L7 Money, Banking and Trade

Tools For A New Political Economy

Article IX


Regarding the Restructuring of Banking and Monetary Systems, and Reforming International Trade Relations



Problems To Solve


The electorate has little influence over banking and monetary systems, or over international trade relations, which has resulted in:
  • Regulatory capture of SEC by self-serving corporate interests
  • Runaway leveraging and other unbacked credit risk
  • Exploitation of developing countries (IMF and World Bank structural adjustment programs)
  • Financialization of economy and runaway speculation and derivative instruments
  • A fractional reserve system that inherently undermines and destabilizes fiat currency (requires deposit insurance, etc.)

Banking and monetary systems encourage socialization of risk, privatization of profits, and ever-increasing levels of debt



Proposed Solutions

  1. Return strategic control of monetary policy, banking practices and international trade practices and agreements to the people - via direct democracy, citizens councils and networks of member-owned credit unions, while allowing tactical administration of the same by elected technocrats
  2. Ultimately the goal would be to close down Wall Street entirely. Short of that, in parallel to transitioning to member or worker-ownership of all businesses so that they are primary/majority shareholders, scale back (and in some cases eliminate altogether) public stock offerings except in instances of disruptive innovation startups that require startup capital, and restrict all such offerings to minor percentages of shares, held for set periods of time, specifically to discourage speculation
  3. End derivative investment instruments and automated trading, then limit both the volume of public shares for a given enterprise that can be traded, and the number of times each share can be traded over a specific interval of time
  4. Discourage deliberate, short-term speculative trading — for example in futures, bonds, foreign exchange markets, digital currencies, real estate, etc. — during the migration to common property shares and Level 7 enterprise schema
  5. Eliminate trust-debt relationships with respect to currency and decentralize currency issuance via the digital domain. Instead of fiat money, allow distributed creation of representative money backed by commonly held non-leveraged semi-fungible assets
  6. Eliminate systems of credit over time by migrating more and more property away from private ownership to common ownership status, while at the same time promoting community-centric democratic control of all property. For example: if mass transit is sufficiently widespread and reliable to eliminate the need for privately owned vehicles, most housing and agricultural and commercial real estate are made available through Community Land Trusts, and initial investments in new enterprises are in largest part held by member or workers as tradable common property shares, then the necessity of credit would be precipitously reduced
  7. Eliminate IMF and World Bank exploitation of developing countries, and instead implement interdependent micro and macro programs that encourage sustainable self-sufficiency, enhanced democracy, and other Level 7 approaches and institutions among countries who ask for assistance
  8. Favor a stable exchange rate and independent monetary policy over free capital flows internationally


Stacks Image 344