THE FUTURE OF MONEY Bernard A. Lietaer - library.uniteddiversity ...

monastic orders was equivalent to a 'cosmopolitan community' in
Careful Communities. Some even have considered it the high period
of 'Christian Mysticism', the period in the West where the sacred and
the secular sustained each other and worked in harmony. But in most
other regards, the assessment that it was a comparatively 'Dark Age'
remains valid.
The 'Careful Communities' scenario is triggered by a sequence of
breakdowns - such as a monetary crash, and a significant earthquake
in California each of which has been forecast by many specialists.
They do not have to occur in order to attain this scenario, but their
combination would be quite devastating to most centralized
governance systems. Some experts claim that, alone, a monetary
meltdown would be sufficient to provoke a breakdown of our current
society.
Assessing possibilities of breakdowns
The plausibility and consequences of some breakdowns will now be
assessed separately, and the consequences of their combination
evaluated.
A monetary meltdown?
The potential breakdown of a large-scale monetary crisis exists. The
Mexican crash of 1994-95, the Asian crisis of 1997 and the Russian one
in 1998 are certainly not going to be the last monetary crises of our
times. The dwarfing of the world economy by currency speculation
(see Primer) guarantees similar future episodes. However, the 'Big
Monetary Crash' would occur whenever the US$ comes under attack.
It is not a question of whether, but only a question of when, the
instabilities of the official monetary system will assail that linchpin
currency of the global money system.'