The Future of Finance, Rebuild21

http://rebuild21.org
What will banks of the 21st century look like? Well not like you think! According to Jem Bendell Rebuild21 speaker we need to rethink the concept of banks and currencies for a more sustainable 21st century. Jem Bendell is a professor and the owner-director of Lifeworth Consulting, providing solutions for systemic change towards sustainable development. For 16 years he has consulted with business, United Nations (UN) and civil society, while writing over 100 publications on the social responsibility of organizations.

Read more about Rebuild21 at:
http://rebuild21.org

• Category

  Nonprofits & Activism

[Peter Burgess]

Very glad I was referred to this talk. In my view this was very good but it did not address the challenge of money being the measure of economic progress and performance. I believe that a part of the solution to economic reform is to upgrade the money profit metric in business and society to include what I refer to as 'valuadd'. A meld of money profit and valuadd is a better metric. Organizations that produce huge profit and negative valuadd or value destruction should then be held to account

[DarkMoonDroid]

More than okay with that!

Marry me!

<3

[tonyhaslam]

Just to clarify a point that Rokas84 makes below about people with savings needing to make interest otherwise they won't lend it - the point about interest free mutual credit clearing systems is about making trades with others - they are not intended for accumulations of capital. Other alternative savings products are needed - forests for example - where investments can be made with a natural return in the future - renewable energy is another example. Banks are not the place to put savings!

[Rokas84]

Fractional banking is not caused by comercial banks, it is part of CENTRAL bank instruments. Central bank is aware of it and adding new money into system takes this into account. There is no way to avoid money multiplier and it is rather a side effect than intentional effect and it is not made by COMERCIAL banks, as for them there is no difference if those are "original" money or secondary/third/etc-cycle-thro­ugh-multiplier as they still need to pay interest for them.

[Rokas84]

Lehmans was investment bank. Difference from comercial is that instead of lending money for other to do business, they do business themselves. 33:1 (or whatever) ratio apeared because their investment were not succesfull (all those investments turned to 0 but you still keep you liabilities). So it is not that these money were created, but rather that money which were borowed and invested were lost which caused these scary equity to debt ratios.

[sickb0ywastaken]

Look up fractional reserve banking, and watch "Money as Debt" to get a better understanding of how the banking system works. You'll be surprised.

[Sofus Midtgaard]

As you write "Commercial banks can't lend out any more than they have collected from depositors (private/corporate/central banks)" - Jem Bendells, main point is exactly that the aggressive gearing of many commercial makes the economy unstable. Lehman Brothers has a debt to equity ratio of 33:1 before they went bankrupt. So ‘money IS created by private banks' as long as they have credit worthiness from Moody of Fitch...

[Rokas84]

Dear Jem Bendell, please DO learn more about monetary system!

The interest is needed so that people with money are willing to lend them to others - this is their "cut" for sharing money. If there will be no interest people will hold onto their money there will be no money available - worse than conventional currencies!

[Rokas84]

This is bullshit!

Commercial banks can't lend out any more than they have collected from depositors (private/corporate/central banks) in fact part of collected money have to be kept in reserve and on top of that there are other regulations to make sure bank is doing ok and is not lending more than it can handle.

Money are "created" by CENTRAL banks in order to keep monetary system stable - keep small (target 2%-3%) inflation. CENTRAL bank goal to keep target inflation, not to make profit!

[favabank]

Favabank is launching as a cooperative in the UK this year, based on a mutual credit system, participants very welcome...