Local and Interest-Free Currencies,
Social Credit and Microcredit

This page of links to resources on microcredit systems, local and interest-free currencies is one of a number of pages on Money - Past, Present and Future maintained by Roy Davies.

Microcredit and Credit Unions

• The Virtual Library on Microcredit, formerly known as the Informal Credit Home Page, this is an excellent source of information on the subject of credit for low-income households. It is international in its coverage.

• Consultative Group to Assist the Poorest A major source of information on microfinance. The website includes the Microfinance Gateway which consists of thousands of documents, abstracts, and case studies, etc.

• Muhammad Yunus Founder and Managing Director, Grameen Bank The fundamental principle behind the Grameen Bank is Yunus' firm belief that credit is a human right.

• Grameen Home Page From here you can find not only a link to the Grameen Bank but also other Grameen organisations.

• Banker to the Poor : Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty by Muhammad Yunus and Alan Jolis. The autobiography of the founder of Grameen Bank and an account of the history of the bank and of the microcredit movement.

• The Credit Union Home Page Information on the philosophy, history and present-day services of credit unions.

General Resources on Local and Interest-Free Currencies and other Alternative Money Systems

• New Money Systems and Financial Innovations. A series of articles from the Global Ideas Bank maintained by the Institute for Social Inventions.

• Alternative Money Systems The New Civilization Network Alternative Money System team was created to collect information on what schemes already exist, to discuss the prospects of doing away with money systems and using a resource-based system instead, and ways of financing new civilization projects, implementing experimental schemes.

• New Money for Healthy Communities by Thomas H. Greco, Jr. The pinnacle of power in today's world is the power to issue money. Can that power can be democratized and focused in a direction which gives social and ecological concerns top priority? The author is the director of the Community Information Resource Center.

• Complementary Community Currency Systems and Local Exchange Networks. A good source of information on various complementary currencies. It includes the two items below.

  • Community Currencies: A New Tool for the 21st Century by Bernard A. Lietaer.

  • Beyond Greed and Scarcity Early drafts of the first few chapters of a book by Bernard Lietaer on re-thinking money. Readers can participate in an online conference at that site and add their own views!

• Richard Douthwaite's Short Circuit This book has four major sections. The first deals with techniques that communities can use to establish an independent supply of money. The LETS system is one, although other, more versatile systems are available. The second section is about types of local banking which enable a district's interest rates and credit terms to differ from those in the world economy. And the third and fourth sections deal with: how energy and food can be produced on a community basis.

• Christian Council for Monetary Justice The CCMJ claims that existing system impedes the development, production and distribution of wealth, and that monopoly of credit issuance held by the banking system is indefensible.

• Sabine Kurjo McNeill - Green Money A website devoted to alternative currency systems, maintained by the pioneer of LETS in London.

• Funny Money The website of David Boyle, author of Funny Money, a book about unconventional currencies published by HarperCollins.

• The Difference Between Money and Real Wealth : Creating Community Currencies by Carol Brouillet, a Co-Founder of the International Media Project

• The Potential of Local Currency by Susan Meeker-Lowry An article from ZMagazine July/August 1995.

• "Newmoney" a mailing list for the discussion of unconventional monetary systems. German is the language of the majority of the messages but there are some in English too.

• Materialien zur Zinsproblematik Articles on monetary theory, mainly in German but there is a long one in English: The How and Why of a New Monetary System by Dr. Erhard Glötzl This article discusses the meaning of money and why interest is an important cause of increasing economic, ecological and social problems in our society.

• The E. F. Schumacher Society has sponsored several experiments making use of local scrip or currency. Details of these and its other activities can be found via its home page.

• Community Currency in Asia, Africa and Latin America maintained by Stephen DeMeulenaere.

• A Snapshot of Community Currency Systems in Europe and North America Contains a lot more information than implied by the modest use of the word "snapshot."

• Hans-Joachim Werner's Home Page has a lot of information in German about the "Free Economy Movement" from Silvio Gesell to LETS. There is a file of addresses of LETS organisations in different countries and a collection of links to related sources of information.

• The Internet and the Future of Money An article by Howard Rheingold who believes that the global communications network has a role to play in the development of local currencies.

• Monetary Reform Magazine A Canadian magazine advocating interest-free money. It has articles on topics of Canadian and international concern.

• International Journal of Community Currency Research The IJCCR aims to fill the gap between those involved in community currencies and those who do research on them. Community currencies are broadly defined to include LETS, (Ithaca) Hours, Business Trade Exchanges (BTEs or Business Barter), time dollars and other similar currencies which seek to serve specific, often localised, communities. The full text of the articles is available in addition to abstracts. There is an Australian mirror site of the IJCCR which might be faster for some users.

LETS (Local Employment Trading Systems)

• LETSystems Home Page. LETS are a type of informal credit market based on local currencies. This homepage is a source of information on LETS in Manchester and around the world. Particularly worth noting is the document Frequently Asked Questions about LETSystems.

• Sidonie Seron's Thesis on LETS A good introduction to the subject.

• Project LETS List aims to identify every LETSystem in the world.

• John "The Engineer" Turmel The home page of the Guinness World Record holding politician whose campaigns for LETS have attracted attention in many countries, not just his native Canada. In addition to some of Turmel's own articles and details of his campaigns the site also has information about local currencies in various countries. Among the material at this site is LETS Engineering Mathematics, a theoretical analysis of money creation by the conventional banking system and by LETS.

• Bytesringar Information about LETS in Swedish. It contains a list of all known LETS systems in the Nordic countries.

• Salford University LETS System

• LETS Connect, an online magazine for the UK LETS community.

• LETS in France This web site in French, English and Spanish lists all French LETS systems.

• Talent Home page of the Swiss experiment inspired by the theories of Silvio Gesell.

• Systemfehler.de The English-language pages of a German website devoted to promoting the ideas of Silvio Gesell and similar thinkers.

• LETS in Australia A page of links.

• SALETS, South Australia's LETSystem and Multi LETS Register In addition to local information and explanations of how LETS works there are links to other relevant sources.

• Freemantle, Western Australia LETS

• Edmonton LETS

• Econ-lets archives and other files of a Mailbase mailing list on LETS.

• LETStalk An interactive newsletter for the UK and Europe.

• ESRC LETS Project Details of research at Queen Mary and Westfield College, the University of Bristol and the University of Leicester evaluating LETS as a means of tackling social exclusion and cohesion.

• The Environmental Implications of LETSystems a thesis by Simon Williams.

• Gill Seyfang's Homepage. Gill is undertaking research on LETS for a Ph.D. at Leeds Metropolitan University,UK. Her home page contains a link to an extract from her M.Sc. thesis at the University of East Anglia, UK.

Other Local Currencies

• WIR Economic Circle Cooperative - Origins and Ideology of the Wirtschaftsring The history of a system of exchange based on interest-free credits founded in Switzerland during the Depression of the 1930s.

• Ithaca Money Home Page Ithaca, a town in New York State, has its own printed banknotes. The people behind the plan for the local currency say "while dollars make us increasingly dependent on multinational corporations and bankers, HOURS reinforce community trading and expand commerce which is more accountable to our concern for ecology and social justice."

• Fair Shares A pilot project in the UK modelled on work of the Time Dollar Institute in the USA.

• Depreciating community-owned currencies by David Weston. In the early 1930s the small town of Worgl in the Austrian Tyrol, suffering like every other town in Europe and America from the Great Depression, took the unlikely step of issuing its own currency.

• Toronto Dollar Community minded citizens can exchange their Canadian dollars for an equal amount of Toronto Dollars which can be spent at participating businesses. If these businesses choose to cash in their Toronto Dollars, they will donate 10% for community projects such as employment creation and care for those most in need.

• Wooden Money Brief information on the history of wooden money or "wooden nickels" originally issued in the state of Washington in 1932 following the failure of the Citizens Bank of Tenino the previous year.

Other Interest-Free or Very Low Interest Currency Proposals

• Social Credit School of Studies. Information about the political, economic, and philosophical principles enunciated by C.H. Douglas on Social Credit.

• Thirst for Justice: the Money Myth Exploded A fable to expound the ideas of social credit.

• A Strategy for a Convertible Currency by Bernard A. Lietaer. A paper proposing a new currency for countries which have no convertible currency now and suffer from unemployment, inflation, and ecological degradation.

• The Theories of Silvio Gesell This site contains material in German and English. Gesell wanted the state to issue money that, like capital assets, depreciated. The idea was to ensure that money was kept in circulation, rather than being saved.

• Interest and inflation free money by Margrit Kennedy. Kennedy, like Silvio Gesell, proposed that instead of earning interest people would pay a small fee if they kept money out of circulation. Some of her work is also available in German.

• HOLIS.ORG Philosophical writings on money and other subjects (in German)

• Complementary Money System The Economic Means to Freedom -- Part V by Frederick Mann. A plan roughly based on the ideas of E.C. Riegel.

• Jubilee 2000 A campaign to cancel the debts of the world's poorest nations inspired by the Old Testament concept of a of a jubilee year whereby each fifty years saw all debts, especially those related to land occupancy and slavery, released.

• Global Resource Bank What is the value of the world's ecosystem? The Global Resource Bank has the ambition of solving global environmental and monetary problems.

• Nordiska Sparlån An interest-free financial institution based in Sweden. The pages are all in Swedish.

• JAK Medlemsbank JAK Members Bank (the name JAK is an acronym - Jord, Arbete och Kapital - Swedish for Land, Labour and Capital, the factors of production in traditional political economy) is an organisation for economic development without exploiting mankind or nature. The pages are all in Swedish. Savers with JAK do not get paid interest on their deposits but they do get "saving points" without which it is not possible to get loans from JAK. Borrowers get charged a fee to cover administrative expenses, normally equivalent to between 2 and 5 interest depending on the period of the loan. The loans are typically for house purchases and such like.

• JAK (Denmark). Information about the activities of JAK institutions in Denmark. The website also features an online magazine or newsletter with brief items on economic, social or environmental topics. All the web pages are in Danish.

• Regnbuekassen Offers cheap loans for ecological projects. The pages are all in Danish.

• Oikos An an ecclesiastically-inspired Danish bank, whose aim it was to grant low-interest loans to projects in the third world. Some of the web pages are in English.

• High Interest Rates and the Failure of Banking by Jonathan Larson. The author argues that compound interest can never, ever be justified and that rates of simple interest should be slightly less than the growth in GNP plus inflation. This article is a chapter from the book Elegant Technology.

Articles on Usury

• Against Those Who Practice Usury by Gregory of Nyssa (c.335-c.394)

• Introduction by Brother Casimir McCambley to Gregory on Usury

• Of Usury by Francis Bacon The full text of Bacon's famous essay.

• On Usury and Dishonest Profit: Vix Pervenit Encyclical of Pope Benedict XIV promulgated on November 1, 1745.

• From Leviticus To Political Economy Chapter XIX of The Warfare Of Science With Theology by Andrew Dickson White (1832-1918), published 1896. "Among questions on which the supporters of right reason in political and social science have only conquered theological opposition after centuries of war, is the taking of interest on loans. In hardly any struggle has rigid adherence to the letter of our sacred books been more prolonged and injurious."

• A Brief History of Interest by Stephen Zarlenga.

• The Abolitionist Party of Canada stands for the abolition of interest and the replacement of the existing monetary system by one based on the use of LETS at the national and international levels as well as the local level.

• Interest (Riba`) by A Student of Darul-Uloom, Bury, U.K.

• Riba (Usury and Interest) According to Quran and Sunnah

• IBF NET : The Islamic Banking and Finance Network A global network of students, researchers, bankers and finance professionals interested in the Islamic approach to finance.

Other Relevant Links

• Resources for Sustainable Living A collection of links maintained by the Center for a New American Dream

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Roy Davies - last updated 20 June 2000
E-mail Roy.Davies@exeter.ac.uk