Money: Understanding and Creating Alternatives to Legal Tender

by Thomas H. Greco Jr.

Book Overview

A former professor of business, Greco expanded his passive study of money to developing new community monetary systems. In the present volume, the way money is exchanged is described, with a focus on... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1890132373
• ISBN13: 9781890132378
• Release Date: November 2001
• Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing Company
• Length: 295 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.1" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Knowledge can set you free

Make an estimate of the amount of time you have spent on preparing yourself to earn money, on getting it, and of taking care of it when you have it. Wouldn't it be worthwile to really understand what it is you are spending all this energy on? Tom Greco has been doing some of that work for you, with integrity, passion and enormous dedication. The time has come to shed some light on the mysterious workings of our money. Read why it is a losing game for most people, of why it is our master instead of our servant. More important still: what you can do to change it for yourself and for your own community.

a valuable book

This book is a fruit of the author's "warm heart and cool head." The value of this book is to demonstrate a theory and a method for democratizing the power to issue money. We can understand the necessity for local currencies in order to decrease the concentration of power in monetary and financial system.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT MONEY IS?

MONEY, by Thomas Greco, is one of those books that will cast a light on the shadows of economy as we've known it. But as it happens with every time light is cast, other shadowy areas emerge. The dark side of a system which we take for granted. If anyone suffers or has concerns about money, by reading this book it'll become clear that most people suffer and are concerned about something they didn't even know what it was. What IS money? Why do we suffer under it? What's the problem with money? Most of the world uses it today, though few realize that Legal Tender has legal implications, is part of a legal contract which we agree on even though we haven't even read the large print, much less the small print. By reading MONEY, both large and small print become clear and understandable. This is a book that is both easy to read and easy to understand, and what's perhaps most interesting, a book which will make us realize that our economic problems might not be our personal fault after all, but rather the fault of a system which was never quite right. Money is a technology with side effects. Poverty is a result of money for money functions under the rule of scarcity. If it's scarce, it's more valuable but if it's too scarce, its function as a `tool of exchange' does not work properly anymore.MONEY is the beginning of a long road we have ahead of us. A few aspects, especially at the end, might still be too close to our present paradigm about economy, but this should change as more people around the world experience different systems of Alternatives to Legal Tender and thus see their very lives changed for the better. MONEY is only one step -but perhaps the first step most of us need- in the path towards a more humane future.

Bringing Freedom To The World

If we're producing more than ever before in world history,with technologies creating enough to feed the world, why do we keep getting deeper in debt? It doesn't take a genius to figure there's somethng rotten in Washington,DC. But it's not the politicians(okay, maybe indirectly), It's not political platforms, and we're not going to change it with term limits or creating new political parties. And we're not going to change it by voting. There's one way to bring back freedom in the USA and the world, and that's by creating an economic system that eliminates the present system based on debt and greed. I'm not talking communism. I'm not talking socialism or Marxism or any ism. I'm talking about every citizen taking control of his own economic and social values by creating alternative currencies. I met Tom Greco several years ago when I was editor of an economics discussion group. I helped him promote his first insightful book on money and debt, and I was impressed by Tom's quiet integrity and deep grasp of the monetary system. This latest book gives the nuts and bolts of economics and lays bare the whole deception set up by our Federal Reserve System. It is written simply and clearly so that you don't need a degree in economics to understand it. I don't have any special education in economics, but after an education frompeople like Tom Greco, I was able to hold my own in any economics discussion and show the whole deceitful process for what it is. You want to know all about economics without paying for an economics degree? Get Tom's book and start changing the world.

Economic Development Professionals Better Read This Book

I found this book to be revelatory as to the true function of money in society. Everybody knows, or at least has a lurking suspicion, that there is an inherent unfairness in the ways that money and the financial edifices built upon its manipulation affect the well-being of local economies. The decimation of locally owned producers and regional industries is documented daily in newspapers -- it hardly seems to be news anymore. Many books have been written about the predatory and extractive nature of a global financial system dominated by huge investor syndicates, but very few books present real, doable strategies by which communities can extricate themselves from the "race to the bottom" that global competitive pressure forces on them.Thomas Greco goes right to the root of the dilemma -- communities suffer from a chronic, artificially enforced scarcity of cash, national currency, and that scarcity suppresses the local exchange of goods and services that is the foundation of a thriving local economy. He says, in effect, that if the existing financial system hampers your community's ability to create wealth, then you and your community must build your own financial system.Mr. Greco draws on his thirty years of study of local economics to create a blueprint (actually, bluprints) of how this local financial system can be implemented. He explains the true nature of money in terms that anybody can understand, and once understood, how that true nature can serve to build a wealth in the community that is impervious to the financial spins and spasms of remote global masters of money.