Thomas H. Greco, Jr.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thomas H. (Tom) Greco, Jr. (born 1936) is a community and monetary economist, writer and consultant and a leading researcher on the subject of free market alternative currency and monetary systems.^[1] He is founder and director of the non-profit Community Information Resource Center which supports community improvement and sustainability efforts. British author David Boyle has called Thomas Greco a "pioneer" in the field of local currencies.^[2] Greco’s writings are frequently cited by alternative currency advocates.^[3]

1 Life and Work
2 Approach to Alternative Currencies
3 Bibliography
4 References
5 External links
6 See Also

[edit] Life and Work

Greco graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Villanova University, acquired a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Rochester and did additional course work pursuant to a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) at Syracuse University. For fourteen years he taught economics, finance, statistics, entrepreneurship, and forecasting as a faculty member in the college of business at Rochester Institute of Technology.

In 1979 Thomas Greco became a private consultant and community activist, working with local Rochester, New York peace and justice groups. From 1981 to 1990 he served as trustee and then president of the School of Living which promotes “decentralized, ecologically-sound, self-governed and humane communities.” A frequent contributor to the decentralist publication Fourth World Review, Greco organized of the Fourth World Assembly and New Economics Symposium held in San Francisco in 1987.

Since 1989 Thomas Greco has focused on studying, writing about, promoting and consulting on monetary exchange alternatives, including private credit clearing systems, complementary currencies and local currencies, including through his web site ReinventingMoney.Com. Greco’s views especially have been influenced by the theories of E.C. Riegel in the compilation of his essays Flight from Inflation: The Monetary Alternative and the German School of Money and Banking (also known as the German School of Monetary Freedom), including economists Heinrich Rittershausen and Ulrich von Beckerath, and attorney and author Walter Zander

After moving to Arizona, Greco assisted in the development of LETSonora (a Local Exchange Trading System) and helped organize Tucson Traders, both now defunct. He has advised groups like Current Innovations, Alliance for Human Empowerment and Macrocosm USA. He has traveled widely promoting and assisting currency projects in the United States, Mexico and South America, Europe, India, Indonesia, China and New Zealand.

Greco was the keynote speaker at the 1998 conference on “Sustainability: From Vision to Practice,” held at Sirius Community and was a forum leader for the 2001 Radical Consultation Forum on Globalization, Money & Trade held in Swindon, England. In 2006, he was a presenter at the conference on Knowledge, Business and Consciousness held at the international community of Auroville, India; the keynote speaker at the annual convention of the International Reciprocal Trade Association (IRTA), the trade association for the commercial "barter" industry; and a speaker at the E.F. Schumacher Society "Money in Local Living Economies" forum in Burlington, Vermont. As reported at the Barter News Blog, in 2007 Greco was the featured speaker at forums in Beijing and Hang Zhou, China and one of the main speakers at The International Conference On the Dinar Economy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Thomas Greco has authored three books on monetary theory and how monetary alternatives can empower communities. He has published articles in many publications, including the Whole Earth Review, World Business Academy Perspectives, Earth Island Journal, Yes! Magazine, Green Revolution, The Permaculture Activist.

[edit] Approach to Alternative Currencies

Greco writes on ReinventingMoney.Com:

The mission of this site is to demystify money by presenting the best leading-edge ideas on monetary and non-monetary exchange. It is a resource devoted to the advancement of economic democracy, self-determination, and global harmony.

He holds that:

The primary lever of power in today's world is the overly centralized, monopolistic control over money, banking, and finance. Money constitutes the greatest and most acute current problem, while being at once the structural domain that is most ready for a transformational shift. It is clear that the best and most promising approaches to liberating economic exchange are in the realm of private, voluntary, free-market initiatives...^[4]

In a review of Greco’s Money: Understanding and Creating Alternatives to Legal Tender, Brian Leslie writes:

Greco is more concerned with the details of current and potential alternative currencies, devoting much of his book to descriptions of current examples and a selection of past ones, their strengths and weaknesses, and theoretical possibilities and recommendations for future systems, several of which are his own proposals. He notes that alternative currencies start and are most successful at times (and in places) when the failings of official money are having the greatest impact, and mostly discontinue when conditions improve.^[5]