4 months since the Swiss Sovereign Money referendum

Dear Supporter of the Swiss Sovereign Money Initiative, It is now 4 months ago since the Sovereign Money referendum. Since then, a survey with nearly 1000 participants conducted a few weeks after the referendum in Switzerland showed that 80% of people would like the Swiss National Bank (SNB) to be responsible for creating Swiss Francs – exactly what the referendum was all about, which implies many people had not really understood what they were voting on. Since the referendum we have also had the 10-year anniversary of Lehman’s collapse, with many articles in leading newspapers around the world stating the obvious: very little has changed and our global financial system is likely to suffer from another collapse sooner or later, with some predicting the next global financial crisis will be much larger than that of 2007/8. Others have pointed to the policy responses – mainly austerity and low interest rates – helping to fuel populist movements. One story particularly caught my attention: John Authers of the FT realised two days after the collapse of Lehman Brothers on the morning of 17th September 2008 that just perhaps the unthinkable might happen and his bank might collapse. He had more money in his account than was covered by government guarantee and he became worried he just might lose his money. In his lunch hour he decided, just to be sure, he'd go to his bank and transfer some of his money to anther bank thereby having the government guarantee for both. Whilst there he found his bank full of other customers doing just the same thing. This was a bank run in the making in downtown Manhattan. He could have got a photographer there and posted a story on the FT website. However, he decided it was his duty not to do so. If he had, would history have played out differently? Would there have been a total financial meltdown? We will never know. The clear need for reform and our failure to get it at the ballot box in Switzerland might lead you to think that our Sovereign Money Initiative was a wasted opportunity. I disagree. It was always going to be a near impossible challenge for outsiders like us to win a highly technical reform to the banking system in a popular vote, especially such a long time after the actual crash. However, what we did achieve was a massive discussion both in Switzerland and worldwide, which, at the very least, will have informed millions of people about how the banking system actually works today. The first step to change must be to understand the current system. In my view, our Initiative has been totally successful in achieving this first step. If you didn’t already see it, do watch the CNN Money show (aired a few days before the referendum) with John Revill from Reuters and Brian Blackstone from The Wall Street Journal discussing the referendum. They, together with Ralph Atkins from the FT, really took the time to understand the Initiative and their reporting was the basis for much of the news coverage around the world. We’ve put together a database of the English-media coverage as a reference with the title, date, link and very brief summary of each article. The graphic below is a quick analysis from this database for key publications, showing clearly what an impressive amount of coverage we had. (Many thanks to our project student Dan Filipiak for compiling and summarising most of this information). If you have further relevant links please email them to me. Graphic showing number of publications together with an indication about whether they are positive, neutral or negative towards the sovereign money initiative. “Negative” includes "neutral" articles primarily reporting on our opponents’ arguments. What does the future hold? MoMo is committed to putting the financial economy at the service of the real economy and the monetary system at the service of the people, but for the moment this will be a low-key endeavour as we’ve expended almost all of our energy and money on the referendum. However, internationally the movement is growing strongly, as more people realise that the roots of many of our problems lie in our banking system. The growth of the International Movement for Money Reform (IMMR), an umbrella organisation for national movements, is evidence of this. You can see the latest copy of their newsletter here. If you have been a supporter of ours – many thanks!  I hope you feel proud about what you’ve helped to achieve. What can you do now? I would like to encourage you to join a movement in your country, or even help start one. Please look at the IMMR website for further information. In November there's a conference covering Vollgeld in Frankfurt with a great line-up of speakers - more details below. I hope I'll see some of you there. With best wishes, on behalf of the MoMo team, Emma Dawnay Board member of MoMo, the association which brought the Sovereign Money Initiative in Switzerland emma.dawnay@vollgeld-initiative.ch If you were forwarded this email and would like to subscribe to our newsletters, please go to www.vollgeld-initiative.ch/english and add your email address at the top right. Did you know? If you click "view this email in your browser" (at the top), then you can access our previous newsletters using the buttons at the top of the screen. Conference "The Future of Money" Ticket sale just opened for the conference "The future of money" on November 24th in Frankfurt , hosted by Monetative and IMMR. There are significantly discounted tickets for IMMR members. More info on the conference and programme can be found here.    Donations to MoMo in Switzerland:    Our mailing address is: Vollgeld-Initiative Postfach 3160 Wettingen 5430 Switzerland