Money: Understanding and Creating Alternatives to Legal Tender - Softcover

Greco, Thomas Jr.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1890132373 ISBN 13: 9781890132378

Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing Co, 2008

Synopsis

Cash. Loot. Scratch. Lucre. Bread. Coin. Scrip. Moolah. Green. We all think we know intuitively what money is, and what it can do for us. Tom Greco, director of the Community Information Resource Center, understands and explains money on an eye-popping, fundamental level. Moreover, he provides a roadmap on how to make alternatives to the "legal tender" work for individuals, communities, and local economies.

Money will set your mental gears spinning with fantastic ideas. This book explains the mysteries and realities of money in clear and accessible prose, and reveals the true workings, and alarming fragility, of our existing financial system. It also describes concrete and realistic actions that individuals, businesses, social service agencies, and governments can take to enhance productivity and purchasing power, to protect local economies from the ravages of globalization, and to strengthen the bonds of community. Money is a radical critique of our existing financial system, but also a practical and inspirational how-to manual for creating a vibrant and effective community currency system.

You'll learn:

• the truth about how money is created, and what it actually represents;
• why we're all in debt;
• how the financial system is structured to inevitably transfer wealth from the poor to the rich; and
• how to start a financial revolution in your local community.

A retired professor of business and economics, Tom Greco has spent twenty years studying community currency systems around the world, including historical models (such as during the Great Depression), and the scores of contemporary examples now operating in the United States, Canada, Europe, South America, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. He helped establish the Tucson Traders currency in Arizona, and he has served as a consultant for many others. No pie-in-the-sky idealist, Greco offers a realistic vision of how healthy local economies can be supplemented with flourishing community currencies.

Anyone who works routinely with money needs this book--this means bankers, stockbrokers, merchants, community organizers, loan sharks, gamblers, investors, bank robbers, hedge fund operators, sports agents, and ordinary people.

About this title

Synopsis

A former professor of business, Greco expanded his passive study of money to developing new community monetary systems. In the present volume, the way money is exchanged is described, with a focus on the tendency of the rich to benefit from current monetary systems. Greco then describes alternate methods of exchange and his own community currency s

Edition details

• Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing Co
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1890132373
• ISBN 13: 9781890132378
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320