Healthy Money Healthy Planet - library.uniteddiversity.coop

4
money.
Richard’s enthusiasm for establishing local currencies and local banking stimulated my
research into the subject. As a result, I soon began to understand a little about what
money is and how communities can create their own currency and enhance their wellbeing
by trading with it.
Then I read Michael Rowbotham’s book The Grip of Death: A Study of Modern
Money, Debt Slavery and Destructive Economics, and another penny dropped – with a
massive clunk. For the first time I understood that forced economic growth happens
because of the system whereby nations allow almost all their money supply to be
created as interest­bearing debt by private banks. Every time someone raises a
mortgage with a bank, money is created – but not the interest. It became so clear to me
now why debt is growing and why there is never enough money to go round. Few
people are aware that only a tiny percentage of our money supply is created by
government. My training in mathematics was starting to be of use again, as was the
training I had received from the epidemiologists who campaigned with me against the
tobacco companies, and who had taught me to think in terms of whole systems.
With two other enthusiasts, I co­founded New Zealand Banking Reform, a shortlived
organisation in Wellington that published newsletters and ran public meetings.
Our goals were achieved when we received official confirmation from the Reserve
Bank of New Zealand that only 2 per cent of the money we use is created interest­free
and the rest is created by commercial banks.
At the end of 2001 I was privileged to spend a lot of time with Margrit Kennedy,
the author of Interest and Inflation Free Money. Her optimism and passion were
infectious, and she spread a message of hope for the development of regional
currencies that are not based on interest, but on a circulation incentive. As we sat