Could we fix systemic flaws simply by printing a new denomination with a picture of a mag-lev train riding through a wind farm on the back of the bill?

The Preamble

I’m not an economist or an expert on currency markets. But I am a designer. When designers are presented with problems, they instinctively imagine design solutions. This is my proposal to work towards solving the current financial crisis and restore the greatness of the United States of America. It is inspired by the three previous attempts of Presidents Lincoln, Jackson and Kennedy to re-nationalize our currency. Most people don’t realize that our currency is based on the Treasury Department selling debt to an international banking cartel that funds the Federal Reserve Bank. When you really try to figure out what the Fed is, you realize that it’s not really Federal (beyond the appointment of leadership positions by government) and it’s not really a Reserve either. And it’s certainly not the purest form of a United States currency. We’ve tried issuing a non-fiat currency of US Notes in the past, often nicknamed the greenback. According to economist, S.G. Fisher, ‘the Greenbacks were the best currency that ever a Nation had.’¹ Naturally, banks hate this kind of currency as it diminishes the role of debt in a financial system, which is how they get to make money out of thin air.

The Problem

The Federal Reserve is far too powerful; above the authority of Congress² and probably above the President.³

Our Lender of Last Resort is now so mired in debt and inflationary triggers that it’s hard to imagine its capacity to finance a green economy revolution. The Fed is stuck with financing the bailouts and an exponential debt that now equals the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and has doubled the amount of money in circulation. In other words, the international financiers that actually supply the Fed with loans to issue Federal Reserve Note dollars have not only doubled their investment, but also crafted the conditions to cause devastating inflation down the road, which will invariably benefit them with more and more indentured servitude to their unquenchable money making.

The forces of globalism naturally seek a more stable currency, one that is more protected from the boom-bust cycles that work out great for the international banking cartel. Just consider how unbelievably profitable the housing-bubble collapse and ensuing bailouts have been to JP Morgan and Goldman-Sachs.

In addition, a Central Bank system thwarts pure capitalism and fuels crony capitalism by centering monetary policy in the hands of a winner-take-all few. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve is widely regarded as the most powerful man in the world economy. And this is good? The US campaign finance and lobby system only worsens the situation, nurturing a corrupt partnership between the corporate person and legislators.

Whether your political perspective is leftist or rightist, it’s pretty easy to accept that the Federal Reserve just might be the source of all economic evil. Libertarians hate it. Liberals should hate it for epitomizing the secret subversion of government and a blatant conspiracy to enrich private interests at the expense of the state and the public common good. The only people who really support the idea of the Federal Reserve are Centrists, who by nature, don’t want to rock the boat. And dissolving the Fed is a truly radical idea, Titanic Big, maybe bigger.

The Solution

Launch a parallel, alternate US NOTE greenback dollar in the spirit of a national project, such as financing a war or major sci-tech project. Like JFK’s proposal, Treasury could issue $30 and $200 US “green” notes. The New Greenback’s value would be directly coupled to Green bonds to fund new eco-economy projects (renewables, mag-lev trains, smart electric vehicles). The value derived from the presumed economic strength of a “free” energy grid that fuels a “clean” transportation network promises a staggering profit potential once initial outlay is capitalized. The Greenback 2.0 captures our national economic potential as an alternative to the petroleum economy. Big Oil is completely tethered to Fed notes and the entrenched oligarchy.

New Greenbacks would likely have restrictions like the original US fiat currencies: maybe you couldn’t pay your income tax with them, or buy gasoline. Instead, they would be used to buy green energy and transportation, as well as acceptable goods and services. We would use New Greenbacks to buy clean energy from wind/solar/tidal farms, pay fares on mag-lev trains, purchase leases on electric smart vehicles and debit tolls on smart highways (with EZPass 2.0 powered by Greenbacks). Commercial business would be free to accept Greenbacks for everyday transactions based on a market-derived exchange rate against Fed Note dollars. Banks and other financial institutions would probably disparage this currency since they’re in on the Federal Reserve cartel.

The Result

Greenbacks (US Notes) would compete in the marketplace with Federal Reserve Notes to diminish the international banking cartel’s grip on our government, economy and monetary policy.

Greenbacks would buffer against inevitable Federal Reserve Note inflation while providing a means to exchange value based on the assets of environmentally sound, renewable, basically unlimited energy sources and the subsequent transportation capabilities that would drive a new 21st century marketplace towards a future without debt.

Instead of making money out of thin air through the Fractional Reserve System, an alternate US Note currency would make money out of an ambitious, game-changing clean-and-green energy and transportation system.

Footnotes

1. This is an awesome quote and S.G. Fisher is an awesome name, but I’m having trouble fact-checking this person and attribution beyond the Wikipedia entry where I found it.
2. According to the Accounting and Auditing Act of 1950, section, 31 USC 714(b), congressional audits of the Federal Reserve may not include “deliberations, decisions and actions on monetary policy matters.” According to the law, in other words, the Fed simply cannot be audited by Congress. Or by anyone else, for that matter.
3. Conspiracy Theory: In 1963, President Kennedy had tried to circumvent the private Federal Reserve banking cartel by issuing legal tender notes in $2 United States Notes denominations. Many speculate that this cost him his life as all the notes were recalled days after his assassination. Andrew Jackson killed the Federal Reserve, but we don’t really know the whole story. Some say it was just a shallow personal vendetta against the bankers that ran it. Others say Jackson was sincere. Abraham Lincoln used US Notes to help finance the Civil War, also assassinated. Call it coincidence or assume the banking cartel operates above the law as it has every reason to and has gotten away with it for more than a hundred years.

It has been awhile since posting to mercurious. However, we’ve been hard at work updating our academic site. This site now documents recent student work:

• Freshmen Processing work
• Muzzi, the digital pet —music player hybrid
• Info Wraps, a mobile informatics research project

It also now features a commercial work samples page that highlights an eight-year career in the interactive media industry. Perhaps the most interesting additions include ancient works from the vault, some almost a decade old.

In fact, getting this site together in this manner has been long overdue.

» New and improved professorial site on parsons.edu

Mobile Touch Screen WordPress Theme In The Works

In response to the proliferating importance of portable touch-screen interfaces, we have started the design and development of a WordPress theme for iPhone and iPod Touch devices. The theme will make your WordPress site look and behave like a native application, taking advantage of the special requirements of a touch-screen, flick-and-slide scroll interface minimizing zoom-pinching, all using Joe Hewitt’s iUI JavaScript and CSS library.

The project is currently in a pre-alpha release state. We have released an early alpha, with a distant dream publish it to the official WordPress theme site. Anyone who is interested in helping to test and develop the concept should contact us by email. Let it be known that we are not the first to attempt a WordPress iUI theme, although we are working a more comprehensive implementation than what Justin Barkhuff has already achieved while on his year-long honeymoon!

» Try WordPress Touch pre-alpha on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

If the Touch theme does not appear right away, keep trying, by refreshing or revisiting this link. For some reason, the cookie that tells WordPress to use this theme isn’t registering correctly.

Release Notes

• You can simulate the experience by viewing the Touch theme without an iPhone or iPod Touch by using Safari 3.1 or the Webkit nightly build, the iPhoney simulator, or the official iPhone simulator as part of the SDK.
• Viewing this theme in other browsers will probably yield unpredictable and undesirable results.
• Your browser will remember your theme choice in a cookie. To reset back to the standard theme, choose Preferences > Theme > Desktop within the Touch theme main menu.
• As stated above, if you don’t succeed in triggering the WordPress Touch theme to appear, be persistent. This is an known issue to be resolved. It has something to do with the theme switcher plugin I’m using.

Design Goals

• Optimize WordPress consumption for the WebKit touchscreen user-interface model — in progress
• Focus on mobile use-cases, to allow a quick consume, easy lookups — in progress
• Employ best practices for iPhone and iPod Touch interface design conventions — in progress
• Allow options for auto-detection, user-selection and return to standard desktop views — in progess
• Introduce glossy icons for menus, with preference to disable — to do
• Introduce auto-resizing thumbnail management and disabling LightBox photo gallery features — to do

A collaboration between the Academy of Arts and Design, Tsinghua University, Beijing and Communication Design and Technology, Parsons The New School for Design

Objective

Develop a design prototype to present to the Art and Design Academy and BOCOG proposing an interactive Mobile Visitors Guide for the 2008 Beijing Olympiad. Comprising of a desktop web product and a downloadable mobile media component, the Mobile Visitors Guide will offer travelers to Beijing helpful information about Olympic events, venues, the visual identity system, transportation, language assistance, and the unique and vibrant culture of China. In particular, the mobile component offers visitors a useful electronic assistant to navigate the city and manage culture shock and language barriers.

Goals

The workshop students (RedStudio) will present prototypes and design documents suggesting and demonstrating how this product might be further defined and developed. The short timeframe (three weeks) will not allow the creation of a fully functional product, but we hope that it inspires further study and development.

Solution

Adobe Flash technology offers the best platform to rapidly design and prototype the Beijing Olympics Mobile Visitors Guide. Using Flash Player to deploy the desktop web feature prototype and Flash Lite to deploy the mobile media prototype on Nokia Series 60 handsets, the students will easily integrate design and content across delivery mechanisms for a unified and integrated user experience.

Mobile Media Enabling World Class Hospitality

Everyone knows that the Chinese are famous for great hospitality, and preparing for the 2008 Summer Olympics is no exception. However, the rapid pace of development and the intricacy of the Chinese language and culture creates
barriers for visitors to enjoy their experience in Beijing. Now that most people carry a mobile phone or laptop when they travel, the Mobile Visitors Guide solves common problems for foreigners to help them communicate across languages, discover the delights of the city, manage its challenges, and more easily find their way around.

An Essential Companion

In the New China, driven by high technology and media innovations, visitors to the Olympics Beijing 2008 should enjoy digital services to help them make the most of their time here, whether on their laptop or mobile phone. Consider these modules:

• Find your way. Visually link event schedules to venue locations and find your way by subway, taxi, bicycle or walking.
• Keep score. Follow sports events by medal counts, in real-time, as winners are announced.
• Communicate. Blaze through the language barrier with common translations for useful phrases and situations on your mobile. Get pinyin transliterations, hanzi characters and audio pronunciations. Point your way out of a tricky situation using Chinese characters on your mobile’s screen. Hand over your mobile and let the Beijinger listen to your needs.
• Participate in China’s Cultural Olympics at the National Art Museum of China and use a mobile phone in an experimental large-scale group interaction within the gallery spaces.
• Explore and discover the Old Beijing and take a guided tour through the famous hutongs, an intricate maze of traditional culture and cuisine.
• Meet the Five Friendlies. The Fuwa have a great life story and getting acquainted with them will help you better enjoy their intricate symbolism which elegantly evokes the many layers of Chinese language and culture, not to mention the universal spirit of the Olympics.

Conclusion

This project prototype was presented to the Academy of Arts and Design, Tsinghua University on June 20, 2007. Relevant industry critics from Nokia and Microsoft R&D laboratories in Beijing attended the presentation.

Presentation Photos

See also

Red Studio: Teaching Design at Tsinghua↑