THE FUTURE OF MONEY Bernard A. Lietaer - library.uniteddiversity ...

First and foremost, these money innovations are not attacking the
official money system. What they do instead is complement the
conventional money system, providing new tools that can operate in
parallel with it, without replacing it. That is why I call them
'complementary currencies', and not, 'alternative' ones.
The second reason is that they have already proven to be capable of
addressing breakdowns of a new nature to which no solutions have
been forthcoming within the conventional money paradigm. Finally,
the availability of information technologies necessary to implement
new money systems has become universal enough that a
democratisation of money innovations has become reality.
My career has taken me to the Four Corners of the earth, where I
have witnessed extremely different worlds ranging from dire poverty
and hunger to opulence and extravagance. Writing this book has,
therefore, not been a cool, abstract intellectual exercise. Rather, it is
an exploration into a deeper meaning of money.
Money not only permeates every facet of our lives, but is also hotwired
to our sensibilities. Thus I too have run through a whole gamut
of emotions, playing and working with money both on a personal
and professional level. While I have learned to deal with money from
a professional, hyper-rational distance, I have also personally
experienced extraordinary highs along with moments of bitter
humiliation and bewilderment. The low of my currency trading days
was when I became caught in the ebb-tide of George Sores' cornering
of the Pound Sterling in the early 1990s. This instantaneously
shattered my professional reputation as the 'world's top currency
trader'. I lost the illusion of my own Midas touch and most of my
own money as well.
Perhaps the most salient outcome of my experiences with money
has been a broader, more grounded view of its worth to us as human