An interview with Lynne Twist

In her interview Lynne Twist covers different topics related to her life. She first starts talking about the big role religion had in the early stage of her life, after her father died when she was only thirteen years old. This was in contrast with her other life, being the star cheerleader in high school and dating a football star. These two lives never collided, until she could finally mix them together with the Hunger Project and the EST training, allowing her to take "a stand in life". She also wrote a book called "The Soul of Money", exploring different stories that engage the reader around the topic of money, including previous works from her. There also a website with the same name.

This interview really showed me how sometimes many beautiful things can come out of bad situations. Lynne Twist was able to change her life after the death of her father, and finally accomplish something she always wanted to do, helping less fortunate people. Her story is really inspiring and I would suggest everybody to read more about her.

Faith, Hope, and Love

In the introduction, the author mentions three perspectives of financial transactions, which are faith, hope, and love, and he wishes to bring more consciousness to money and its uses to an evolving appreciative economy by letting people understand these qualities. The author pictures an appreciative economy, valuing the warmth of recognition. One way the author uses to explain faith is by relating it to brand allegiance: if customer’s experience with the product confirms the promise of the brand, the product earns customer loyalty and makes itself a shopping habit of the customer. Loan transactions is another example: the lender look over borrower’s creditworthiness and financial history to establish enough faith for himself to make the decision, while borrower need a faith of himself to honor the loan commitment before he asks for the service. The author says hope is a future bearing since it processes over time and gift transaction, one example of transactions based upon hope, to charity is entirely future bearing because no one could expect what the outcomes of the charity activity are and what impact the activity sponsored by this gift could bring to the world. Purchases have values in the equality of exchange at the time and by saying purchases for need are practices for love, the author is questioning what the real needs of an individual are and whether the decision of purchases affects the needs of others. Love is refereed to the author by something that is only present, influencing transactions, happening in a single action and making us value money differently every time.

I believe that faith, hope and love are 3 characteristics that exist in most transactions that take place in our daily lives, whether it be economical or not. Faith in regards to that the idea that you must have faith that what you are doing and where you are going in a given moment will end up okay. Hope that we need to look forward and believe we can be better and work towards a goal and love in the way that you must love who you are and the process of who you are becoming. All three characteristics are intertwined in our everyday lives both personally and economically.

When we take a deeper look at our economic life, the way we conduct financial transaction is similar to the way we look at our soul. By slowing down and think carefully, we recognize the deepest meanings of faith, hope, and love in financial transactions. This allows us to transform the way we look at our economic life and to conduct businesses with faith, hope, and love. “So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”

Genius of money chapters 5 and 13

Adam Smith, known as the father of economics, believed that self-interest and competition were two key factors that would guide the economy. Nevertheless, author John Bloom analyzes the social paradox this theory has built in it. He points out that "the shadow side of Smith’s socio-economic theory is created when an individual’s (or corporation’s) self-interest turns to greed and suffers from the condition of 'never-enoughness'"(Bloom 19). As the gap between the rich and the poor widens, and the presence of the middle class seems to diminish, this shadow seems to be growing in size. The author also references to JP Morgan and the Federal Reserve and how they handled the recent economic crisis.

This chapter also focuses on technology and its limitations in being able to solve the world's largest problems. Bloom references the speech Bill Gates gave in 2008 at the World Economic Forum. Gates claims that technology does have immense capabilities to solve problems and to improve the lives of the underprivileged. Nevertheless, he states that "[technological] breakthroughs change lives only where people can afford to buy them – only where there is economic demand. And economic demand is not the same as economic need” (Bloom 20). To support the argument John Bloom uses alternative currencies that use technology to provide a better service, like the TimeBanks, based on time rather than time.

In chapter 13 John Bloom analyzes money and its value in society. It affects everyday choices and yet we don’t feel comfortable talking about it. The author brings the example of J.S.G. Boogs, a contemporary artist who was able to pay with fake bills drew on a piece of paper and get change in real bills. He managed to repeat this action many times, to a point where he became famous that he was able to make it to art shows, increasing the value of “nothing” exponentially. The author also covers the dilemma presented in Grimm Brothers’ story “The Grave Mound”, inviting us to reflect about how we use our money.

This chapter invites you to reflect on how money can assume different values and shapes the way we behave in our everyday life. This chapter made me reflect on how we relate to money in society and how would society work without money. At the end an arbitrary value on a piece of paper might not be any different than old currencies they used in the past. The example of the fake bills that created value says a lot about it.