Negative Interest and Thrift Radiates Happiness
Thank God I read Sacred Economics when I did. Or headlines like ‘Bank Raises Spectre of Negative Interest Rates’ or todays articles on levy’s on savings deposits (mainly aimed at Dirty Money in Bad Banks, but affecting everybody) and cries of ‘Doomed’ from Cyprus and ‘Who’s next?! ‘ would have been much more confusing and bewildering than they need to be. According to Eisenstein (also described as a ‘De-Growth activist) this is just the logical unfolding of a legacy that has turned the original, sacred purpose of money (to do beautiful things with in the world for the common purpose) into it’s polar opposite and we now have a front seat in watching it unfold back into itself, as well as stepping onto the stage to play our part or be played depending on how dependent we are on the credit system at any particular time.
Why do we have lack of growth coupled with death at such a deep level?? Check his thoughts in Transition Press on some of the solutions being muted in the press and also how they are not new ideas so no need to fear so much, as solutions like this finally come into public consideration. In particular on negative interest:
Negative interest is a different kind of money system. For example, it could involve a liquidity tax or charge on reserves in the Fed or central bank system. If banks hold onto their money as they do today, their money would slowly shrink in value. So would your checking account. So it gives you an incentive to lend your money, even at zero interest. Thus, you can have money circulate without an imperative for growth…it amounts to slow-motion debt forgiveness, kind of like inflation in that it works to the benefit of debtors and against the interest of creditors. For those of us living paycheck-to-paycheck, it would have little effect except to help us to pay back debts more easily.
Looking at the comments at the bottom of this article I was interested to be reminded that:
‘Negative interest on hoarded money is wealth tax, and it is not new. For example, Islam has a 2.5 percent tax on all stagnant (hoarded) wealth’.
I am just coming out of flu and rather fuzzy headed so will now make a lateral leap back in time to the ancient era when banks were places that (at least some) people were proud to work in, as evoked by a show I was taken to see when I was in Birmingham last week updating and planning interventions for October with Laura, artistic co-director of Fierce Festival, called Thrift Radiates Happiness in the former Municipal Bank in the city centre (we want it, but whether it will be available is another matter, as everyone wants it- what a building!). There were some really playful and disarming works, including an evocative and heart warming audio piece, “Half -Crowns in their Petticoats’ by Elly Clarke interviewing former employees on site about their years of service to the bank, The Investment Project, where you ‘invested’ £2 and were given a key to a safety deposit box and escorted into the vaults to discover if your box contained a limited edition print (we both got a photograph of the vault itself by Julie Tsang, which was pretty thrilling as I loved the room and it was impossible to shoot on my IPhone).
The piece I fell most in love with (predictably, as you will see) was a table of copies of letters which track The National Debt Project by Nicole Wilson, a durational (!) work where the artist is documenting her attempts to fund the National Deficit through her found change by sending daily letters to Barack Obama….She is on day 1297. It makes for compulsive, funny and often tragic reading. That kind of trying-to-bail-yourself-out-of-a-sinking- ship-with-a teacup kind of feeling that speaks volumes about where we are globally.
