This is a page to link to books, videos and audio that you think may be of interest to the Positive Money group. You can add links to external sites by simply clicking edit and pasting the link in. It's also easy enough to embed a YouTube video into a separate wiki page using the "Insert" menu (in edit mode). This may be preferable if we want to add comments or links to related content. For example, see the page I made for The Secret of Oz.
Table of contents
What is money?
Video
- The Secret of Oz
- A detailed account of the history of money-as-debt by the legendary Bill Still
- Money as Debt(46 mins)
- An animated film by artist & videographer, Paul Grignon. A useful primer to understanding the banking system
- Money - how it works (13 mins)
- One of the best and simplest explanations of how banks create money "out of thin air" by Michael Reiss, a regular contributor to the Positive Money blog
- This video also covers the 'misinformation' given about our money supply in most university-level textbooks
Television
Books
- Where does money come from - the essential guide to the UK monetary and banking system
- Published by nef(New Economics Foundation), and written by 2 members of nef, Prof Richard Warner of Univ. of Southampton, and Andrew Jackson of Positive Money
- It concludes that the current monetary system is inherently unstable, depending as it does primarily on the confidence of private banks themselves, while the central bank or government have chosen to exert little control over either the quantity of new money created or whether it is used for productive or speculative purposes
- Available from the Positive Money website (£14.99+pp) or from nef or Amazon. Seven 5* reviews on amazon!
- 'The Little Money Book' by David Boyle.
- Everything you wanted to know about money - what it is, what forms it takes, where it comes from - in easily digestible bites. Currently £6.29. Take a look inside on Amazon
Audio
- The Great Hargeisa Goat Bubble
You don't get many plays about goats. Or economics. Poor regulation, perverse incentive structures, securitised debt, and the manic pursuit of wealth - you'll find it all here. Just don't expect things to end well for the goats.
- What is money?
We dream about it, argue about it, worry about it, celebrate it, spend it, save it, we transfer it from one emotion to another. But what exactly is money? And why do we trust it? Frances Stonor Saunders takes a journey through some of the fundamentals of money. [Radio 4, 30 minutes]
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01dtlzn/Analysis_What_Is_Money/
Fun
Monetary Reform
Video
- In September 2012, Peter gave a talk "Fixing our broken economy"to the Sheffield and Rotherham Green Party.
- Just Banking(Prezi) - must watch!!
- http://prezi.com/a2ngj7vclhro/just-banking/
- This 'Prezi' contains a huge resource of video clips, telling the whole story of where money comes from, why it's so bad, and what we should do about it. It consists of short clips taken from the "Just Banking" conference held in Edinburgh in May 2012, brought together very effectively with a graphic front-end. It's brilliant.
- It might take a minute or two to download, because there is a lot of content, but once it's loaded you just move from clip to clip using the right arrow. Thanks to Steve for this
- The "Crash Course" by Chris Martenson. In total 3hrs 20mins spread over 20 chapters. The key chapters are 3-12
- A 12-year old Canadian girl Victoria Grant explains what is wrong with debt-based money, and how to fix it. She's a star!
- "97%owned" - a documentary by QueuePolitely
- “97% Owned” is a new documentary that reveals how money is at the root of our current social and economic crisis. Featuring frank interviews and commentary from economists, campaigners and former bankers, it exposes the privatised, debt-based monetary system that gives banks the power to create money, shape the economy, cause crises and push house prices out of reach
- Full version (2hrs 10 mins) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcGh1Dex4Yo
- Directors cut - specific to UK - (1hr) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3mfkD6Ky5o
- The Mary Mellor lectures - Understanding Money; the route to Economic Democracy and a Sustainable Planet
- Mary Mellor is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Northumbra University and has published several books on economics. This is a series of four lectures she gave in Feb 2012 to the NE Transition Towns Network.
- Session 1 What is money?
- Money and society; taxation - 53mins
- "States who have their own currency aren't households, this household analogy is pernicious... the notion that you can't spend more than you earn is nonsense if you have control of your own currency. ...[this] would stop all this austerity nonsense in its tracks"
- Session 2 Money and Banking
- the illusion of fractional reserve; what is 'real' money?; national debt - 52mins
- "debt-based money must expand the money supply constantly and must demand constant economic activity, hence this obsession with growth"
- Session 3 Crisis
- the crisis unfurls - from speculative boom to austerity; Northern Rock - 66mins
- "the reason for the euro crisis is that they don't understand money systems ... the social nature of money"
- "we've forgotten that states can issue their own money; the states are having to 'borrow' money and this has led to the sovereign-debt crisis"
- Session 4 the Future of Money
- banking reform vs. monetary reform; new technologies; micro-credit; LETS - 39mins
- "my aim is to try and devise a money system that can produce the concept of a sufficiency economy ... living within social and ecological limits"
Television
- Steve Keen on BBC HardTalk
- he predicted the crash, and now he's got a novel scheme for writing off debt with a bailout for the public (we all get money but those of us with debts must use the bailout to pay down our debts). This interview is a gem, if only for the fact that money-as-debt actually gets a mention on the BBC!
Books, Magazines & Blogs
- Money Week (Magazine and website)
- Steve recommends the back page of "Money Week" magazine which contains interesting insights from Bill Bonner
- The Money Myth Exploded
- A short fictional story written around 1936 by Louis Even, an advocate of Social Credit. It follows the lives of a group of shipwreck survivors on a desert island and describes productivity and the development of banking in simple terms. It is a useful primer for anyone who is finding subjects like Fractional Reserve Banking or Debt-based Currency hard to to grasp.
Flyers
Audio
- BBC - Radio 4 Analysis - Steve Keen: Why Economics Is Bunk
- BBC - Radio 4 Analysis - The Gold Standard (30 minutes)
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01k9qd8
- Blurb - "As banks collapse and governments run out of money, the popular solution is to print more and more and expand bank balance sheets. But is there another way of fixing our economy? Would the financial system be more stable if each pound in our pocket was backed by gold? The Today programme's business presenter Simon Jack meets the so-called 'gold bugs' who predict the collapse of the paper system as well as those who argue that a return to the gold standard would be a huge mistake."
- This was a well-balanced discussion of the pros and cons of fiat money vs. gold-backed money. However it failed to mention the fact that the money supply is really controlled by our high-street banks and not by the Bank of England!
- BBC - Radio 4 Analysis - Radical Economics - escaping credit surfdom
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00y6qtb
- The role of credit in the build up to the global financial crisis is well known - but what has our reliance on credit been doing to the wider economy and to human behaviour? The expansion of consumer credit has been encouraged by social democratic as well as centre right governments. But some on the left believe that the growth of the financial sector has given birth to a novel form of capitalism and with that a new kind of worker exploitation.
Banking
There is a huge range of videos about banking on the internet. Some can be trusted, some are best regarded as conspiracy theory. These are some that our supporters have recommended you watch -
Video
- Banking corruption, with Simon Dixon and Max Keiser
Political Reform
Video
Television
Books
- When The People Speak - James Fiskin,
- A detailed introduction to the theory and application of deliberative democracy, an alternative to the representative democracy we currently suffer under. The basic idea is that we - the people - act as the executive i.e. experts prepare policy proposals, but the public decide which policy is implemented in a process resembling jury service. Fishkin works through the theoretical arguments in favour of deliberative democracy and then reviews case studies from trials run all over the world.
Audio
- BBC R4 - Analysis - Alternative Economic Cultures
- Paul Mason interviews renowned sociologist Prof Manuel Castells about the rise of alternative economic cultures since the financial crisis. Recorded in front of an audience at the London School of Economics on Monday 8th October 2012.
- The financial crisis which has unfolded since 2008 marks more than an economic downturn, according to Prof Castells. The problems which caused the crisis are so deep rooted that they have provoked a profound reassessment of our economic beliefs and institutions. They have also given rise to social movements such as Occupy and alternative economic cultures opposed to financial capitalism.
Other papers