Global Vision 2000 the independent international Islamic thinktank held a successful emergency conference on the Global Financial Crash and a sustainable future for humanity on December 13 2008 in London. It brought together leading monetary reformers, bankers, economists, academics, social change and political activists, ngos and journalists from across the UK to focus on the current crisis and chart out new directions to rebuild the system.

see http://www.globalvision2000.com/images/GV2000/gv2000conference.pdf

After the opening formalities and welcome from the host, the opening address and inspirational illumination was given by Reverend Canon Peter Challen, Chairman of the Christian Council for Monetary Justice , who gracefully began with the simplest plea: love God (the universe/nature) and love your neighbour (all people). This guiding light extends to respect for all life. So what is it that underlies so much of the friction between people, and between people and nature? Canon Challen explained that we live in a system that is unjust because it is based on exploitation. The drivers of this exploitation are in the ideologies that lie behind property and corporate law, and the exploitative root is the usurious debt-based money system , with its hidden but incessant imperative: exponential growth. Exponential growth is not part of Earth jurisprudence; it is not natural; nature is based on cyclical flows, not linear expansion. Inclusive justice requires finding common ground; our shared earth identity. We have to move from love of power to power of love; from markets to networks; from competition to collaboration. Moreover, it is important to recognise that aspects of truth come from many sources and in many terms, but as William Shakespeare reminded us ' A rose by any other name would smell as sweet' , and we must learn to discern and honour the sweet smell of inclusive justice in whatever terms it is expressed.

Moeen Yaseen the convenor and Director of Global Vision 2000 opened up proceedings by emphasising the emergency context of the conference with the implosion of the global financial system with "black swan" events and an impending 2nd Great Depression. Neoliberal free market fundamentalism and the global financial usurious capitalism is built on the sand of a gigantic Ponzi scheme and is self destructing before our eyes and is being propped up for the moment by government intervention with taxpayers money being used as bailouts of the criminals. This is a great and unique opportunity to realise the vision for every human being to be afforded dignity and respect and live according to the laws of abundance as opposed to false laws of scarcity. This necessitates the need for an alternative diagnosis and prescription of the global financial crash with radical solutions addressing causes as opposed to symptoms and moving them from the fringe to mainstream. There was a need for moving towards an Universal Paradigm shift by establishing a crisis and future proof financial architecture and system which works for all. The conference was a powerful catalyst calling for the liberation of our money, banks and economy from bankers and from debt bondage. We are at a crossroads now and we are approaching the finest or final hour of humanity.

Bringing their expert perspectives on this vision were the following speakers. Muhammad Rafeeq of Global Vision 2000 one of the world's leading banking consultants argued that the technical cause for the current global financial crisis is the New Capital Accords , not any particular financial 'product' like sub-prime CDOs or derivatives. What was known as fractional-reserve banking, which was based on cash, finished in 2000. The New Capital Accords are based on the level of deemed risk in various tiers of assets, called 'capital'. The New Capital Accords caused and allowed the explosions in financial bubbles. Now, all the big banks would be bankrupt, not just insolvent, if litigation action were taken. The problem we have to face is the widespread confusion between financial fiction and the real economy. If this confusion remains, the fictional financial mess will have damaging impacts on the real economy, and society. At present, the government can only get money through taxes on transactions in the real economy, unlike banks and finance market players, who make up numbers. But in the desperate attempt to make those numbers stand, we have seen the government intervene on an obscene scale, handing over more money than is provided for health or education. So far, about £1 trillion has been taken from the real economy to try to restore the banks' balance sheets, but the banks have to hold and keep the bail-out money in their books, they can't use it to make loans. While that £1 trillion is still counted as being in the overall money supply, it is locked-up out of circulation, so effective purchasing power in the real economy has dropped by 20-25%. The result will be goods and services not being purchased, so more job losses, and a downward spiral of slowdown/downturn, shrinkage/deflation, slump/depression.

The only solutions that will work are ones that get more money into people's pockets as directly and fairly as possible. To get this, we have to drive home to people that it's our money , not the government's – it's the goods and services we generate in the real economy which generate the values for the 'tax events' that currently underpin the entire monetary, banking and financial system. We the people prop-up the system, so we don't want to be damned for generations for our efforts. If we pay the tax, then we should call the shots, if we have a government that is truly responsible to the people. We need to redesign our monetary, banking and financial systems, not keep 200-300-year-old systems going in the 21 st century. Monetary reform makes sense on all grounds; financial, economic and ethical.

Tarek El Diwany, Zest Advisory LLP claimed from the experience of those who work in them, what actually happens in banks and financial markets is the opposite of the economic theories taught in universities and schools. This can lead one to conclude that economics, as presently taught, is a lie invented by bankers and financiers to justify their corrupt practices. We can live without usury. There are plenty of financing models that offer win-win situations, using a partnership approach. Presently these models are usually placed on the fringe by the financial establishment. The established players do understand that the bad effects are bad, but they don't see the main cause, usury, as bad. The problem is we don't have enough money, the solution under the prevailing wisdom is to have more borrowing/lending, more debt, which is what got us into this mess. The inertia to change is largely one of political will. The usury system will be attempted to be propped-up at all costs, but either we change it, or total collapse will force it to change.

Alistair McConnachie, of Prosperity UK and the Bromsgrove group reinforced the policy that a sustainable future for humanity requires the return of the money power to where it belongs, the people, through democratically-elected government. Commercial banks are presently given the privilege of the power to 'make' our money when they advance us our credit, but they also run the risk of some of that money being lost from their books due to defaults, so the practical limit to their money-making is our creditworthiness. Investment banks issue and trade in bonds and buy and sell financial 'products', and to finance this they borrow money from commercial banks, and have a special relationship with them. Deregulation pushed away barriers that had prevented commercial banks from creating money for investment banks to use for empire-building or gambling on various types of financial markets. The current global financial crisis is partly a result of schemes dreamed-up by deregulation-era whiz-kids to try to remove the risk of defaults from the books of banks by using exotic financial 'instruments' called credit risk derivatives, where the risks and profits of debts are shared with other parties, but this just spread the risk further and opened the door to ever riskier levels of exposure to defaults. Apart from the 'moral hazard' involved, the schemes didn't work. The consequence for us is the 'credit crunch'. It is clearly evident that the firewalls between commercial and investment banking functions have to be rebuilt.

Banks have found their shell-games are hollow and crumbling, and are trying to save themselves. To do this they have stopped advancing us our money as our credit, and they are hoarding as much money as they can get. This is a classic example of the misuse of the money system. The privilege of the money power given to the banking system has been used irresponsibly by a very few, and now we are all about to suffer the consequences. The banking sector is the author of its own downfall, so it is highly questionable why it should be bailed-out. In a proper money system, it shouldn't matter to us if any banks have got themselves into a difficult position, but it does matter to us at present because the banking system is currently the source of 97% of our money supply. The obvious ultimate solution is to switch from a system where the money supply is directly dependent on the banking sector to a system where the money supply is directly dependent on the good credit of society. This is the essence of the Robertson-Huber and the American Monetary Institute (AMI) reform proposals, which incorporate these main components:

· forbid banks from creating money;

· an independent public body to create all money as required;

· government spending money into society;

· banks compete to attract savings for finance.

A pragmatic interim solution could include the measures advised by notable monetary reformers to assist Malaysia to protect its economic sovereignty in the wake of the Asian currency crisis of the late 1990s:

· start using exchange controls;

· stop the deregulation process;

· stop public asset privatisation;

· stop borrowing money from overseas;

· start using debt-free sovereign government money.

The relationship between the banking and financial system and the real economy can be viewed as a horse and cart relationship. The real economy is the horse, doing all the real work, and the banking and financial system is the cart, which should follow the horse. The big problem is that at present, we have got the cart before the horse! People have to ask and must be able to answer this question: to whom does the power to create money belong? – It belongs to "we the people!"

Jamal Harwood, Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain emphasised that the financial crisis is a human crisis, because people will lose their real wealth and the rich/poor divide will grow even more. To counter this, we need a financial system that is geared towards real wealth-generation and better distribution, and that ensures basic necessities are met for all. To get spending going again, we need to keep more money in circulation in order to get real wealth (goods and services) circulating, and not accumulating. There are many features of Islamic banking and finance that may facilitate this. Open trading is required and true lending of surpluses is actively incentivised, with the actual results equitably shared according to fair dealing, with clear accounting procedures, and within a corporate legal framework where there is full liability and responsibility. Usury and gambling/speculation are prohibited. In the real economy, land and resource utilisation also needs to be optimised to make the most of available productive capacity. As presently operated, free trade and free markets are myths, nothing more or less than price-fixing rackets, but tariffs and price controls are not seen as good substitutes, so let us have a real free market of open trade with clear rules, on the basis of ethical laws.

Daud Pidcock the leading British monetary refomer was delayed in coming due to the publication of his seminal book in New Delhi. He was planning to speak on the theme of his book and it's relevancy. The book's title is, " The Other Road to Serfdom. How unregulated capital caused the crash of 2008" by Arthur Swan with a foreword by David Pidcock and published by Pentagon Press in India. It covers the history of monetary failures from Plato to Nato.

The evidence presented convincingly shows that a far greater threat is posed to our freedoms by usury and unregulated unfettered capital which is not only responsible for the Crash of 2008 but has also been the cause of every recorded economic catastrophe since the Bank of England was founded in 1694. The good news is that the second Great Depression does not have to happen and is avoidable and correctable overnight. More on this later and watch this space. Likewise Robert Corfe was caught up in a nasty accident and extended his apologies and best wishes and was unable to present his thoughts on his voluminous work on Social Capitalism. Dr.Alawi and Roy Tindle were put out of action with illness.

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, Institute for Policy Research & Development stressed that the financial and economic crisis is a civilisational crisis and we are entering a period of transition to a post-industrial age. There are 3 aspects to this:

1. Global Warming/Climate Change; 2013 is the deadline, but the current remedies only aim to extract more from consumers (carbon taxes); it seems UK government policy is not to avoid climatic catastrophe, but to continue business as usual and adapt to changes;

2. Energy Crisis/Peak Oil (directly related to the above); world oil extraction peaked in 2006, but there will be an undulating plateau of supply responding to recovering and collapsing demand for 5-10 years before falling away by 7 % p.a.; Natural Gas extraction will peak in 2030s, Coal extraction will peak between 2050-2100, Uranium extraction will peak by 2030, Tar Sand/Oil Shale is currently pointless in terms of energy in-out;

3. Post-Industrial Civilisation; economy and nature can no longer continue to have a dysfunctional relationship, 'neo-liberal' capitalism has failed, even on its own terms; decline of progress/increase of inequality.

So-called 'neo-liberal' capitalism is inherently unstable due to the unresolved unrealistic relationships between production and consumption in the real economy and the monetary and financial system. Whilst the ' Washington Consensus' created the crisis it cannot stop it. The basic problem is that to eat, people have to work in a job because they no longer have access to land and resources to support themselves. By making unlimited growth the only answer, the problem only gets worse. By pumping more debt-money into the system, it compels more conversion of nature into products. The financial system has consolidated ownership of productive industries. We need to change to a system which results in distribution and decentralisation, otherwise any recovery will only be temporary.

Dr.Syed Mustafa Ali, Bandung2 argued that the choice we face is a sustainable future for humanity or controlled chaos. There is no point talking about sustainability without asking what is being sustained and who is it being sustained for? The system that operates in the world can be viewed as a global plantation of masters and slaves. There are three types of slaves; house, field, and yard – the yard slave is used by the masters to produce a buffer between the field and house slaves. The system of slavery is so entrenched, it is almost unnoticeable, and as such, the system requires only a little effort on the part of the masters to maintain the desired order. The culture has been made into a psychological trap; image has replaced reality, and language has been altered to suit the agenda, so that 'change' means business as usual. The big idea is to confuse and divide any opposition to the status quo. The technical cause is monetary, and the steps towards revolution and reconciliation are also necessarily monetary in nature:

1. Cancellation of debts;

2. Abolition of global debt-based money system;

3. Reparations for all victims.

Francis Mulleady from Westminster University focussed on Corporate Social Responsibility, ethical business and sustainable capitalism and felt that different ideas and idealism are useful if they can co-exist with reality and practicality.

CSR recognises that logic and ethics are common in all cultures, and goes beyond minimum legal requirements (some of which are unethical) to actively promote social mobility. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, blocks distribution of ethics that are not based on exploitation. False creation of money and values are based on short-term returns over long-term development; need to sift reality from rhetoric. Businesses have a range of stakeholders; shareholders, consumers, workers, communities, governments, other businesses, NGOs. The origins of CSR and ethics in business are in stakeholder theory, cause-related and green movements. There was also a need to avoid generalisations about democracy and capitalism.

In his closing remarks Moeen Yaseen stated that Global Vision 2000 would continue this work and collaborate with others who are serious in re-designing and rebuilding the system and would convey the proceedings to the Government as they have expressed interest in our agenda. There would also be a special satellite tv documentary produced and broadcasted round the conference and themes discussed on Islam Channel in the New Year.