What is known is that monetary crashes invariably leave people in fear, despair, and anger.This is an explosive social mix that irresponsible demagogues can and do exploit, even today.What started as a monetary problem in the former Yugoslavia, for example—exacerbated by the IMF readjustment program in the late 1980s—was swiftly transformed into intolerance toward “others.” Minorities were used as scapegoats by ethnic leaders to redirect anger away from themselves andtoward a common enemy, providing the sociopolitical context for extreme nationalist leaders to gain power in the process.Within days of the 1998 monetary crisis in Indonesia, mobs were incited to violence against Chinese and other minorities.Similarly, in Russia, discrimination against minorities was aggravated by the financial collapse of the 1990s.With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Soviet communism, it could be argued that the identified archenemy of the United States has now been supplanted with a new foe, immigrants and the poor.
Rethinking Money: How New Currencies Turn Scarcity into Prosperity (BK Currents)
by Bernard A. Lietaer