Fixing our broken financial system22 July 2013
Everyone's talking about bad bankers.
But if you wanted to change our finance and banking system that put people and the planet first, where would you start?
At our Transforming Finance conference in May, an impressive array of experts and campaigners threw their ideas into the ring.
More than 20 speakers set out their ideas - ranging from local banking to limiting to the ability of banks to speculate on useless activity.
The conference was also featured in a double page spread in the Observer, and was summarised in 4 videos on the Guardian website.
Smaller, better banking
An idea that we kept hearing was about the huge dangers presented by four massive banks dominating our economy.
Governments need to get a handle on what our banks lend to - cracking down on pointless speculation. Even former chief regulator, Lord Turner, said much of the activities of banks is "socially useless".
In Germany, their network of local savings banks - that only lend for local purposes - went from strength to strength as the big banks fell. And with innovators coming up with more ways to sidestep the big banks, this looks like an exciting time for new thinking.
Time to transform finance
Many of our campaigns are about getting money where it's needed, and out of harmful activities.
You can write to your pension fund asking them if they're bankrolling harmful land grabbing. Or ask Apple to come clean about the damage it's supply chain inflicts on the communities and environment of Bangka Island, Indonesia.
Our colleagues at Friends of the Earth Europe are also working for stricter rules and fairer practices, to transform a broken banking system.
We'd love to hear your ideas about what needs to happen to fix our broken financial system.
© Transforming Finance
