Bibliography – Introductory

Bjerg, Ole. 2016. “Where does money come from?” TEDxCopenhagen. 24 May 2016. Video file.

“Ole Bjerg believes that we have handed a vital societal power — money creation — to the financial sectors, and that this leads to instability, inequalities and a concentration of power outside democratic institutions. Facing this gloomy situation, he highlights the solution: a sovereign money system”.

Prof. Bjerg teaches management and philosophy in Denmark and was the founder of the Danish monetary reform organization Gode Penge.

Egnatz, Nick. 2014. “Linking Social Justice to Monetary Reform”. Alpheus. 25 Dec 2014.

“Social Justice is the struggle to make society work for the vast majority of people. The comprehensive monetary reform of the NEED Act is the necessary first step on the path to realization of this struggle. The following ten points are the major social issues in which I will try to link social justice with monetary reform”.

Nick Egnatz is a Vietnam veteran and worked closely with the American Monetary Institute in support of the comprehensive monetary reform contained in the NEED Act.

Graeber, David. 2014. “The truth is out: money is just an IOU, and the banks are rolling in it”. The Guardian, 18 March 2014.

“Last week, something remarkable happened. The Bank of England let the cat out of the bag. In a paper called “Money Creation in the Modern Economy“, co-authored by three economists from the Bank’s Monetary Analysis Directorate, they stated outright that most common assumptions of how banking works are simply wrong, and that the kind of populist, heterodox positions more ordinarily associated with groups such as Occupy Wall Street are correct. In doing so, they have effectively thrown the entire theoretical basis for austerity out of the window.”

David Graeber is professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics and author of Debt: The First 5000 Years; he was involved in the Global Justice Movement and Occupy Wall Street.

Hammon, Virginia & Pash, Mark. 2019. How We Pay for a Better World. Portland: Great Democracy Media. 

The authors make the case that our current money system has to change from “a private debt-credit money, created and entered into the money supply by private bankers” to a “public tool that is part of our shared national wealth, created by our government”.

Virginia Hammon, MS, investigated US Government’s financial reports and then became a monetary reform writer and activist. In 2018 she authored US Money: What is it? Why we must change. How We Can.

Mark Pash is a Certified Financial Planner and a macroeconomic thinker. He created a non-profit, the Center for Progressive Economics, and wrote Creating a 21st Century Win-Win Economy: The Problems and the Solutions. 

Kumhof, Michael & Jakab, Zoltán. 2016. “The Truth about Banks”. Finance and Development. IMF Publication (March 2016).

During the Great Depression a group of prominent economists proposed a set of monetary reforms now known as the 1930s Chicago Plan. Benes and Kumhof analyzed and computer-modelled the proposal and confirmed its positive features in their 2012 landmark paper “The Chicago Plan Revisited”.This article is a journalistic summary of their findings.

Benes and Kumhof worked at the Research Department of the IMF.

McLeay, Michael et al. 2014a. “Money Creation in the Modern Economy”. Monetary Analysis Directorate. Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin (Q1, 2014): 14-27.

“In the modern economy, most money takes the form of bank deposits. But how those bank deposits are created is often misunderstood: the principal way is through commercial banks making loans. Whenever a bank makes a loan, it simultaneously creates a matching deposit in the borrower’s bank account, thereby creating new money”.

McLeay, Michael et al. 2014b. “Money in the Modern Economy: An Introduction”. Monetary Analysis Directorate. Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin (Q1 2014): 4-13.

“Money is essential to the workings of a modern economy, but its nature has varied substantially over time. This article provides an introduction to what money is today”. This article is a useful introduction to the more detailed paper on money creation.

The authors work at the Monetary Analysis Directorate of the Bank of England.

Positive Money. “10 year old explains the truth about where money comes from…” London: Positive Money. 4 Sep 2013. Video file.

“10 year old Holly explains where money really comes from, why is there so much debt and what it means for you…” Informative video created by the UK monetary reform organization Positive Money.

Schuller, Govert. 2018. “Formulations of the Three-Point Policy Proposal for Monetary Reform“. Alpheus, 6 Feb 2018.

Modern monetary reform aims at three inter-connected changes of the monetary system, which unity is essential and therefore for many non-negotiable. This is a compilation of different formulations of essentially the same three points. Most formulations are intentionally triple-pointed and some are differently constructed even while more or less covering the same proposals.

Zarlenga, Stephen. 2011. “Congressman Dennis Kucinich’s Briefing to Solve the Debt Crisis”. Huffington Post. The Blog. 11 Aug 2011.

In the summer of 2011 Congressman Kucinich (D-OH) hosted Professor Yamaguchi for a Monetary Briefing to present to members of Congress his scientific evaluation of the NEED Act. Yamaguchi’s conclusion is that the current debt-based system will lead to severe economic crises and that a sovereign monetary system would solve a host of economic and social problems.

Stephen Zarlenga is co-founder and Director of the American Monetary Institute and author of The Lost Science of Money.

Zarlenga, Stephen A. 2014. “Presenting the American Monetary Reform Manual”. Valatie, NY: American Monetary Institute.

Full text and introduction to the “National Emergency Employment Defense Act” (the NEED Act). “The power to create money is an awesome power – at times stronger than the Executive, Legislative and Judicial powers combined. It’s like having a ‘magic checkbook’, where checks can’t bounce. When controlled by banks it can be used to gain riches, but much more importantly it determines the direction of our society by deciding where the money goes – what gets funded and what does not. Will it be used to build and repair vital infrastructure such as the New Orleans levees and Minneapolis bridges to protect major cities? Or will it go into warfare and real estate bubbles and Wall Street Gambling – leading to crashes and depressions, as banking has usually done”.

P.S.: An intermediary, weighted list of best studies based on the opinion of a group of experts you can find here.  The extensive bibliography of monetary reform and theory texts you can find here.