Michelle LaBrosse Blogs

So, if our Project Managers feel by about 33% that the world economy is the biggest issue that we should be creating projects to resolve, just what are those problems we need to resolve? Just what is the basis of the problems of the world economy? It seems we certainly have enough things to work on that would keep all of us very well employed for years with infrastructure, global warming, energy self-sufficiency, poverty, and hunger. And if we focused our attention on solving problems in those domains, we’d actually fix the problems with the world economy.

The film clip from the blog post below – http://tinyurl.com/27jppm – shows that the problem is actually with our entire monetary management system. Banks make money so they can create the new loans they issue based on outstanding loans they have out.   There are two types of money – Central Bank Money (real money) and Commercial Bank Money (money created by the Fractional Reserve Laws). Our whole system works as long as we are willing to continue financing all our expansion. The issue is becoming that our expansion (the issues with global warming, and natural resource depletion), is impacting our ability to continue expanding and continuing this system. For more information, review the films references.

The film poses four questions:

1. Why do governments choose to borrow money from private banks at interest when goverment could create all the interest-free money it needs, itself?

2. Why create money as debt at all? Why do we even have this system where we are giving new loans based on the value of the loans outstanding? Why not create money that circulates permanently?

3. How can a money system dependent on perpetually accelerating growth be used to build a sustainable economy?

4. What specifically needs to be changed to create a sustainable economy?

A system that is built up based on the ability of an individual or a business to develop and grow if and only if they can get financing through debt is bound at some point in time to fail. When the powers that be cease to be willing to fund the individuals or the businesses money to stay afloat, they need to adopt other practices.

I have the good fortune to live in a small rural town in Alaska part of the year. Many people up here live a self-sufficient lifestyle. They have very minimal financial needs and are able to create a fantastic lifestyle with minimal to no support from the local bank. And most of these folks don’t need to horde salmon either with subsistence permits (see blog post from yesterday). The majority of people I know do not have a mortgage on their homes, don’t carry credit cards, and many have spent years becoming exquisite craftsman in their trades. Some even have extensive businesses where they export their products out if the area.

If you are scared by the current worldwide economic woes – I recommend you become smart, not scared. We all have four sources of capital to leverage to generate our own prosperity (just like my neighbors in Alaska). Those sources of capital are – social, knowledge, skills, and operating infrastructure. We all have access to these sources of capital and hold the keys to develop and grow those. Work on eliminating your dependency on debt to achieve your goals. I went this route over 8 years ago and I have achieved a level of success most people only dream of. You can do it as well. You don’t need to live in slavery to the banks. If you’d like more information or encouragement on doing this yourself, feel free to comment.

Like I say to my children, if it stops working, stop doing it. Our reliance on credit to capitalize our development and growth is no longer working. Time to stop doing it. Time to adopt more effective practices. Others are already doing it and living by practices that create a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable existence.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 10th, 2008 at 4:41 pm and is filed under Tips for Project Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.