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Thomas H. Greco, Jr.

Thomas H. Greco, Jr. is a preeminent scholar, author, educator, and community economist, who, for more than 40 years, has been working at the leading edge of transformational restructuring. He is widely regarded as a leading authority on monetary theory, moneyless exchange systems, community currencies, financial innovation, and community economic development, and is a sought after speaker internationally. He has traveled widely in Europe, Asia, Australia, and the Americas, lecturing, teaching, and advising. He has been a speaker at numerous conferences and has led many workshops and colloquies in many countries around the world.

He is dedicated to transcending the interest-based political debt money system and advises community and business groups on how they can create honest “home-grown” means of payment (liquidity) that can empower small business, provide meaningful employment, and shift control back to local communities.

Distinctive features of his work—a personal manifesto

Having immersed myself for more than 40 years in the study of money, banking, finance, networking, innovation, and the dynamics of power, I have attained a unique body of knowledge and skills that can be of value in guiding the next “post-industrial” wave of civilization. Some of the unique features of my work that make it stand out in contract to conventional economics and social engineering are the following:

1. My interest and study of history and international relations has aided my comprehension of the geopolitical BIG PICTURE in which the centralized control of money, banking, and finance enables a small global elite group to acquire unprecedented power and wealth, and to dominate economics, politics and virtually every aspect of society.
2. Recognition of the need to segregate the various functions which money is said to serve, namely, medium of exchange, measure of value, and store of value. (See Money and Debt: a Solution to the Global Crisis). Recognition that the essence of money is credit and its sole purpose is to facilitate the exchange of value in the market; that a measure of value must be based on some real commodity or group of commodities; and that the savings or store of value function is achieved, not by storing money, but by investing it in either real assets or long term financial claims.
3. Recognition that almost all political money is created by banks making “loans,” and that the interest/usury that is charged on those “loans” causes a debt-growth imperative which is the DRIVER of artificial economic growth that now threatens civilization and the very existence of life on this finite planet. This system is also the driver of increasing disparities of wealth and power that is destroying what little remains of democratic government and is moving the world toward a fascist neo-feudal world order.
4. Recognition that every political currency is supported by the collective credit of the people, that we have allowed the credit commons to be privatized and monopolized to empower and enrich the few at the expense of the many.
5. My urgent call for reclaiming the credit commons through
- (a) the issuance of private currencies by trusted producers of real value who spend it into circulation, and
- (b) the organization of small local credit clearing exchanges that lessen dependence upon conventional money (political currencies) and bank borrowing, and create interest-free local exchange media (liquidity) based on local production.
6. My vision of an open and transparent global system of exchange in which credit is locally controlled within small circles of users who are personally known to one another, but which are networked together in a way that enables locally-based credits to be globally useful as payment media.
7. My consequent call for an independent measure of value and unit of account that is separate and distinct from any established unit of political currency or payment medium, i.e., a pricing unit that is defined in terms of some physical commodity or bundle of commodities that are actively traded in the market. (See Money and Debt: a Solution to the Global Crisis).
8. My call for an abandonment of interest-bearing debt as a general means of finance and the use of shared equity or shared revenue models instead.
9. My expertise in the design and implementation of innovative systems for exchanging value and financing economic activity.
10. My call for an end of taxation on labor, as well as sales or consumption taxes on basic necessities, and a shift of taxation to privileges, like the limited liability privilege of corporations and the private use and exploitation of Earth’s resources, airwaves, and other aspects of “the commons.” (See http://circinfo.wordpress.com/).
11. My call for truly democratic decentralized governing structures that vest political power in the hands of the people and communities that allocate resources upward as needed.

He is the author of numerous books and articles. His most recent book, The End of Money and the Future of Civilization (Chelsea Green, 2009), is both descriptive of the essence of money and its historical evolution, and prescriptive of actions that can be taken by communities, businesses, and governments to enhance economic stability and vitality through liberation of credit and the exchange process. That book is currently being revised and extensively rewritten, and each chapter is being published online. The first fourteen chapters can be freely accessed at: The new 2024 edition of The End of Money and the Future of Civilization. Additional chapters can be accessed there as they are completed.

His previous books on complementary currencies and exchange systems are Money: Understanding and Creating Alternatives to Legal Tender (Chelsea Green, 2001) and New Money for Healthy Communities (1994), which describe voluntary alternatives to conventional money that empower communities and reward people fairly. His first book, Money and Debt: A Solution to the Global Crisis (1990) explained the dysfunctional nature of conventional political money, outlined the principles upon which a more ideal money system can be structured, and proposed a plan for solving the global debt crisis and making the transition to an interest-free, harmonious economic and financial world order.

He has written for a wide range of journals including, the Internet Journal of Community Currency Research, Alternet, Common Dreams, Reality Sandwich, The Whole Earth Review, World Business Academy Perspectives, At Work, Earth Island Journal, The Catholic Worker, The Permaculture Activist, Permaculture Drylands Journal, Green Revolution, Fourth World Review, and others.

Here are just a few highlights of his past activities. Many more presentations and interviews have been recorded and can be found on his website, https://beyondmoney.net

2024 Presentation at the RAMICS congress.
2023: Alternative Currencies & Solar Dollars presented to The Sustainability Laboratory.
2022 Presentation at the RAMICS 6 Congress: Private and Complementary Currency Systems: Purposes, Principles, Practices, and Performance.
2021-11 Transcending the present political money system–the urgent need and the way to do it. University of Hertfordshire.
2021-05&06 Webinar series: Our Money System – What’s Wrong with it and How to Fix it.
2017: Disruptive Technologies Making Money Obsolete. Presented at the International Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
October 2016: Presentations at the International Forum on Inclusive Wealth and the Institute for Advanced Islamic Studies in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. A World Without Money and Interest: A pathway toward social justice and economic equity.
June 2016 and 2017: Conducted a one week short course in Exchange and Finance for the New Economy at the Kalikalos Holistic Summer School in Greece.
2015 summer tour in Europe: presentations and workshops at Kalikalos Holistic Summer School in Greece, at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, and at Queens University, Belfast, UK.
October 2014: The Evolution of Money and its Potential to Improve Humanity, presentation at the Institute for Noetic Sciences in Petaluma, CA.
2013: presentations at the Second International Conference on Complementary Currency Systems in The Hague, Netherlands;
April 2012: A New Paradigm in Exchange and Finance: The pathway to peace, justice, freedom, and a dignified life for all. Presentation at the Public Banking Institute conference, Philadelphia.
2011: Financial Planning in the Emerging Butterfly Economy. Presentation to Financial Planning Association Retreat in Florida;
2009: Speaker at the Economics of Peace Conference in California.
2007: Speaker the Gold Dinar Conference in Malaysia
2006: Speaker at the Knowledge, Business and Consciousness conference held at the international community of Auroville, India
He has spoken at four annual conventions of the International Reciprocal Trade Association (IRTA), the trade association for the commercial “barter” industry (2006, 2009, 2013, and 2018).

Mr. Greco holds an MBA (Business Administration) from the University of Rochester and a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Villanova University. He spent a year in residence doing doctoral study in Management, and Instructional Technology at Syracuse University. His work experience includes 5 years as an aerospace engineer and 14 years in academia where he held a tenured faculty position at Rochester Institute of Technology. His expertise includes monetary theory, complementary currency and exchange systems, computer applications, statistics and survey research.

He maintains an active correspondence and major web presence. Many of his recorded presentations, interviews, and writings are available on his websites Beyond Money. He can be reached at thgreco@mindspring.com

Metadata

Econaut: Thomas H. Greco, Jr.

AlphabeticalOrder: Greco, Jr., Thomas H.

Investigatory Question: Why do we have perpetual conflicts when we could have a world of fellowship and abundance - hell rather than heaven on Earth?