From: Jem Bendel) To: Jeffrey <jeevacation®gmail.com> Subject:The Festival Nears: Jem's Quarterly #2 Date: Tue, 12 May 2015 09:54:42 +0000 Greetings Jeffrey This is my second quarterly update (time flies!) If you dont want a round up every 3 months, click the link at the end of this email. Still here? Good, as I want to update you on the festival we are organising this summer on the shores of England's largest lake. The full programme, which includes over 80 experts, plus lots of outdoor activities is now out: download here. As it is during the summer holidays, we are providing a free children's programme of professionally run outdoor activities - and babysitting. Half the places have now gone, so book now if you are interested. The research festival is preceded by a 6 day course on sustainable leadership that I'm teaching. We have some wonderful people joining the course. In the past months I've been on secondment to the UN, and as I've been in Geneva I presented my research at a couple of events. In April I presented to the UNECE about the monetary cause of the house price crisis that is affecting many cities. I explained, based on my work in 'Healing Capitalism' that the more consolidated a nation's banking system is, the more their lending is focused on real estate, and so this leads to the asset price inflation of housing. Solutions must involve re-balancing the process of new money creation by commercial banks. That can be achieved by promoting more local banks that focus on lending to businesses (e.g. breaking up RBS) and introducing credit guidance so we move away from a situation where over 80% of new credit creation is for real estate. Other options include removing from commercial banks the priviledge of creating money. Given that, according to research, most politicians dont even realise that commercial banks create over 90% of a nations' money supply, we have some way to go before sensible policies even begin to be considered. I