Bernard Lietaer, author of New Money for a New World, is an international expert in the design and implementation of currency systems.   He has studied and worked in the field of money for more than 30 years in an unusually broad range of capacities including as a Central Banker, a fund manager,  a university professor, and a consultant to governments in numerous  countries, multinational corporations, and community organizations.

Here in this 3 minute clip, Bernard speaks on what he refers to as Yin and Yang currencies and that “it’s time to create a balanced view.”

Bernard will be presenting via Skype at the upcoming Money & Life 2012 event at the Whidbey Institute.  For more information click here.  We hope you can join us for what promises to be an exciting and engaging event.

I’ve been non-stop editing the past couple months and I’m excited to report that the film is coming in to solid structural form. I’ve been remiss on posting clips as I’ve been singularly focused on the film itself.

So, I am taking a breather and getting back to sharing some of the wonderful material. One of the questions I get asked most often is “which was your favorite interview?” It’s an impossible question since each interview was utterly unique. Some were more memorable for technical difficulties while others knocked my socks off in terms of learning new information or were transformative in having my own assumptions challenged.

My interview with Rebecca Adamson, the founder of First Peoples Worldwide, left me breathless being on the receiving end of her passion and brilliance. Rebecca, a Cherokee, has worked directly with grassroots tribal communities, and nationally as an advocate of local tribal issues since 1970. She helped create the first microloan in the U.S. on a reservation. She’s been active in the Social Investment movement since its inception and brings a wisdom perspective based on indigenous understanding and methodology to the conversation on money and the economy.

She shares some stories on sufficiency and wealth redistribution in this 5 minute clip that have stuck with me since our interview a year and a half ago! Please watch and share and comment.

We are now entering post-production full on. I’ll be meeting with a potential animator and musician this week. I’ve got my second editor on board. We’ll start researching and obtaining archival footage soon. And I’m talking to some collaborators about designing a “workbook” to be used in conjunction with group screenings.

We still need to raise about $30,000 for this next stage (for above items). I am astounded at how the funds keep flowing in and take it to be a reflection of a hunger for this conversation. And I know this film will be a valuable tool in satiating this hunger. If you find value in the project (what we’ve been sharing thus far and what’s to come), please consider giving accordingly. This is a labor of love for what’s possible.

John Fullerton is Founder and President of Capital Institute, a transdisciplinary collaborative space dedicated to exploring and effecting economic change.  The Institute’s mission is to help create “a more just, resilient, and sustainable way of living on this earth through the transformation of finance.”

In our candid interview with John, he shared his own transformative journey that lead him from Wall Street, where he managed capital markets worldwide at JP Morgan, to establishing himself as a thought leader in the “new economy” space.

In this 5 minute clip, John speaks soberly yet with optimism about the immense challenge of our time: the biospheric reality that is forcing us to re-think economics as we have known it, which is as John states “essentially our religion today.”

Watch, listen, comment and share!

I am lucky.  I get to sit down and talk with some of the brightest minds and biggest hearts that have been engaging the conversation on transitioning to a new economy, to a world occupied by systems that work for the well-being of all life on the planet.  Juliet Schor, Professor of Sociology at Boston College, certainly fits this bill having spent her career robustly researching, writing and lecturing on the connections between consumerism, work life and ecological sustainability.

Enjoy the first five minutes of our interview where I asked her to share her view on the growth of the Occupy Movement.

In my first 30 minutes at Liberty Plaza, I walked upon a circle of stillness, a growing gathering of meditators who sat in stark contrast to the blustering trees and flapping tarps, the wet chill in the air, and the constant shuffling of people all around.

The power of holding the subtle space for the Occupy Movement was undeniably felt and I fell instantly into the conviction that sacred activism is, in large part, what will give this movement true transformative legs to stand on and walk with.

A month into the Occupy Wall Street movement and, like many of you, I have been watching, reading, talking, participating, and learning with fervor.  All the while, feeling a great upwelling of inspiration at what we are witness to, with no one certain as to its outcome, and with no one specific in control. The old guard in us trembles at the notion, but something greater in our hearts gives way to the tase of possibility, the taste of something real afoot.

I’ve been eager to put fingers to keyboard in efforts to articulate the nuances of my reflections and feelings but have yielded instead to the consuming work of filming and digesting the varied perspectives of others. There is a rush to name and conceptualize what is unfolding, this is natural. But I feel there is no name yet for the potential of what is emerging.  It’s organic, messy and autopoetic. Life at its creative best. The people re-claiming the integrity of democracy and Life re-claiming its heritage, taking a stand for its inherent beauty and worth. Perhaps taking itself to the next order of creation along the way.

I’ve had the good fortune to be in Nashville, Tennessee the day Occupy Nashville kicked off.  And then again was in Chicago on the day the labor unions marched with Occupy Chicago in Take Back Chicago!  And am leaving in two days for NYC to visit Zuccotti Park. Needless to say, I am taking my camera with me.

Between here and there, I was able to stitch together enough time to quickly cut a segment from Occupy Chicago.  Instead of more words, I leave you with the moving image.  With more to come.

Last May I had the pleasure and fun of spending a couple of days with Bill Miller, Nipun Mehta, Pancho Ramos-Stierle and the gang of ServiceSpace (formerly CharityFocus). Put simply, ServiceSpace – a wondrous web of people, technologies, ideas and actions – is an astonishing expression of lived generosity.  And the glue that binds the web together is love.

If ever there was inspiration for realizing an economy based on giving over accumulating, that brings relationship and our inherent interdependence with all life back into the realm of exchange, I witnessed and felt it in those two days.  Better yet, I was even infected by this generosity virus and I’m asking more and more “how can I serve (you)” versus the mostly unspoken undertow of “what can I get (from you?)”

One of ServiceSpace’s more famous ventures into the Gift Economy is Karma Kitchen (now in 3 cities in the U.S.).  I’ve been hearing about Karma Kitchen for years and finally had the joy of walking through the doors of this unique experiment.  Here is a five-minute film I created out of being so moved by my experience of these two days and in longing to convey the essence of what it means to live in the gift.

One of the most frequent questions I get when people learn about the film is “what do you think is going to happen with the economy” followed by “what are the solutions?”  As a former psychotherapist by trade, my tendency is to usually respond to the question with more questions to the questioner.

You could call it a cop out, but there is real wealth in the deepening of dialogue, in the exchange of wonder and not knowing, out of which a genuine insight may emerge, a kernel of real knowledge that has the power to open up unforeseen horizons.  Certainly a richening of the relationship in the moment is inevitable versus delivering a stock answer like a platter of ready-made food.  Jacob Needleman says that “any question can lead to truth if it is an aching question.”

So many of us feel helpless and hopeless in the daunting face of the economic crisis, by the mere consideration of effecting change on the reigning juggernaut of Business As Usual.  And helplessness turned to apathy will surely be our greatest enemy, if you will. The questioning is our sanctuary from and bullet against this enemy (of our own innocent making).  Needleman goes on to say “an aching question, a question that is not just a matter of curiosity or a fleeting burst of emotion, cannot be answered with old thought…The intelligence of the heart begins to call to us in our sleep.”

So I’ve had the honor, pleasure and good fortune for the past couple of years to get to run around and ask a lot of brilliant minds and beautiful hearts a lot of questions about where we are and where we are headed.  The many responses have deepened my own questions, lead me in to new territory of my own understanding and capacity, and made me hungrier for truth and an outer engagement with the questions that lead the way.

I had no idea I was going to write this long intro to this 7 minute clip from the interview with my mentor and friend Hazel Henderson, President of Ethical Markets.  For decades Hazel has been blazing the trail in asking paradigm-shifting questions of the Business As Usual model.  It seems there is a critical mass now catching up with her.

This clip is her response at the time to the popular questions: what’s happening with the economy and what are the solutions?  I offer it not as the answer but as a deepening to the questions of our participation in what Hazel calls “a design revolution from top to bottom.”  Beneath all the complicated details of money and finance, we are facing a crisis of democracy (look no further than the political theatre of late for evidence), a crisis of the human spirit, of awakening our direct participation in the great experiment of life.

What aching questions are alive in you?  Are inspired by this clip?  What intelligence of the heart is beginning to call?

And please share your reflections and questions if you feel so compelled…

I woke up this morning with Leonard Cohen’s lyrics from “Bird on the Wire” echoing in my inner chamber.  I have not listened to that song in years, so I was curious to see what message it was bringing and how it might inform me as I continue working on the film (or the film continues working on me):

Like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free

Like a worm on a hook
Like a knight from some old fashioned book
I have saved all my ribbons for thee

If I, if I have been unkind
I hope that you can just let it go by
If I, if I have been untrue
I hope you know it was never to you

Oh, like a baby, stillborn
Like a beast with his horn
I have torn everyone who reached out for me

But I swear by this song
And by all that I have done wrong
I will make it all up to thee

I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch
He said to me, “You must not ask for so much”
And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door
She cried to me, “Hey, why not ask for more?”

Oh, like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free

In the context of the Great Transition we are in on planet Earth (of which I see the breakdown of our financial and monetary system reflecting starkly to us), I wonder as an individual and as a player in a greater whole:

What am I/are we asking for too much?  And what could I/could we stand to ask for more?

Good inquiry for us birds on the wire!