No Money

A woman seeks money at the Puskar station. Puskar India August 2012

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To those who have won their freedom

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One day

In one of the prettier rooms there were a few men waiting for the most important call they would ever receive. From the top of the skyscraper the views of the sunset in Manhattan was impressive. They were waiting for the last opportunity. That night in Time Square there was no more time. When the British called and said no, everyone in the room felt a deep cold in their souls. One hundred and fifty-eight years before, three German brothers had been making a killing in Alabama with the cotton business they had founded as the Lehman Brothers.

Richar Fuld was one of the businessmen of major prestige in Manhattan. Also known by the nickname the Gorilla as a consequence of an ambition without control and lack of ethics, he was unable to avoid one of the major managerial failures. The FED had put a deadline and Barclays knew it, for that reason they thought that instead of buying that night they would do it one day later at a lower price when the bankruptcy was announced. Ten minutes after the call conference when everything was lost, the executives were still trusting in a last miracle. Was the American government about to let one of the most important banks fall? The consequences for the national and international economy would be terrible. They did it, and one of the most important banks in the world was declared bankrupt, breaking the world confidence in the whole financial system. The time for the American dream was over giving way to the world nightmare.

The concept

However what is money? Money is nothing more but trusts. While people think that a piece of paper has a value everyone admits that it is a simple way to do any kind of transaction. Every time that the trust was broken, millions of pieces of paper without value were seen on the streets. Nowadays, even paper is unnecessary; money is only digits in your computer, digits in the cash machine, digits in your credit cards. The amount of money is literally created by the government according to the richness of the country. So if they print too much money it means that there may not be enough richness to support the value, so markets will depreciate their currency. For that reason money cannot be created without a limit. Finally money is nothing more than trust and we have lost a lot of trust.

Sources to survive

Living without money is almost impossible. There are interesting adventures like time banking and others that are recovering the barter as an alternative but thinking carefully it so difficult to apply this into our way of life. Nevertheless is there still hope? We have been suffering from this crisis since 2007. According to what everyone can read each economical crisis takes more or less ten years so we are in the middle of it. What is most important as a citizen is to learn about how our individual behaviour can affect this situation and take control of it. The Icelandic model could be an interesting example. Its high time all of us woke up. Being responsible about our decisions as consumers could be the first step. To stop acting like sheep in the political field and instead act like responsible citizens who are in a different reality than the political professionalized class by taking part and pushing society in the suitable direction could help us too.

Where is the money?

There is no money. There is no trust. Nowadays money is in the pockets of richer men who are becoming richer thanks to this crisis. Money will come back eventually and what will be more important is to know if all of this was worth it. There is no money in the cup of the woman who is seeking it but what will happen from now to the future will depend on whether we make things different, reinvent the system, find other ways, wake up, start the real revolution that begins inside of us where the trust is held.

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