Give credit to Future

Scritto il 8 Agosto 2013

As ironically asked by Bertolt Brecht, what is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank? The world is in crisis. The values are in crisis. The climate is in crisis, the youth are in crisis, politics are in crisis, and the future is in crisis.
Nonetheless, the only crisis people seem to talk about is the financial crisis – The banking collapse. This is paradoxical, as banks and their dynamics are as far as you can get from the culture and the language of the people. Who truly knows how a bank works? Who knows about the BCE, seigniorage, Basilea sanctions 1, 2, 3, what’s a TAN, a Taeg, a Tegm, the difference between fixed and variable rate, interests calculations, market quotations?
How could banking and financing become so pop – why are the only pre-selected function on our iPhone weather forecasting and stock exchange? We can all relate to the weather and we can all understand the icon of a cloud or a sunbeam. But who can actually interpret FTSE, MIB or DOW JONES indexes? More importantly, are they really so important that you need to have them laid out on your phone? Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to have world news, scientific discovery, medical research, history or philosophy?
Finance is important, but the assumption of it being a prime constant within our daily life is a dangerous paradox. Banks are largely based on a debt system, which according to a redeemed Gordon Gekko, is global, formulaic and malign. The idea of “enjoying something now that will be paid in future” is the whole idea that should be questioned. Credit or debt, depending on the observer’s perspective, can destroy the future. It can transform it into something that you need to depend on. Future cannot be built upon banking interests. Instead of keeping on accumulating debt, we should create a system that allows us to accumulate future on credit.