Cleanliness might be the last thing that comes to mind when thinking about money. While a trillion microbial bacteria live all over us and, no doubt, on our money too, most of us probably never give its purity a thought.
At the same time, unconsciously, we associate money with dirt – filthy lucre, money requiring laundering, filthy rich (as opposed to dirt poor), and so on, all spring to (my) mind automatically – but only recently I became aware of the concept of clean money, not the freshly laundered staff, and how it earns that epithet through the use to which it is put. Simply put, clean money is money that doesn’t harm people or the planet but is used for the benefit of all.
Recently a Royal Banking Commission here in Australia has slammed all four of the major banks for greedy and unscrupulous behaviour towards their customers. Fees charged to the accounts of deceased people, or charged for advice never given were some of the proven charges while more than sixty million dollars were loaned to dirty fossil fuel projects in the last ten years.
While many of us (or at least some) try to lead meaningful lives – donating to charities, sorting our domestic garbage, eating organic, even going vegan – increasingly people want to know whether their money is used beneficially, morally and for the sake of the planet and future generations and how the products made with our money may be damaging people and the planet.
Clean money thinks through where materials came from, who assembled them and whether the process was fair or unfair, empowering or disabling. Does it matter? Do we understand where our money goes, for what and for whom?
Along with clean food and clean energy, clean money is emerging, blended by both the massive ‘green’ movement worldwide and the colossal transfer of wealth from the well-heeled Boomers on to Gen X and the Millenials*.
We all (mostly) place our money into banks nowadays but I certainly have never questioned – much less thought – about what the bank does with my, and other people’s, money. The simple question prompted by Joel Solomon* in his recent book, The Clean Money Revolution – Do you really know what your money is doing? – struck me like a hammer blow. What if, God forbid, my bank is investing my money in chemical or biological weapons programs or in strip mining the ocean floor or cutting down the Amazon jungle or…? You get the picture.
So, where do our banks invest our money and how do we find out and what is my personal bottom line? Perhaps because of the scandals unearthed by the banking commission here, there have been a lot of attention paid to responsible banking with smaller banks and credit unions that proclaim their aversion to investing in such things as fossil fuels, intensive animal farming, gambling, arms and the tobacco industries to name but a few while still returning a prosperous return.
Responsible banking means using the customers’ deposits to loan to people, to community organisations and to businesses in order to have a positive economic, social, environmental and cultural impact on the world.
Responsible banks are owned by their customers, not the shareholders, with profits returned to customers through better rates and fees while investing in such areas as community housing suited to people with special care needs, lending responsibly to individual customers an amount they can afford to repay, sustainable, affordable and community-focused land developments and renewable energy projects and not for profit community organisations, all aimed to create positive social and environmental change.
Perhaps antecedent to this ‘new’ banking morality was the earlier focus on Fair Trade products as society moved from the Baby Boomer generation in the middle of last century to that of the (possibly more) socially aware Generation X and the Millenials who followed them, born towards the last quarter of the previous century.
Right now, the Millenials are on the edge of the largest transfer of inter-generational money ever experienced in human history. Baby Boomers here in Australia probably make up less than a quarter of the population while hanging onto to more than half the wealth of the country. During the next twenty years, at least three trillion dollars are expected to change hands from one generation to another, the Millenials. Worldwide the figure must be huge.
Unfortunately, much of this money the Millenials will inherit is, by its very nature, dirty money, earned from non-ethical investments in such things as arms, fossil fuels and tobacco to name but a few. No blame, of course, can be attributed to generations who, in their turn, profited from such things as slavery and the opium trade for example. No doubt, just like us, people trusted the banks to do the right thing with their money. However, unlike the present generation which has grown up with the Internet and widespread knowledge, our parents were probably unaware of where the banks were investing their money.
This generation does not have that luxury of ignorance. Now there is no excuse, we can join the growing number of clean banks that support such things as divesting from fossil fuels into renewable energy, organic foods or other ethical possibilities, like cleaner manufacturing or preventive health or waste reduction.
No matter how much or how little we have in some bank or other, there is one thing we can all do and that is check if our banks make their money in a way that aligns with our personal values, If not …?
Personally, I am looking forward to closing down my account with the subsidiary of one of the four major (dirty) banks here in Australia and opening up with a clean one.
By aligning money with values everybody can benefit from what their money is doing right at this moment somewhere in this shared world without sacrificing our planet.
That will certainly be easier for me than going vegan!
- A rough definition of some of the terms used here –
Baby-Boomers refers to the generation born in the two decades, more or less, after the WWII, so from 1946 – 1964
Gen(eration) X covers the following period 1965 – 1979, and
Gen(eration) Y – also known as Millenials – takes in 1980 – 1994, while
Gen(eration) Z deals with those born between 1995 – 2015
Gen Who Knows? – 2016 – 2038?
- Solomon, Joel. The Clean Money Revolution . New Society Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Red Branch Chronicles 