by Theresa Carter. What happens if the money in your pockets is worthless overnight? The future of the Euro is not looking too bright, nor is our relationship with it. Whether it crashes, we leave it or we are asked to leave – it is something worth preparing for.

For Adam Smith, “Goods can serve many other purposes besides purchasing money, but money can serve no other purpose besides purchasing goods.” Banks and financial traders have other ideas. They are now running a parallel economy in which money makes money out of money. The volume of this trade is ten times the volume of trade in goods and services, and traders extract money that other mortals can’t possibly aspire to. No wonder it causes havoc.

By Warren Mosler and Philip Pilkington.  The Eurozone has certainly seen better days. The mess is only getting messier. Leaked documents from within the Troika show the austerity programs to be an abject failure and yet European officials continue to consider them the only game in town. So, we contend that the periphery governments should have a credible exit strategy on hand and it is to this that we now turn.

The financial world has out-stripped the real world. Our current economic crisis is too good an opportunity to miss since it allows radical action to be taken.

Feasta member Brian Davey has produced several posters for use at Occupy camps which can be downloaded for free here. They make use of creative graphics in order to explore the nature of the current financial crisis, the energy and banking crises, financial predation, and the connection between the Occupy movements and climate change.

The Irish economy needs stimulus and the most effective way to do this is to implement an immediate jobs program backed by newly issued, low-yield tax-backed Jobs Bonds. This will provide the financing necessary for such a program without adding to Ireland’s already substantial interest burden. [...]

by Richard Douthwaite. In a widely-circulated article in September 2011, Chris Skrebowski, who runs a peak oil consulting firm and was editor of the Petroleum Review for eleven years until 2008, argued that there are two forms of oil peak. One is, or will be, caused directly by depletion – the oil is no longer in the ground in sufficient quantities for producers to be able to maintain production. The other is the economic oil peak, which he says is the “price at which oil becomes unaffordable to consume and therefore to produce.” Is this assessment realistic?

by Graham Barnes. The debt we accumulate as individuals, companies and governments is instrumental in depleting the planet and deepening the rich-poor divide.
This ‘value-led’ critique is powerful and compelling to those wishing to listen, but it is not enough, of itself, to procure any meaningful systemic/ structural change in the monetary regime. We need to communicate widely about the side-effects of debt-based money, and to help people to imagine non-debt based alternatives.

The Occupy movement needs some clear, simple ideas to champion. Debt cancellation is a clear, simple idea – but how can it be done in a way that is not chaotic and is fair to all, eg to the people who were never in debt anyway? And can it help us to start to work on our “ecological debts” too?

In this article Brian Davey explains the rationale for setting up a group called “Cafe Economique” in Nottingham. Following a similar group in Leeds a Nottingham group has been set up, one of whose aims is to give non-economists the confidence to participate in economic discussions. It is high time that non-economists feel able to challenge the baloney that most economists preach and are armed with the ideas that will allow them to do so. In this piece, Brian attacks the status claim that economics makes when it describes itself as a “social science”.

Recently I had a chat with one of the interns at a local biodynamic farm who explained to me that the farm is currently undergoing a change of ownership. What he told me about the future plans for the farm reminded me of some of the investment models described elsewhere on this site, so I thought I’d write a few words about it. [...]

Feasta has made a submission to the consultation on the Rio +20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development which you can download below.

Feasta Consultation on Rio +20

Feasta has been exploring the potential for parallel currencies for some time, largely through the Liquidity Network project which is aimed at boosting local economies at a time when euros are scarce. Now a related idea is gaining traction at a national level in the form of a Parallel Punt. This surprisingly conservative option was discussed at Feasta’s Autumn Conference held in Dublin on 22nd/ 23rd September. In this preview Graham Barnes set the scene for what could be a gamechanging development.