Book review: Healthy money, healthy planet

The first 1/4 of this book spends some time explaining how our current money system works and spelling out some of the implications: eternal debt, pressure to exploit more and more natural resources and concentration of wealth and power.

The other 3/4 of the book talks about solutions; complementary economic and monetary systems which have been tried all over the world and documents their successes and failures. There is a strong relevance to us in New Zealand, as it has many current examples of things that happened or are happening here. A vision of overlapping local, regional, national and international currencies that function in an ecological fashion is presented, which although appealing is probably too breathtaking in scope for most people to stomach. Maybe it'll come to pass, but certainly not all at once!

After finishing this book you will have a firm grounding in the basics of a wide variety of different approaches to money and an awareness of how to avoid some obvious (in hindsight!) mistakes that others have made in the past.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who is interested in LETS or complimentary currencies or who is in need of inspiration on how to respond to the ongoing financial collapse.