Bernard Lietaer (7 February 1942 – 4 February 2019
) was a
Belgian civil engineer
A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering – the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructure while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing i ...
,
economist
An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics.
The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...
,
author
In legal discourse, an author is the creator of an original work that has been published, whether that work exists in written, graphic, visual, or recorded form. The act of creating such a work is referred to as authorship. Therefore, a sculpt ...
, and educator. He studied
monetary system
A monetary system is a system where a government manages money in a country's economy. Modern monetary systems usually consist of the national treasury, the mint, the central banks and commercial banks.
Commodity money system
A commodity mon ...
s and promoted the idea that communities can benefit from creating their own local or
complementary currency, which circulate parallel with national currencies.
Early life
Bernard Lietaer was born 7 February 1942 in
Lauwe,
Belgium
Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeas ...
. He attended College of St Paul, Godinne from 1955 to 1961.
He studied engineering at the
Catholic University of Leuven, in Belgium, where, later in life, he held an assistant professorship of
international finance
International finance (also referred to as international monetary economics or international macroeconomics) is the branch of monetary economics, monetary and macroeconomics, macroeconomic interrelations between two or more countries. Internation ...
. During his engineering studies, he was a member of the debating union
Olivaint Conference of Belgium. After obtaining his
M.Sc. in 1967, he went on to continue his studies at the
MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...
until 1969.
Career
Lietaer's post-graduate
thesis
A thesis (: theses), or dissertation (abbreviated diss.), is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings.International Standard ISO 7144: D ...
, published in 1971, included a description of "floating exchanges". The
Nixon Shock of that same year eradicated the
Bretton Woods system
The Bretton Woods system of monetary management established the rules for commercial relations among 44 countries, including the United States, Canada, Western European countries, and Australia, after the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement until the ...
by decoupling the US dollar from the
gold standard
A gold standard is a backed currency, monetary system in which the standard economics, economic unit of account is based on a fixed quantity of gold. The gold standard was the basis for the international monetary system from the 1870s to the ...
and inaugurated an era of "universal floating exchanges". Prior to that time, the only "floating exchanges" involved some Latin American currencies. The techniques which he had developed for marginal, Latin American currencies were for a time the only systematic research that could be used to deal with the major currencies of the world. A US bank negotiated exclusive rights to his approach and Lietaer began another career.
In 1987, he co-founded the currency-management firm GaiaCorp and managed the
offshore currency fund "Gaia Hedge II", which during the 1987–1991 period was the world's top-performing managed currency fund.
His biography cites the
Micropal survey of 1,800 off-shore funds.
In the preface to his book ''
The Future of Money: Beyond Greed and Scarcity'', Lietaer claimed: "We almost tripled the money in three years." ''
Business Week
''Bloomberg Businessweek'', previously known as ''BusinessWeek'' (and before that ''Business Week'' and ''The Business Week''), is an American monthly business magazine published 12 times a year. The magazine debuted in New York City in Septembe ...
'' named him "the world's top currency trader" in 1992.
From 2003 to 2006, he was a visiting scholar at
Naropa University
Naropa University is a private university in Boulder, Colorado, United States. Founded in 1974 by Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa, it is named after the 11th-century Indian Buddhist sage Naropa, an abbot of Nalanda. The university ...
,
USA, where he created the university's Marpa Center for Business and Economics.
While at the
Central Bank in Belgium, he implemented the convergence mechanism (
ECU) to the single European-currency system. During that period, he also served as President of Belgium's
Electronic Payment System.
In a 2007 interview, Lietaer claimed that diversified, internationally valid currencies can help "address specific needs and enable certain exchanges – whether to fight global warming, promote employment or facilitate education and health care."
In 2012, he was co-author, along with Christian Arnsperger, Sally Goerner, and Stefan Brunnhuber, of ''Money & Sustainability: the missing link'', a publication of
The Club of Rome, in which he predicted that "the period 2007–2020
ould beone of financial turmoil and gradual monetary breakdown."
"Money & Sustainability:the missing link"
, News release d The Club of Rome
Personal life and death
At the time of his death, Lietaer lived in Hoyerhagen
Hoyerhagen is a municipality in the district of Nienburg, in Lower Saxony, Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the ...
, in northern Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
.
Bibliography
* The Future of Money (London: Random House, 2001)
* New Money for a New World (Qiterra Press 2011) (with Stephen Belgin)
*
People Money: The Promise of Regional Currencies
(with Margrit Kennedy and John Rogers) (Triarchy Press 2012)
Money and Sustainability: The Missing Link / A report from the Club of Rome
(with Christian Arnsperger, Sally Goerner and Stefan Brunnhuber), Triarchy Press Ltd, 30. May 2012,
* Rethinking Money: How New Currencies Turn Scarcity into Prosperity (with Jacqui Dunne) (Berrett-Koehler Publishers 2013),
*With Helga Preuss, Marek Hudon, Kristof de Spiegeleer, Dieter Legat & Cary Sherburne: Towards a sustainable world. Delta Institute - Dieter Legat E.U. 2019,
See also
* ANCAP
* Barter
In trade, barter (derived from ''bareter'') is a system of exchange (economics), exchange in which participants in a financial transaction, transaction directly exchange good (economics), goods or service (economics), services for other goods ...
* Collaborative finance
* Community wealth building
* Complementary currencies
* Credit money
* Cryptocurrency
A cryptocurrency (colloquially crypto) is a digital currency designed to work through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it.
Individual coin ownership record ...
* Digital currencies
* Flex dollar
* Freiwirtschaft
* Margrit Kennedy
* List of Canadian community currencies
* List of community currencies in the United States
* Local currency
In economics, a local currency is a currency that can be spent in a particular geographical locality at participating organisations. A regional currency is a form of local currency encompassing a larger geographical area, while a community curren ...
* Local exchange trading system
A local exchange trading system (also local employment and trading system or local energy transfer system; abbreviated LETS) is a locally initiated, democratically organised, not-for-profit community enterprise that provides a community infor ...
* Silvio Gesell
References
External links
*
New Money for a New World
Money and Sustainability: The Missing Link
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lietaer, Bernard
1942 births
2019 deaths
Belgian economists
Catholic University of Leuven alumni
Freiwirtschaft
Monetary reformers
Naropa University faculty
Academic staff of the Université catholique de Louvain
Members of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts