Positive Money

Positive Money is a UK organisation based in London and founded in 2010 by Ben Dysonhttp://positivemoney.org/author/ben-dyson/ that campaigns against fractional-reserve banking.http://positivemoney.org/2013/09/can-money-be-converted-to-everlasting-tokens/ They also want to make central banking more democratic http://positivemoney.org/2015/01/occupy-democratise-money/ and abolish quantitative easing.http://positivemoney.org/how-money-works/advanced/how-quantitative-easing-works/
Positive Money are part of the International Movement for Monetary Reform,http://internationalmoneyreform.org/ who have a groups within it who oppose Fractional Reserve Banking from all over the world, including Israel, http://internationalmoneyreform.org/blog/movement/%D7%A9%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%95%D7%99-%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%98%D7%A8%D7%99-monetary-change/ India,http://internationalmoneyreform.org/blog/movement/india-money-reforms/ Australiahttp://internationalmoneyreform.org/blog/movement/fair-money/ and South Africa.http://internationalmoneyreform.org/blog/movement/south-africa-firstsource-money/
Positive Money has had little success in trying to reform Britain's monetary policy, although it has had some small victories:
*It has influenced smaller parties such as the Green Party and Christian Peoples Alliance, who both adopted Positive Money's objective of ending fractional-reserve banking ("banks creating money") in 2015.http://positivemoney.org/2015/04/green-party-manifesto-pledges-monetary-reform-will-championed-green-mps/https://www.greenparty.org.uk/assets/files/manifesto/Green_Party_2015_General_Election_Manifesto.pdfhttp://www.cpaparty.net/cpafullpol.html Between them, they got around 1.5% of the vote in 2017, so don't pin your hopes on them reforming the monetary system anytime soon.
*They got the UK parliament to debate the issue of money creation.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBSlSUIT-KM The debate, called the 'Money Creation & Society' Debate (catchy!) occurred on the 20th November 2014, which sounds impressive, until you note that it was only a backbench debate which only about 30 MPs attended.http://www.stevebaker.info/2014/11/understanding-the-money-creation-and-society-debate/ This sounds more like a failure but Positive Money put a positive spin on it by saying that it was the first debate on how money is produced in over 170 yearshttp://positivemoney.org/2014/11/mps-debated-money-creation/ (which isn't surprising since ability for banks to create money digitally and cause the fractional-reserve banking "problem" has only occurred in the last few decades. How on earth were people during the prior 150 years supposed to debate a problem which didn't exist?).
*It got the chief economist at the Financial Times, Martin Wolf, to support its proposals and even to do videos for them (yes, it's gotten to the point where some top guy at a paper supporting a group is a victory for the group).https://www.ft.com/content/7f000b18-ca44-11e3-bb92-00144feabdc0https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2014/04/25/1836542/martin-wolf-on-funny-money-creation/http://positivemoney.org/2016/12/whats-wrong-financial-system-martin-wolf/
Looking back, maybe calling these small victories was too generous. Minute victories may been a better term.
==Documentaries==
Positive Money have released a documentary called 97% Owned (2012),http://positivemoney.org/videos/97-owned-monetary-reform-documentary/97% Owned IMDb which is about how 97% of our money is controlled by banks and how this has led to financial instability throughout the world.
The producers of this also created another conspiracy theory documentary about fractional-reserve banking called Princes of the Yen (2014),http://positivemoney.org/2014/12/princes-yen-documentary/Princes of the Yen IMDb which Positive Money promoted on their website. The film is about how "Japanese society was transformed to suit the agenda and desire of powerful interest groups, and how citizens were kept entirely in the dark about this" (again, totally not a conspiracy theory).
==Criticism==
Ann Pettifor, a Keynesian economist, an honorary research fellow at the Political Economy Research Centre at City University, London (CITYPERC) and a fellow of the New Economics Foundation, London who also is Chair of the Goldsmiths College Political Economy Research Centre's Advisory Board. She published an online article called 'Why I disagree with Martin Wolf and Positive Money' in which she criticises their proposal to negate fractional-reserve banking:http://www.primeeconomics.org/articles/why-i-disagree-with-martin-wolf-and-positive-money
===Rebuttal===
Positive Money released a rebuttal article on their own website called 'Why we disagree with Ann Pettifor' (I see what you did there) in which they replied:http://positivemoney.org/2014/06/disagree-ann-pettifor/
One thing is certainly established by this rebuttal, Positive Money doesn't fuck around!
==External links==
*Positive Money
==References==
category:Economics
category:British politics