ultimately leads to the extinction of mankind and its living environment.
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5. We believe that as Clemenceau said that ""war is so important that it should not be left to the military,"" today we must say that ""the economy and money are too important to be left to economists and bankers.""
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6. We believe that the lack of clarity about the nature of the economic and financial system is causing major problems and diversions. We must clarify the nature of money and the very misleading and dangerous procedures for creating money, replacing the current opaque financial engineering for a model that places at its core and makes explicit the concepts of debt, credit and money assets.
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7. It is incomprehensible that governments and heads of international organizations - including Nobel laureates and prominent economists of international reputation - have not yet managed to find a logical and rational manner for countries to trade with each other without the need to borrow money from banking institutions and major international financial centers, thus maintaining the world's dependence on them.
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8. It is unacceptable that U.S. dollars are created - invented by a private institution called the Federal Reserve, because the U.S. government asks it for loans at an interest rate to meet its cash needs, especially to cover its trade imbalances.
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9. We consider it contradictory that international transfers of capital and international trade should occur mainly in U.S. dollars and thus, all other world governments have no choice but to purchase strong currencies in the international financial market. Governments should supposedly have the monopoly of money creation, and yet they repeatedly must borrow and pay high interest on the debt thus contracted. We believe that the peoples of the world must realize this and put the blame on their governments and the international institutions themselves for allowing this stupid and unfair system to be applied for so long.
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10. We believe that the dominance of the U.S. dollar as an international currency is entering a slow and lingering agony period, but that major world leaders are showing a remarkable inability to raise new and more interesting proposals. The U.S. - or perhaps we should say the Federal Reserve - have plugged the hole of the international economy with a potentially unpayable debt, since according to some estimates this debt is six times the U.S. annual GDP. Regrettably, the currency of the world's largest economy is depreciating.
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11. We believe that a fundamental cause of the inability to meet basic needs of all people is the existing divorce between the production and distribution of real-values (values that serve life, i.e. food) and the symbolic and referential money movements (money-value). The will for possessing and accumulating material values prevails, often reduced to money – understood as a power factor. Unimaginable amounts of money are concentrated in very few hands instead of boosting upwards from the base the whole of society.
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12. We believe that the current global economic crisis is a landmark in a cycle, with its true effects not yet predictable. It demands awareness about money in contemporary society - something historically invented as a resource to facilitate exchanges and then favorable of equity and mutual satisfaction - something that today, after several stunning and catastrophic financial and monetary cycles, has lost its legitimacy and effectiveness... because of the monumental flaws in its operation, such as arbitrary taxation, usury, speculation and fraud.
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13. Money has been losing credibility even among its very creators, the modern banking system and the stock market, who managed to compromise governments into bearing the costs of their breakdown, thus creating more public debt, irresponsibly leaving the problem unresolved.
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14. We believe that the main contradiction that humanity suffers today is the divorce between objects' real-value and their money value. The money that now exists and circulates in the world generally does not refer to life and it is nothing but the result of virtual operations carried out by possessive instincts. Those who handle real-value through fictitious and deceitful symbols as money currently is have led a life of privilege based on ignorance, complicity and the corruption of the majorities who put their hopes in a progress that is based on the law of the most cunning and tricky. Certainly, such progress then materializes in huge cement, steel, glass, and technological works, but they remain expensive and unsustainable illusions, with clay feet.
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15. We believe that the disputed American Way of Life yields to China's Way of Life, an ideology that involves a new aristocracy, adjacent to the Communist Party and more than one million people in semi-slavery producing for the entire world. It is not difficult to predict the environmental and cultural impact of the Chinese model, which has in 30 years and especially over the last decade managed to create 875,000 millionaires who are in average between 30 and 40 years of age, produce 14 million new cars a year, and the city of Shanghai which will be host to 300 million Chinese in the near future.
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16. We believe that money became a fallacy in the 20th century, one that divides society into cunning profiteers and the ignorant masses. The most notable milestone was the U.S.'s 1971 unilateral cancellation of the Bretton Woods agreement of 1944. It had disconnected the dollar value from gold, justifying the creation of virtual value: mere tokens and manipulative figures in the hands of magician bankers and brokers.
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17. We believe that if Marx emphasized workers' exploitation by the capital, others are now stressing the exploitation of all values by money. The exclusive possession of the means of production are as serious as the issuing of money and the subsequent trade speculations.
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18. We believe that the creation of expensive debt with no real backups is at the root of the current crisis, which has produced a generation of ignorant and cynical dealers, some of whom have accommodated in their position as public authorities - including many prestigious institutions, not excluding academies - unable to offer solutions to the current humanitarian and environmental dismantlement. The impoverishment of the majority of the population, including the middle classes, is, under the current circumstances, unstoppable.
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19. We believe that money is a fundamental concept and a tool of major public interest, which makes reference to the intangible but vital dimension of credit (value, time, risk, reciprocity). We believe that we must answer the fundamental question "Who produces money, at what cost and for whose benefit?," for this is a topic that has been kept a mystery. In the past three centuries private traders have been making profits through it, rather than trying to elucidate it.
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20. We believe that more important than the nationalization of the commercial banks would be the nationalization, at a higher level, of the money-issuing capability for the creation of an inclusive welfare for all citizens.
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21. A country's banking system should be integrated under a moral, social and monetary authority which can ensure its autonomy from governments and businesses, practicing absolute transparency. In constant dialogue with the productive levels of society - workers and the population – which is how it can estimate and create the money needed for the domestic market. This money should be put into circulation not as predatory lending, but as a vital national right, delivered to a democratically elected government and a participative government which in turn encourages, promotes or co-manages social programs. These programs should be based on the three basic criteria of progress: Solidarity, Subsidiarity and Sustainability.
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22. We believe that nationalizing money-issuing capability is a highly strategic and important goal that involves a large civil society campaign, one already put forward by ECOSOL (Solidarity Economy Network) and the WSF (World Social Forum), with its very own political and solidarity economics, accompanied by a great number of political forces struggling for genuine change in favor of one of the most legitimate of causes for all citizens.
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23. We believe that public ability to issue money must be recovered. The community - the public administration with the central bank - should create money without having to borrow either from banks or from its citizens: if (and always if) the value and destination of the money created is fully transparent and in accordance with the production, consumption and savings needs of the country, to avoid inflation.
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24. We believe that the economy can not pursue a continuous and rapid growth indefinitely; this situation is clearly unsustainable given that we live on a finite planet. In the long term, continuous growth (repeated year after year) and sustainability are not compatible. We must urgently implement a major change in the monetary and financial system, a system that requires structural growth due to the ability of privately owned institutions to issue funds (and then charge interests). What make our economic and monetary system so dependent on unlimited growth are the monetary creation mechanisms - artificial procedures that clearly enrich a parasite sector.
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25. We would like to propose a deep reform of our banking systems, so that they can: operate with much less personnel, by making extensive use of information and communication technologies (ICTs); and align their actions with the re-appropriation strategies by the States, both of the monetary issue capability and the creation of bank money.
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26. We believe that in the current socio-financial structure, in which the agents move with a certain impunity and discretion, it is very difficult to fully identify offenders and assess diverted funds or wrong-doing, and even if these problems had been overcome, it is usually very difficult to enforce an effective sentence, because of the anonymous and un-informative kind of money we currently use. Surely we must change our mode of operating, by introducing registering, accounting, digital coins that would also enable the monitoring of long chains of transfers; in this new environment, natural resources and environmental quite possibly could be better managed, preserved and defended.
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27. We want the abolition of high-value bank notes (in Europe the 500, 200 and 100 €), which encourage the impunity of tax frauds, people, drugs and weapons trafficking, foreign exchange evasion …
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28. We want two types of Euro – the European currency -, each adapted to the two different levels of growth, policies, inflation...
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29. We want money location, so that surpluses flow and stay as much as possible in their origin. With an Economic models have shown that if money circulates five times from its origin, it can generate a small economic boom.
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30. It is unbelievable that governments allow the creation of so-called bank-money or debt-money by private banking institutions, when this creation should be assumed by governments themselves, with two advantages: 1. Gains from interest charges and 2. Better control over the money in the economy.
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31. We believe that there are many initiatives in the world that address mysterious economic money creation, and that a micro-monetary insurgency is emerging by creating social and complementary currencies and claim a similar response from governments and in a higher scale.
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32. We want to promote the creation of local currencies for the exchange of goods and local services linked to global networks of local currencies as the CES (Community Exchange System) which brings together more than 170 networks in 20 countries.
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34. We believe that a profound change in the global economy is required. To avoid the hegemonic use of U.S. Dollars in the development of international trade and the monitoring of international transactions, a true international currency as the bancor telematics proposed by Lord John Maynard Keynes is necessary. For a time two multinational financial systems will have to run simultaneously: the current one, driven by the dollar-euro, and the new bancor telematics-based system. Such an event is perfectly feasible, since all it would take is a connecting door between both systems. If the new monetary system was far better than the current, it would clearly impose itself.
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35. We believe that the adhoc creation of monetary exchange under public scrutiny is a remarkable innovation that grants a social base, enabling a new State to recover from private banks the inalienable right of issuing public money, for now eminently electronic, without the usury and speculative costs that keep the world on the brink of meltdown. A State that supports and monitors the market, not over the society but with and for the society.
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36. We believe that while the capitalist currency is collapsing, ending up bottoming out with debts being reviewed towards an inevitable universal Jubilee, the recognition and promotion of a human capital strategy is advancing. Conventional terms such as domestic market, SMEs, productivity, or the more social terms such as fair trade, ethical banking, microfinance, cooperatives, social economy, must identify themselves with the spirit of giving above the spirit of gaining, until an economics of equity is found, an economics that involves new ways of pricing, paying and saving, new social, public and private issuers.
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37. We would like to see our personal, social, political, economic and cultural, local and global existence with other eyes. Respecting and promoting personal and collective life, appreciating all that constitutes the social fabric, cohesion, accountability and reciprocity to turn trust and credit into a dimension that corrects and releases us from selfishness, deceit, and human and environmental depredation.
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General comments
En lo personal opino que vamos por el buen camino. Se avanza en las distintas etapas previstas en nuestro proyecto CONSENSO DE BARCELONA, y por cierto ya se están delineando diversas y originales estrategias de abordaje, y distintos grupos de conclusiones. Y muy probablemente a mediados del año 2011, tendremos que decidir sobre cómo vamos a dar continuidad y seguimiento a este interesante y prometedor emprendimiento. Por un lado debe reconocerse que estamos en un mundo muy cambiante, así que no podemos cometer la soberbia de pensar que la declaración del 2011 marcará la cumbre de nuestros esfuerzos, y el fin de la historia de los consensos. Por lo tanto, tendremos que marcar con énfasis, que el resultado de nuestros actuales trabajos y esfuerzos, es simplemente una primera etapa, que como resultado tiene la DECLARACIÓN 2011 del CONSENSO DE BARCELONA, y que a la misma seguirán actualizaciones y revisiones que se concretarán en nuevas DECLARACIONES cada tres o cuatro o cinco años. Pero por otra parte, la DECLARACIÓN 2011 no debe tener como destino sólo algunas pomposas presentaciones públicas, seguida de una circulación restringida y una difusión limitada. Quienes de alguna manera estamos participando y apoyando esta etapa 2010-2011 del proyecto, y creemos en los resultados que se puedan alcanzar, no podemos admitir que la DECLARACIÓN FINAL 2011 solamente circule entre nosotros y en algunos pocos ámbitos más. DEBEMOS LLEGAR TAMBIÉN A LOS GRANDES MEDIOS DE PRENSA, A LOS ORGANISMOS INTERNACIONALES, Y EN GENERAL TANTO AL SISTEMA POLÍTICO COMO A LAS PREOCUPACIONES CIUDADANAS DEL DÍA A DÍA. Los asuntos que pondremos de relieve en la DECLARACIÓN FINAL 2011 deben ingresar en la agenda mediática, en la agenda política, y en la agenda social, en distintos idiomas, y en distintas partes del mundo. Y en relación a esta cuestión, no debemos ser tan ingenuos de pensar que bastará con llamar a una conferencia de prensa, hacer allí una presentación formal, contestar unas cuantas preguntas de periodistas, y que ya está, que a partir de allí la difusión será todo un éxito. NO, CIERTAMENTE NO DEBEMOS PENSAR DE ESTA FORMA. Está bien, el actual grupo de trabajo fue conformado buscando diversidad en cuanto a la geografía, en cuanto a cultura e idioma, en cuanto a la formación y la ocupación de los participantes, etcétera, para así lograr representatividad respecto de toda nuestra sociedad y sin exclusiones. PERO ELLO NO QUIERE DECIR QUE PARA DETERMINADAS CUESTIONES NO DEBAMOS RECURRIR A ESPECIALISTAS Y GRUPOS DE TRABAJO DE MUY ALTO NIVEL Y MUY BUENA CAPACITACIÓN PROFESIONAL. Por ejemplo, varios de los capítulos que estamos elaborando conciernen temáticas especializadas en economía, y la sociedad civil en esta materia puede y debe marcar rumbos, pero la profundización de cuestiones muy especializadas de normativa, operativa, y organización, ciertamente debemos dejarlas en manos de expertos de muy alto nivel. Y en cuanto a la difusión de la DECLARACIÓN 2011 del CONSENSO DE BARCELONA, debemos proceder de manera análoga. LA DIFUSIÓN, LA PROPAGANDA, Y EL PERIODISMO, es materia de especialistas, y a ellos nos debemos remitir. UNA AGENCIA DE PUBLICIDAD por ejemplo, que sea creativa y competente, sirve para bastante más que para generar bonitos y llamativos afiches. ELLOS TIENEN BUENOS CONTACTOS CON PERIODISTAS Y CON MEDIOS DE DIFUSIÓN, y saben de su profesión, y saben de campañas que den buenos resultados, y por tanto en algún momento deberemos recurrir a este tipo de apoyo profesional. SI POR LIMITACIONES PRESUPUESTARIAS no podemos abordar desde el inicio una campaña bien organizada a nivel mundial, bueno, siempre podremos empezar de una manera más modesta. EN AMÉRICA LATINA POR EJEMPLO, los costes en materia de difusión y publicidad son bastante menores que los vigentes en países industrializados, y a eso se une general buen nivel cultural de muchos sectores de población, o sea, hay allí también un campo fértil para sembrar. MUY PROBABLEMENTE EN ALGÚN PAÍS LATINOAMERICANO PODRÍAMOS HACER UN ENSAYO EN CUANTO A DIFUSIÓN Y PROPAGANDA, con la ventaja adicional que al basar estos esfuerzos en idioma español, la experiencia y algunos productos publicitarios concretos podrían circular muy fácilmente de un país a otro. LA GRAN DIVERSIDAD LINGÜÍSTICA DE CONTINENTES COMO ÁFRICA, ASIA, o EUROPA, en el sentido aludido por cierto plantea dificultades especiales.
Written by J.Elissalde at 21 / 11 / 2010
En este capítulo, en este foro, hay realmente ideas muy buenas, que apoyo en lo personal con todas mis fuerzas. PERO NO NOS OLVIDEMOS DEL FORMATO EN EL QUE NOS SON PRESENTADAS LAS PROPUESTAS, Y DE LA FORMA COMO LAS CALIFICAMOS. Estudiamos y evaluamos las recomendaciones una a una, o sea con un enfoque analítico y muy escasamente holístico. TENGAMOS CONCIENCIA DE ESTA REALIDAD. Claro, de otra forma, este grupo de casi 300 especialistas no podría trabajar, así que esa es una restricción de la metodología de trabajo que aplicamos, pero en algún momento tendremos que poner énfasis en la visión de conjunto y en las interrelaciones, y también en los tiempos de las reformas. PONGAMOS ALGUNOS EJEMPLOS. Se señala aquí al actual tejido financiero de base y al mecanismo de los intereses, como un elemento que favorece la formación de las crisis recurrentes, y que favorece también la potenciación del crecimiento continuo y permanente. MUY BIEN, EXCELENTE, ESTO TIENE TODO MI APOYO. Y también se señala que el Estado debe estar cerca de los mecanismos de creación monetaria, para controlarlos tal vez totalmente, vía nacionalización de la banca. CORRECTO, ESTO TAMBIÉN TIENE MI APOYO PERSONAL. Pero para poder al menos reducir tasas de interés, tenemos que analizar los distintos ámbitos de actuación. ECONOMÍA INTERNACIONAL: Ahí sí se pueden eliminar totalmente los intereses, y se debe, pero ello implica introducir una verdadera moneda internacional bajo control mundial, y que solamente sea usada para los intercambios y pagos en la economía internacional, y que solamente puedan manejar y tener propiedad en esta especie los BANCOS CENTRALES nacionales, los ORGANISMOS INTERNACIONALES, y el ADMINISTRADOR MUNDIAL. Pero analicemos ahora las ECONOMÍAS NACIONALES: Allí si definitivamente conviene reducir tasas de interés, pero opino que las mismas no podrán ser retiradas del todo, por no convenir al interés general. Pero obsérvese. Correcto, de alguna forma, tal vez nacionalizando la banca, podremos apropiarnos de las ganancias de los banqueros. Pero los intereses por préstamos que hoy día se cobran también sirven para sufragar gastos operativos y gastos salariales. Y la única forma que se tendrá de hacer realidad algunas de las buenas recomendaciones en esta sección planteadas, será reducir sensiblemente gastos operativos bancarios y salarios bancarios. CONCLUSIÓN. Muchos de los sueños aquí planteados solamente serán posibles con una banca muy automatizada y tal vez nacionalizada en su totalidad o en variados aspectos, y por cierto usando monedas nacionales telemáticas, o sea, monedas nacionales que al menos sean digitales y nominativas y escriturales, pues de otra forma, con las actuales monedas materiales y anónimas, no podremos reducir casi a cero la plantilla de trabajadores bancarios.
Written by J.Elissalde at 01 / 12 / 2010
TAL VEZ SEA ADELANTARME DEMASIADO. TAL VEZ LO QUE AQUÍ SEÑALE CORRESPONDA PONERLO EN OTRO LUGAR. En lo personal me sigue preocupando la difusión de nuestro trabajo, una vez que tengamos algo decente para difundir a principios del 2011. LA DIFUSIÓN Y LA PROPAGANDA ES VITAL, pues no debemos dejar todo el esfuerzo realizado, y todo lo que hemos avanzado, para que luego nuestras recomendaciones queden en archivos de nuestras computadoras y en algunos anaqueles de bibliotecas tradicionales sitas en Barcelona y en el resto de ESPAÑA. Muy bien, y además, de los 300 ponentes-calificadores, sumados a los integrantes del Consejo Asesor Internacional, y a otros técnicos contratados y participantes en este proyecto, debiéramos involucrar en presentaciones, en difusión, en propaganda, en entrevistas, etcétera, al menos a la mitad. NO HAY QUE SER MUY PERSPICAZ para darse cuenta que no podremos financiar reuniones presentaciales frecuentes, porque posiblemente no den los presupuestos hoy día disponibles, pero además, seamos coherentes. Muchos de nosotros adherimos a las ideas de DECRECIMIENTO, y una de nuestras primeras acciones no puede ser movilizar muchas personas por avión y por otros medios de transporte. En lo personal, y si bien en principio no debemos descartar ninguna línea de acción, tendríamos que poder asegurar expresión verbal y registro a distancia de todos nosotros, tal vez vía SKYPE. Me adelanto a dar mi identificación de usuario en Skype: "anselmijuan". Tal vez entre los distintos participantes haya personas que no sean usuarias de SKYPE. Tal vez (no sé), convenga que todos tengamos camaritas de cierta calidad (a recomendar), para que se pueda captar nuestra voz y nuestra imagen desde Barcelona o desde donde sea. Tal vez convenga que el organizador en Barcelona tenga al menos una foto reciente de cada uno de nosotros. NO ESPEREMOS A ÚLTIMO MOMENTO. Vayamos recogiendo foto de todos. Vayamos instruyendo a quienes no conozcan SKYPE, a que allí se hagan una cuenta.
Written by J.Elissalde at 01 / 12 / 2010
Estoy de acuerdo con armar un grupo en Skype, sobre todo a partir de la presentación de las conclusiones del proceso Barcelona Consensus, supongo que éso estará previsto por el grupo promotor! Envío mi foto reciente y mi dirección skype.
Written by H.Primavera at 26 / 12 / 2010


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