Thomas H. Greco Jr.

Thomas Henry Greco Jr. (born October 9, 1936) is a community economist, who writes and consults on monetary exchange alternatives, including private credit clearing systems, complementary currencies and local currencies.[1][2]

Education and career

Greco earned his Bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering from Villanova University, a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Rochester, and he pursued a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) at Syracuse University. For fourteen years he taught economics, finance, statistics, entrepreneurship, and forecasting as a tenured faculty member in the college of business at Rochester Institute of Technology.[3]

In 1979 Thomas Greco became a private consultant and community activist, working with local Rochester, New York peace and justice groups. From 1981 to 1990 he served as trustee and then president of the School of Living which promotes "self-governing communities that are democratic, humane, globally conscious and ecologically sound".[4]

A frequent contributor to the decentralist publication Fourth World Review, Greco organized of the Fourth World Assembly and New Economics Symposium held in San Francisco in 1987.[3] From 1989–1991 he co-edited Green Revolution, a journal dedicated to right education, right living and personal responsibility.

After moving to Arizona, Greco assisted in the development of LETSonora (a Local Exchange Trading System) and helped organize Tucson Traders, both now defunct, and in 1991 organized the Community Information Resource Center (CIRC) as a project of NEST, Inc., which promoted transformative approaches to community building.

Greco has authored four books on monetary theory and how practical monetary alternatives can empower communities by generating credit under local control. He has written for a wide range of journals, including the Internet Journal of Community Research, Alternate, Common Dreams, Transformation, Global Research, Reality Sandwich, Whole Earth Review, World Business Academy Perspectives, At Work, Earth Island Journal, the Catholic Worker, The Permaculture Activist, Yes! Magazine,[5] Green Revolution, and others. Since 2019, he has hosted Beyond Money Podcast.[6]

Approach to alternative currencies

The essence of Greco's philosophy about money and the exchange of value might be summarized as the following:[7]

1.  The essence of money is credit.

2.  Money has only one purpose: to enable the reciprocal exchange of value (payment) in the markets.

3.  The other functions that money is said to serve (measure of value and store of value) are in reality served by other instruments, not money.

4.  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, which in turn causes misdistribution of wealth, environmental despoliation and a tendency toward despotic government.

5.  Economic equity demands the abandonment of interest-bearing debt as a general means of finance, and the use shared equity or shared revenue models instead.

6.  The "credit commons" in every country needs to be reclaimed. Greco advocates for reclaiming the credit commons from private banking interests by (1) the cooperative issuance of private community currencies that are spent into circulation by trusted producers, and (2) the organization of producers and sellers into relatively small, local credit clearing exchanges that can be networked together to expand the scale and scope of moneyless trading opportunities.

Greco writes:

The primary lever of power in today's world is the overly centralized, monopolistic control over money, banking, and finance. Money constitutes the greatest and most acute current problem, while being at once the structural domain that is most ready for a transformational shift. It is clear that the best and most promising approaches to liberating economic exchange are in the realm of private, voluntary, free-market initiatives.[8]

In a review of Greco's Money: Understanding and Creating Alternatives to Legal Tender, Brian Leslie writes:

Greco is more concerned with the details of current and potential alternative currencies, devoting much of his book to descriptions of current examples and a selection of past ones, their strengths and weaknesses, and theoretical possibilities and recommendations for future systems, several of which are his own proposals. He notes that alternative currencies start and are most successful at times (and in places) when the failings of official money are having the greatest impact, and mostly discontinue when conditions improve.[9]

Journalist Jon Rutter described Greco's goal as "junking the dominant monetary system". He notes Greco's opinion that a centralized banking and investment system concentrates wealth, causing misery for average families. Rather than reform, Greco advocates "an entirely new system of money and exchange" which "democratizes credit and emphasizes local control."[10]

Instrumental in the development of Greco's thinking on money are the writings of E.C. Riegel, who "conceived of money as simply number accountancy among private traders... There might be numerous trading circles, each with its own accountant but its [own value unit would be] indistinguishable from those of other trading circles. The accountant assigns each member of his circle a credit limit based on experience with that member’s type of business, charging a small fee to cover bookkeeping and insurance against default. Thus might different accounting firms form competitive trading circles, charging less or more for their insurance depending how lenient or strict the credit limits they allow."[11]

Greco has consulted with various business barter exchanges which since the 1970s have been applying the credit clearing process that he has been advocating. Greco was the keynote speaker at the 2006 annual convention of IRTA (the International Reciprocal Trade Association), a global trade association for local business barter exchange networks.

Many community and business groups have been consulted by Greco 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 credit that banks are supposed to provide. He has advised such groups as Current Innovations, Alliance for Human Empowerment, Community Forge, Sonoma GoLocal, Sardex, Banglapesa, and others. 

Bibliography
  • The End of Money and the Future of Civilization, Chelsea Green (June 4, 2009). Also at Books.Google ISBN 978-1-60358-078-6
  • Money: Understanding and Creating Alternatives to Legal Tender, PDF, Chelsea Green (November 1, 2001). ISBN 1-890132-37-3
  • New Money for Healthy Communities, self-published, 1994.
  • Money and Debt: A Solution to the Global Crisis, self-published, 1990.
  • Chapter 7, "New Mechanisms for Monetary Exchange," in Willis W. Harman, Maya Porter, The New Business of Business: Sharing Responsibility for a Positive Global Future, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1997, ISBN 1-57675-018-3

See also

References
  1. Boyle, David (June 27, 2004). "Speech at Local Currencies for the 21st Century conference" (PDF). E. F. Schumacher Society. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-06-08.
  2. Paul Glover, Monica Hargraves, In Each Other We Trust: local currency brings communities together, Whole Earth, March 22, 1998
  3. Greco, Thomas H. "Thomas H. Greco, Jr. (PDF)" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-05-14.
  4. "School of Living". School of Living. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
  5. Greco, Thomas H. (June 30, 1997). "The Trouble with Money". Yes! Magazine.
  6. "Beyond Money Podcast". Beyond Money. 2019-09-05. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
  7. Greco, Thomas H., 1936- (2009). The end of money and the future of civilization. White River Junction, Vt.: Chelsea Green Pub. ISBN 978-1-60358-078-6. OCLC 262883164.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  8. Greco, Thomas H. "Background and Rationale".
  9. Brian Leslie, Participatory democracy is good for you, review of Thomas H. Greco, Jr. and Bernard Lietaer books on money.
  10. Rutter, Jon (September 13, 2009). "Learning to live sustainably". Lancaster Sunday News. Archived from the original on 2009-09-18.
  11. "The Legacy of E. C. Riegel". Beyond Money. 2009-09-07. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
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