If Money Rules the World - Who Rules Money?

Lecture theatre: Háskólabíó miðjan

Margrit Kennedy is an architect, an ecologist, a financial expert and a critic of the prevailing economic system. As professor, she headed the department of "Technological Advancement and Resource Efficient Construction" at the University of Hannover's architecture school. In the 1980s, she began to argue that the broader application of ecological principles was inhibited by fundamental flaws in the monetary system, especially the consistent need for economic growth resulting from interest and compound interest.

Through her research she has worked on practical solutions for essential problems such as:

1. How is it possible to create a sustainable monetary system?
2. What characterizes monetary systems that do not collapse repeatedly
and which serves people rather than control them?
3. Where can examples be found of well-working monetary systems in the
past and present?
4. What should be the make-up of a money system that does not
continually redistribute wealth from the large majority to a small
minority?

In 1998 Kennedy published with Declan Kennedy and Helmut Creutz the book Interest and Inflation Free Money: Creating an Exchange Medium That Works for Everybody and Protects the Earth. This book has been translated into 22 languages. She founded the Money Network Alliance in 2003 for the research and development of complementary currencies. For further information about Margrit Kennedy see http://www.margritkennedy.de/ and http://www.monneta.org/.