About Ben Dyson

I’m promoting an awareness of the fundamental problem of the current debt-based monetary system in the UK through working on the Positive Money campaign.

I’m based in London, but I’m often in Yorkshire, England, and in Chicago about once a year. Feel free to contact me.

A Brief Bio

I studied economics at SOAS, University of London, for two years, until in 2007 I realised that mainstream economics had little relevance to the real world. After finishing my second year, I withdrew from my course and joined three friends who were starting a business on the fringes of the financial sector. That business went well; within 6 months of joining and getting the business organised, we secured investment from the founder and owner of a FTSE250 firm worth over £1billion.

This experience on the fringes of the City gave me a good background in finance and how the City operates. But as I watched the financial crisis kick off, it became apparent that no journalist, commentator or politician had a clue about the root of the problem. The same superficial analysis was repeated over and over again; it was like blaming the collapse of a building on the occupants being overweight, rather than asking whether the building may have been fundamentally unsound.

Thanks to a random encounter a couple of years before, I had a different take on the financial crisis. Whilst stumbling through the university library one day, hunting for a mind-numbingly dull textbook on economics, the words ’Grip of Death‘ caught my eye. I had discovered the book that would explain why most economic theories failed, and why governments were usually unsuccessful in manipulating the economy. The book was Michael Rowbotham’s expose on the system on the shocking effects of money and debt creation at the hands of the commercial banks. (You can get the book on Amazon, but please consider supporting and thanking the publisher who took the financial risk of publishing this book: call Jon Carpenter Publishing on (+44) 01689 870437).

The book explained the fact that almost all money is now created by commercial banks, as debt, when they make loans. The system that this book revealed, and the devastating consequences that result from it, explained why economic theories never seem to work in reality. Without this knowledge, economists lacked a fundamental understanding of how the money system really works, and as money is the lubricant that makes everything happen in modern society, this meant that they could never understand how the economy really works.

By April 2009 it had become apparent that the authorities and commentators were no closer to the root of the problem than they had been at the start of the crisis. It was time to do something.

I went freelance a month later, and spent half my time earning money, and the other half researching the monetary system, developing proposals, based heavily on the work of James Robertson and Prof James Huber in Creating New Money (available as a free PDF). I also started to build a list of people who were interested in the issue, this site.

In January 2010, I made the first call out for a proper campaign. After some mis-starts, we registered a not-for-profit company in May 2010, and started building an organisation. Our first campaign name was too poorly-chosen to repeat, so in September 2010 we rebranded as Positive Money. The name has two meanings: that money (and finance) can be a positive force if the system is well-designed, and that money can be created as ‘positive money’, without the mountain of debt that is inherent in the current debt-based system.

Since then we’ve been making significant progress. Check out the Positive Money website for more.