Links > social money

The WSSE is the network from which the ALOE network emerged. The website includes an important number of general documents, or other more specific from different sectors of solidarity economy (Vision of a SE, Indicators, Fair Trade, Solidarity Finance, Social Money, Women and Economy, Social Responsibility, International regulations, Environmental Justice, Ecological Debt and Sustainable Development). 5 years of archives showing the wealth of reflexion on solidarity economy at the international level.

Thomas H. Greco, Jr. is a community and monetary economist, educator, writer, and consultant. He is a former tenured college teacher who has spent more than 30 years studying and writing about ways to achieve greater harmony, equity, and sustainability through business and economics. His special expertise in monetary and financial structures has led to innovative designs for private community currencies and payment systems. Among other books and articles, he is the author of, Money: Understanding and Creating Alternatives to Legal Tender (Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2001) and The End of Money and the Future of Civilization (Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2009).

See also his blog http://beyondmoney.net/

This page provides information about the most urgent actions to be taken now that the banking crisis of 2008 has hit.

Whatever governments do for the banks, credit will be a lot harder to obtain for businesses, for many years to come. The trickiest aspect of the current situation is the simultaneous, global nature, of the banking crisis. Please, get ready now for an unprecedented rough ride for as long as one decade. What all this means in practice is that we have now entered the period of an unprecedented convergence of the four planetary issues - financial instability, climate change, unemployment and the financial consequences of an aging society - that was described in the 2001 book, The Future of Money.

To avoid a domino effect of massive layoffs and bankruptcies, the most urgent action for businesses to take is the initiative of creating a Business-to-Business (B2B) mutual credit system at whatever scale makes sense to them. The WIR system (see six page synthesis paper for details) is a successful precedent of this strategy implemented in Switzerland since 1934.

The various downloadable documents available on this page describe the practical steps to achieve this; as well as the theoretical backing why this is a systemic solution to today’s sitiation. This includes a one pager and a six pager on the B2B currency solution; and a White Paper on the Financial Crisis describing all the options on how to deal with the current crisis. If you desire the theoretical backing for the claims made in the White Paper, the documents below are the relevant original academic sources available for download. It includes the quantitative study on the stabilization effect of the WIR on the Swiss economy; the peer reviewed paper on the sustainability of complex systems; and an explanation for the collective psychology of financial crashes, extracted from my "Mystery of Money" (unpublished in English).

Author, Independent Futurist, Worldwide syndicated columnist, Advocate for and consultant on equitable ecologically sustainable human development and socially responsible business and investment.

Hazel Henderson is the founder of Ethical Markets Media, LLC and the creator and co-executive Producer of its TV series. She is a world renowned futurist, evolutionary economist, a worldwide syndicated columnist, consultant on sustainable development, and author of The Axiom and Nautilus award-winning book Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy (2006) and eight other books. She co-edited, with Harlan Cleveland and Inge Kaul, The UN: Policy and Financing Alternatives, Elsevier Scientific, UK 1995 (US edition, 1996).

The Social Economy Network Cooperative Basel is a local and regional social movement organization to promote social and ecological sustainability. It issues an alternative currency: The BNB (BonNetzBon = GoodNetworkVoucher)

The website is in mainly in German, but also in French, Spanish and English.

Think tank on local economies and local currencies, as a transition to an economically and ecologically sustainable society. See its newsletter.

A whole section is dedicated to local currencies and in particular to the Berkshares experience, in Massachussetts, atool for community economic revitalization.

TheTransitioner is an international network of researchers, social entrepreneurs, spiritual explorers, visionaries, writers, leaders, scientists, technical and software engineers who work on Collective Intelligence, Wisdom and Consciousness (CIWC).

A whole section is dedicated to the Open Money system. Read the Open Money Manifesto.