Monetary reform describes any movement or theory that proposes a different system of supplying money and financing the economy from the current system.
Monetary reformers may advocate any of the following, among other proposals:
- A return to the gold standard (or silver standard or bimetallism).
- The issuance of interest-free credit from a government-controlled and fully owned central bank. These interest free but repayable loans would be used for public infrastructure and productive private investment. This proposal seeks to overcome the charge that debt-free money would cause inflation.
- The issuance of social credit - "debt-free" money issued directly from the Treasury - rather than the sourcing of fresh money from a central bank in the form of interest-bearing bonds. These direct cash payments would be made to "replenish" or compensate the populace for the net losses some monetary reformers believe the populace suffers in a fractional reserve-based monetary system.
- The enforcement of full reserve banking for the privately owned banking system.
Famous quotes containing the words monetary and/or reform:
“In our time, the curse is monetary illiteracy, just as inability to read plain print was the curse of earlier centuries.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“Short of a wholesale reform of college athletics—a complete breakdown of the whole system that is now focused on money and power—the women’s programs are just as doomed as the men’s are to move further and further away from the academic mission of their colleges.... We have to decide if that’s the kind of success for women’s sports that we want.”
—Christine H. B. Grant, U.S. university athletic director. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A42 (May 12, 1993)