Why I don’t love Bartercard any more

Isn’t it a pity when great ideas are implemented in ways that are not so great?

Well, Wayne Sharpe, the founder of Bartercard, told me clearly why he did it: he saw a commercial opportunity. That’s great, for Bartercard could be a social business in the way that Nobel Peace Prize winner Prof. Dr. Muhammad Yunus thinks the future of capitalism could be influenced by people like you and me – despite the “establishment of institutions and governments” that are notoriously slow and ineffective.

Now he writes: … in simple terms we have been unable to use the event really.. our attempts to try to gain press or credibility from this have not really been effectual, as frankly our demographic target market does not fit into the higher level agenda.

Part of the issues are really that business is in fact dependant on the current economy and currency- hence we promote ourselves as an ‘alongside’ addition – NOT an alternative. Our systems are designed to mirror those used because that what business wants- ease of use and credibility.

So frankly we have to be cautiously aligned with this type of program, and if it becomes a platform for anarchy then its not our place to be.

The reason we get little or no press is this is not a viable solution.. it seems like the proposal I made never got out of the room in fact. so no matter how much we want to change things really too many people have an agenda that in their own interests… I have failed more than once and lost everything- and having started with nothing I have no sympathy for anyone unless they are genuinely done over. Real life and history tell us only the strong survive.. and right now the weak are noisy but nothing changes.
Some of the facts and philosophies I agree with- but we have a business to run that depends on credibility and respect from business owners, and right now we need PR that tells them how we can help THEM top survive.
I am not sure our strategic objectives align completely really.

So a loose alliance with the right links is what’s needed
James I feel its best if you allow me and Tim to direct our PR – and in particular the ‘relationship’ with Sabine from here on in.

Best regards

WAYNE SHARPE
EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN & FOUNDER
Bartercard Group of Companies

Please remember:

1. I “met” Wayne Sharpe thanks to the web where I read that he is estimated to have assets in excess of £30m
2. I therefore had thought that Bartercard could “sponsor” our non-funded voluntary Forum activities to raise them to higher levels
3. In my enthusiasm I created not only this blog (currently 682 views), but also gave Wayne the platform at our meeting, even though I had never met him
4. At the meeting, photographs were taken that I’ve been promised but never seen.
5. For the meeting I had recommended to make to “display pop-ups”: one featuring the Forum for Stable Currencies and one saying “sponsored by Bartercard”.
6. As you can read above, “sponsoring” to Wayne Sharpe means “using”.
7. In a lunch conversation with Robert Cookson from the FT, Wayne made it clear that he has no political goal either and he effectively asked me to “use” Governmental contacts to promote Bartercard.
8. After requests from James (Farmer), I deleted a previous entry about my misgivings with Bartercard from this blog.

Fortunately, I have an inner voice that tells me what is worth doing.

Challenging the Recession – after the event

Thanks to Brad Meyer from Collaboration, we can offer video recordings of the event before lunch here.

After lunch, a number of us met in Room 14 – the Gladstone Room – where the most extraordinary cross-connections became apparent: between law firms and banks, between victims an ‘co-victims’. The realisation that ‘victims’ are NOT alone and thus not on their own seems to have been very healing in itself.

We plan to follow on with more supportive MPs in June.

Thanks to CompleteMediaGroup, the event was bigger and better, since we had over 20 journalists attending.

CompleteMedia wanted to “create the debate” for their client Bartercard. Was that achieved? Only time will tell…

Meanwhile, Austin Mitchell’s Early Day Motion Enforcement of Bank of England Act 1694 is gathering signatures. Will you WriteToYourMP and ask him / her to sign?

The future of finance

JOINT PRESS RELEASE from CompleteMediaGroup and the Forum for Stable Currencies:

Sterling Cash burning into smoke

At 11am on Thursday 23rd April in the House of Commons Grand Committee Room, expert speakers will create the debate on financial reform at the Forum for Stable Currencies.

Expert speakers will be advocating economic democracy through freedom from National Debt. They will address the monetary problems connected with the banking crisis and global recession, discuss solutions to the problems and put together a framework for change. The speakers are leaders in the field and include Lord Sudeley, Austin Mitchell MP, Derek Wyatt MP, Michael Grimsdale ACIB (Associate of the Chartered Institute of Bankers), Abdallah Homouda, political scientist, respected journalist and TV commentator.

The event is sponsored by Bartercard, the world’s largest trade exchange. Bartercard enables account-holding businesses to exchange goods and services with each other, saving valuable cash, without having to engage in a direct swap. Bartercard has created a new form of stable currency; the trade pound, which offers one solution to the economic crisis because it allows businesses to trade and grow without the need for cash or credit from banks. This is increasingly important as private banks have replaced money with financial ‘products’ and ‘instruments’ as a medium of exchange; replacing prudence with profits by accumulating toxic assets, packaging unsustainable debts and selling them on to unsuspecting buyers. As a result the banks are suspicious and unwilling to lend or trade with each other.

Please email sabine@3d-metrics.com if you want to attend.

Notes to editor

Cash (notes and coins) and credit make up the money supply. After the Second World War, 53% of the UK money supply was in the form of credit (debt) issued by banks at interest. Now that figure stands at 97%. By making more and more money from credit (or debt) the financial economy is more and more disconnected from the real economy.

This is inherently unstable as the money necessary to pay for interest on credit is simply not there. That means virtually everybody is borrowing at interest to pay off interest as well as capital. The mathematics of compounding interest on interest results in a cycle of boom and bust. Because the money supply being is controlled by central banks, successive UK governments have tended to increase the ‘National Debt’ to fund growth or ‘fiscal stimulus’ packages, rather than make cut backs to repay the debt (unpopular with voters) or print money themselves. [See the Forum’s petition Stop the Cash Crumble to Equalize the Credit Crunch, asking the Treasury Select Committee to organize an inquiry into the money supply. More on http://tinyurl.com/666rwd]

Financial institutions are increasingly using legal enforcement to call in loans, cause bankruptcies, home repossessions, unnecessary litigation and even suicides. Through the national debt they also exploit and constrain the state’s budget, thus limiting political freedom.

The dubious benefits of unfettered market forces and a Western capitalist ideology have faced no serious opposition since Glasnost (openness) and Perestroika (restructuring) effectively brought an end to communism in the former Soviet Union. Even communist China has embraced capitalism; transforming its economy and becoming a global super-power in the process. It seems the world has made a collective decision to accept the inevitable economic losers as well as winners; deregulate and let the so-called free market work its magic… but now the market’s spell is well and truly broken together with the global economy.

At the recent G20 summit in London, the governments of the twenty most powerful nations on Earth decided to throw over $1 trillion at the ailing financial system. Along with previous commitments, this will take the total to over $5 trillion spent on propping up some of the biggest of those banks, institutions and financiers which have failed us so spectacularly.

Yet, instead of trying to paper over the deep cracks in the global financial system, we should aim to rebuild a more democratic and fairer global economy. Fresh thinking and a modern-day Glasnost (openness) and Perestroika (restructuring) are required for a capitalist world. Ushering in a second decade of meetings, the Forum for Stable Currencies will provide the platform for key decision makers to discuss the hows and whys of creating a better future.

US communities print own currencies to keep cash flowing

This article in USA TODAY summarizes nicely how people are helping themselves.

How bad does it have to get in Britain, one wonders… But LetsLink UK is inundated with requests for help!

Challenging the Recession: Programme

Challenging the Recession – Can we change the Economy? Yes, we can!

Thursday, April 23, 2009, 11am – House of Commons
Grand Committee Room

After 10 years of Forum meetings with topics ranging from what has been contributing to the CAUSES of monetary problems to the EFFECTS of these problems on financial levels in the regulatory environment, this one addresses current problems and suggested solutions, at whatever level of influence we may have. Our panel of speakers will be open for dialogue, so that constituents won’t feel isolated and powerless:

Lord Sudeley, co-founder of the Forum at the House of Lords in 1998: after his great-grandfather was made bankrupt by Lloyds Bank in 1893 and his grandmother’s will was executed to the detriment of the heirs, Lord Sudeley who will highlight how grouping complaints changed the law in the 15^th century. His Wikipedia entry is on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_Hanbury-Tracy,_7th_Baron_Sudeley

Austin Mitchell MP for Grimsby, Chairman of the Forum since 2005, received the Attwood Award in 2008 for his constant commitment to monetary reform during his time as MP, not Old Labour but positive geriatric, as he writes on his blog on http://www.austinmitchell.org.uk.

Derek Wyatt MP for Sittingbourne & Sheppey, was a Labour councillor for Archway in North London before being elected in 1997. In 2004, Derek was voted one of the top 100 internet visionaries, and his website http://derekwyatt.co.uk has won three international awards. He formed the All Party Internet Group in 1997, and merged three IT Groups into the All Party Communications Group.

Michael Grimsdale ACIB, Associate of the Chartered Institute of Bankers, was in banking for 26 years with Lloyds and TSB, leaving as a manager in 1993. He now works freelance as a business advisor and consultant, visiting accountants, solicitors and banks on behalf of his clients. In this process, he has encountered so many wrong-doings that he wants to create the Foundation for Change to guarantee access to lawyers for people who are refused legal aid and have no funds left to fight their cases.

Abdallah Homouda is a political scientist who has been working in Britain and Egypt as a highly respected journalist and TV commentator. He has attended many Forum meetings and is particularly interested in attempts to introduce the merits of Islamic economics within the efforts to reform Western capitalism.

The meeting will be recorded on video, and participation will be on a first come, first serve basis. The meeting is sponsored by Bartercard and will be facilitated by the organiser Sabine K McNeill who was a software diagnostician at CERN where the web was born, before coming to London in 1981. As an experienced event organiser and passionate networker, she started the first LETS (Local Exchange Trading System) in London which taught her about the principles and governance of the issuing of currency. Since 1996 she developed innovative software methods and set up her company 3D Metrics.

Right after Budget Day, the audience will be composed from a number of contact lists, including the Singapore Business Group and the signatories of the Forum’s online petitions:

Stop the Cash Crumble to Equalize the Credit Crunch

and Financial Fairness for Voters and Taxpayers, please!

Please email if you want to attend.

With the Singapore Business Group

Last night I was given a great welcome at the meeting of the Singapore Business Group which was hosted by Stephenson Harwood, a law firm that has a number of offices in Asia.

While outlining the problems of the Global Financial Crisis, I presented Bartercard as the ‘private business solution’.

Here are the 13 slides.

One Italian business man who attended has already signed our online petition!

Challenging the Recession

Can we Change the Economy? Yes, we Can!

This is the title of the event that we’re preparing for end of April at the House of Commons.

In preparation, I gave a presentation for the Open Discussion Society at Birkbeck College and will soon talk about the same subject to the Singapore Business Club: Challenging the Recession

Conrad Taylor recorded both audio and video.

Why I Love Bartercard

Let me count the ways:

1. As an enterprise, Bartercard started in Australia which to my German / Slavic mindset promises to come from a reasonably sound money culture. Having established bank accounts in five different countries in my life, I am aware of significant differences between emotional attitudes towards money.
2. As a company, Bartercard has been around since 1991 and it has visibly improved substantially, since I last visited their offices some 5-6 years ago.
3. “Trade pounds” is the right name for the right purpose as the UK  “barter currency”.
4. Bartercard’s computer system is as comprehensive as possible and has clearly grown ‘from experience’.
5. Bartercard’s ‘means of payment’ are excellent, too: a credit card, on-line facilities, vouchers and even transfers from mobile phone to mobile phone!
6. Bartercard means usury-free banking, ethical accounting and has the potential of a social business in the definition of Nobel Peace prize winner Muhammad Yunus: non-loss, non-dividend (the franchise model is apparently under discussion) and for the benefit (rather than the exploitation) of its member clients.
7. One of the Bartercard directors has had his own experience of being overcharged by Lloyds. So he knows how important it is to create ethical alternatives to what has been described as being ‘criminogenic’: a legal privilege ruled by self-regulation…

From our LETS experience, we could contribute the ‘passbook’ as an additional means of payment: the balance is open for every trader to see, and counter signatures demonstrate the ‘mutual credit’ principle, on which complementary currencies are based.

The passbook comes from the former DDR and is designed for individuals and senior citizens who grew up before Internet times or still like pen and paper!

The Usury-Free Banking Act Law, 1983

This act has been formulated in the Islamic Republic of Iran and can be found here. Some of the titles of the articles and chapters read as follows:

1. Objectives of the banking system
2. Functions of the banking system
3. Mobilization of Monetary Resources
4. Banking Facilities

What a model!

Welcome to Usury-Free Banking with Stable Currencies!

Welcome to my latest blog that promotes LETS as community building activities, and BarterCard as a social business in the way that Nobel Peace prize winner Muhammad Yunus has defined it: operating without loss, without dividends and for the greater good.

The blog informs about money and currencies as solutions to the banking crisis.

And it promotes:

• banking that is usury-free rather than thrives on legitimising usury
• accounting that is ethical and in the public interest or at least in the interest of the members of an organisation and clients of a business
• enterprises that are social, i.e. good for society and our environment.

In the Spirit of the Forum for Stable Currencies, your most passionate blogger, promoter and mathematician Sabine K McNeill.