All Street — Alternative Finance System Map

All Street — Alternative Finance
Alternative Finance System Map

(h/t Michel Bauwens at P2P Foundation)

In Transition 2.0 — printing your own money, growing food, localising economies, and setting up community power stations

To mark the release of In Transition 2.0 — an inspirational film about communities printing their own money, growing food, localising their economies and setting up community power stations — I spoke to Rob Hopkins, co-founder of the Transition Network and Transition Totnes, about energy ownership, cooperative finance strategies, and how storytelling can change our expectations of ourselves and our communities.

Read it at Energy Bulletin
In Transition 2.0 — printing your own money, growing food, localising economies, and setting up community power stations
by Jonny Gordon-Farleigh

Mafia now "Italy's No.1 bank"

Reuters
Mafia now "Italy's No.1 bank" as crisis bites-report
By James Mackenzie

ROME, Jan 10 (Reuters) - Organised crime has tightened its grip on the Italian economy during the economic crisis, making the Mafia the country's biggest "bank" and squeezing the life out of thousands of small firms, according to a report on Tuesday.Extortionate lending by criminal groups had become a "national emergency", said the report by anti-crime group SOS Impresa.

Alternative finance

MÁLAGA, Spain, Nov 29, 2011 (IPS) - On the first Sunday of every month, Abdoulaye Fall, from Senegal, meets a group of people in Barcelona, to contribute money to a common fund or to take out a loan. This is one of 60 self-financed communities in Spain, an alternative to traditional banking systems that is having a powerful social effect.

"I'll contribute 20 euros (27 dollars)," says one of the 15 Senegalese members of the Axell (which means "providence" in Wolof, the dominant language in Senegal) self-financing community (SFC). "I'll put in 100 (133 dollars)," says the person sitting next to him. The accountant writes down the amounts and the treasurer puts the money into a box, from which loans approved by the meeting will be made later. 

SFCs are community financial organisations in which members are at once owners of the capital and loan customers, borrowers as well as lenders of credit, with a flat interest rate of one percent in most groups. 

Fall told IPS that the communities grant loans to fill small urgent or unforeseen needs, such as a trip, a health emergency or payment of a fine, and they are not devoted to creating businesses.

Read the rest at Inter Press Service
Self-Financed Communities "A Tool for Building Trust"
By Inés Benítez