Bernard Lietaer (7 February 1942 – 4 February 2019) was a

Belgian Belgian may refer to: * Something of, or related to, Belgium * Belgians, people from Belgium or of Belgian descent * Languages of Belgium, languages spoken in Belgium, such as Dutch, French, and German *Ancient Belgian language, an extinct languag ...

civil engineer A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering – the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructure while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing ...

economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...

author An author is the writer of a book, article, play, mostly written work. A broader definition of the word "author" states: "''An author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility f ...

, and educator. He studied

monetary system A monetary system is a system by which a government provides money in a country's economy. Modern monetary systems usually consist of the national treasury, the mint, the central banks and commercial banks. Commodity money system A commodity m ...

s and promoted the idea that communities can benefit from creating their own local or

complementary currency A complementary currency is a currency or medium of exchange that is not necessarily a national currency, but that is thought of as supplementing or complementing national currencies. Complementary currencies are usually not legal tender and thei ...

, which circulate parallel with national currencies.

Early life

Bernard Lietaer was born on 7 February 1942 in Lauwe,

Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to ...

. He attended College of St Paul, Godinne from 1955 to 1961. He studied engineering at the

Catholic University of Leuven University of Leuven or University of Louvain (french: Université de Louvain, link=no; nl, Universiteit Leuven, link=no) may refer to: * Old University of Leuven (1425–1797) * State University of Leuven (1817–1835) * Catholic University of L ...

, in Belgium, where, later in life, he held an assistant professorship of

international finance International finance (also referred to as international monetary economics or international macroeconomics) is the branch of financial economics broadly concerned with monetary and macroeconomic interrelations between two or more countries. Inter ...

. During his engineering studies, he was a member of the debating union

Olivaint Conference of Belgium The Royal Olivaint Conference of Belgium NPO is a Belgian independent, multilingual leadership organisation and debating union for students founded in 1954. It is the only student organisation in Belgium operating in both official languages ...

. After obtaining his M.Sc. in 1967, he went on to continue his studies at the

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

until 1969.

Career

Lietaer's post-graduate

thesis A thesis ( : theses), or dissertation (abbreviated diss.), is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings.International Standard ISO 7144 ...

, published in 1971, included a description of "floating exchanges". The Nixon Shock of that same year eradicated the

Bretton Woods system The Bretton Woods system of monetary management established the rules for commercial and financial relations among the United States, Canada, Western European countries, Australia, and Japan after the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement. The Bretto ...

by decoupling the US dollar from the

gold standard A gold standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is based on a fixed quantity of gold. The gold standard was the basis for the international monetary system from the 1870s to the early 1920s, and from th ...

and inaugurated an era of "universal floating exchanges". Prior to that time, the only "floating exchanges" involved some Latin American currencies. The techniques which he had developed for marginal, Latin American currencies were for a time the only systematic research that could be used to deal with the major currencies of the world. A US bank negotiated exclusive rights to his approach and Lietaer began another career. In 1987, he co-founded a currency-management firm, called GaiaCorp, and managed the offshore currency fund "Gaia Hedge II", which during the 1987-91 period was the world's top performing managed currency fund. His biography cites the Micropal survey of 1,800 off-shore funds. In the preface to his book '' The Future of Money: Beyond Greed and Scarcity'', Lietaer claimed: "We almost tripled the money in three years". ''

Business Week ''Bloomberg Businessweek'', previously known as ''BusinessWeek'', is an American weekly business magazine published fifty times a year. Since 2009, the magazine is owned by New York City-based Bloomberg L.P. The magazine debuted in New York City ...

'' named him "the world’s top currency trader" in 1992. From 2003 to 2006, he was a visiting scholar at

Naropa University Naropa University is a private university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1974 by Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa, it is named for the 11th-century Indian Buddhist sage Naropa, an abbot of Nalanda. The university describes itself a ...

, USA, where he created the university's Marpa Center for Business and Economics. While at the Central Bank in Belgium, he implemented the convergence mechanism ( ECU) to the single European-currency system. During that period, he also served as President of Belgium's

Electronic Payment System An e-commerce payment system (or an electronic payment system) facilitates the acceptance of electronic payment for offline transfer, also known as a subcomponent of electronic data interchange (EDI), e-commerce payment systems have become incre ...

. In an 2007 interview, Lietaer claimed that diversified, internationally valid currencies can help "address specific needs and enable certain exchanges – whether to fight global warming, promote employment or facilitate education and health care." In 2012, he was co-author, along with Christian Arnsperger, Sally Goerner, and Stefan Brunnhuber, of ''Money & Sustainability: the missing link'', a publication of The Club of Rome, in which he predicted that "the period 2007-2020 ould beone of financial turmoil and gradual monetary breakdown.""Money & Sustainability:the missing link"
, News release d The Club of Rome

Personal life and death

At the time of his death, Lietaer lived in Hoyerhagen, in northern Germany.

Bibliography

* The Future of Money (London: Random House, 2001) * New Money for a New World (Qiterra Press 2011) (with Stephen Belgin) *
People Money: The Promise of Regional Currencies
(with

Margrit Kennedy Margrit Kennedy (November 21, 1939, Chemnitz – December 28, 2013, Steyerberg) was a German architect, professor, environmentalist, author and advocate of complementary currencies and an interest- and inflation-free economy. In 2011, she initia ...

and John Rogers) (Triarchy Press 2012) * Money and Sustainability: The Missing Link / A report from the Club of Rome (with Christian Arnsperger, Sally Goerner and Stefan Brunnhuber), Triarchy Press Ltd, 30. May 2012, * Rethinking Money: How New Currencies Turn Scarcity into Prosperity (with Jacqui Dunne) (Berrett-Koehler Publishers 2013), *With Helga Preuss, Marek Hudon, Kristof de Spiegeleer, Dieter Legat & Cary Sherburne
Towards a sustainable world
Delta Institute - Dieter Legat E.U. 2019,

Notes

External links

* Official website (since 2022) with all biographical information and publications
bernard-lietaer.org

New Money for a New World

Money and Sustainability: The Missing Link
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lietaer, Bernard 1942 births 2019 deaths Belgian economists Catholic University of Leuven alumni Freiwirtschaft Monetary reformers Naropa University faculty Academic staff of the Université catholique de Louvain Members of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts