Thomas H. Greco

Thomas H. Greco, Jr. is a preeminent scholar, author, educator, and community economist, who, for more than 35 years, has been working at the leading edge of transformational restructuring. He is widely regarded as a leading authority on 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 16 countries.

He advises many community and business groups on how they can create “home-grown” means of payment (liquidity) that can save small business and put people back to work by shifting control back to local communities and compensating for the shortage of official currency that banks are supposed to provide.

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 wave of innovation. Here are some of the unique features of my work that make it stand out from the rest of the crowd of players engaged in building a new more just, peaceful and equitable society.

1. My comprehension of the geopolitical BIG PICTURE of power based on the centralized control of money, banking, and finance which enables a small global elite group to dominate economics, politics and virtually every aspect of society.
2. My recognition that the essence of money is credit,
3. The interest/usury that is built into the global system of money creation causes a debt-growth imperative that is the DRIVER of artificial economic growth that now threatens civilization and the very existence of life on this finite planet, and 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. My recognition that every political currency is supported by the collective credit of the people, and that we have allowed the credit commons to be privatized and 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 who spend it into circulation, and (b) the organization of small local credit clearing exchanges that lessen dependency 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 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).
8. 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, Part III)
9. 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.
10. My expertise in the design and implementation of innovative systems for exchanging value and financing economic activity.
11. My call for an end of taxation on labor, as well as sales/consumption taxes on basic necessities, and a shift of taxation to privileges, like the limited liability privilege of corporations and the private use or exploitation of Earth’s resources, airwaves, and other aspects of “the commons.” (See http://circinfo.wordpress.com/).
12. My call for truly democratic governing structures that vest decision power at the base comprised of small social units (communities) that allocate resources upward as needed.

Mr. Greco 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 the decentralized control of credit and the exchange process. 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, Transformation, 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.

A former college professor, he is currently Director of the non-profit Community Information Resource Center, a networking hub that provides information access and administrative support for efforts in community resilience, social justice, and sustainability. He maintains an active correspondence and major web presence. Many of his recorded presentations, interviews, and writings are available on his websites Beyond Money (https://beyondmoney.net/) and Reinventing Money (http://reinventingmoney.com/).

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 work 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.