Oikonomics: a social life of money

A magna carta for money?: reflections on a week of talking about 'the long now'

 
Many of the questions being raised by discussing 'the long now' of money and finance at SIBOS are existential ones.  Unfortunately I am not convinced that many if any banks are willing to consider existential problems; despite that being the elephant in the rather big room that is SIBOS.

It is hardly surprising, seeing how the most of the banks present at SIBOS seem to be feeling somewhat existentially challenged; reduced as they are to considering mainly short term issues of liquidity, capital (or lack of it), risk (see the previous two issues) and focusing on making money from the bread and butter of banking (payments).  The Long Now team will be prefacing their summary to the plenary session today with a video which points out how and why banks are doomed in the style of Hitch Hiker's Guide, only without the "Don't Panic" reassurance that there is a manual of 'how to get out of this hole".

I am not sure that this will elicit 'engagement' as such from an audience of bankers, which is a shame because asking these sort of questions might help them see beyond the present crisis and work out what sort of banks we need in the future - based on the binocular hindsight of the long now approach.

Our own long now conversations, detailed by the ubiquitous Chris "I know where the next party is" Skinner on his blog, shifted the emphasis back to what is happening "in the real world".  As individuals, we are looking for institutions who can make money solid and tangible, not merely in terms of seeing cold hard cash (although that is a start), but in terms what we do with money and constructed in a way that fits with its Long Now role of being a function of its social utility rather than its narrow economic definition and usage.

By framing wealth in terms of concepts like legacy and immortality (or at least of guarantees of succession) which expanded what we thought really constituted 'wealth' in a world of uncertainty, our discussion began to look at the motivations of individuals to use money for good works (one form of legacy).

The problem here is that modern money in its current incarnation cannot adequately convey the 'spirit' of a gift.  Modern Money reduces a transaction to a question of economic value (like leaving the price tag on a birthday present) which leaves no legacy or lasting imprint - it merely reflects the price of a thing at a particular time (it does not signify for example whether I was generous in the price I offered or stingy).

If banks are to maintain their position as the 'producers' of money (as opposed to just the pipes it flows and is stored within) then they need to work out how to construct money products which can confer permanence and legacy on the giver and communicate that also to the receiver.  Which I guess is one million dollar question coming out of the long now (for me at least).

Perhaps a bit frustratingly one of the best ways of thinking about money in the long now was presented by Paul Saffo who in 90 seconds summarised the concept of the legal 'long now' and raised questions of whether the crisis was the prelude to a change in schema (i.e. a new money akin to a new common law), constitution, legislation, regulation, enforcement regime or merely fashion (i.e. will this be solved by bloody revolution or a marketing refresh at the extremes)? You might argue that neo-liberal capitalism has been regulation masquerading as a schema or constitution and as such should expect competing forms of regulation of markets (and therefore different forms of market) to emerge from the crisis and challenge its claim to natural hegemony as merely a function of legal precedent and entrenched power relations.

In other words, who are the barons who will force the signing of a magna carta for money?

The Economics of Enough

A thought in progress which occurred when putting together a presentation on “The long now of finance” for SIBOS next week in Amsterdam. I will be presenting as part of the following ‘Innotribe’ whose remit is to think forward across the next century.  A slightly daunting prospect, as Bauman reminded us at his conference, “don’t make predictions, especially not about the future”.

I have always found it challenging to describe ‘what is going on now/here’ let alone make any assertions about the shape of the future. Perhaps that is the best to hope for, just as we write our histories for the present so we write futures.  One thing which is ‘going on now’ is an increasing instance of ideas of collaboration and inklings of new consumer moralities emerging under the banner of sustainability.

The economics of enough are bubbling up all over the place, not so much new era economics as “new age” currently, but then so was Gaia theory and environmentalism not so long ago. I have seen it used in the context of rethinking Thailand’s economic strategy post the 1997 Asian crisis and trying to assert some new moralities of economic endeavour through recourse to Buddhist teachings.

For me the “economics of enough” reflects a fundamental optimism of what we do as individuals in an open, transparent and social context.  It is a function of the compromise between individuality and security which Bauman places at the heart of all social contexts.   The Gordon Gekkos of this world thrive behind the opaque doors of regulated financial markets which enshrine and legitimise greed and ruthless competition in the name of liberalisation and the pursuit of money as an end in itself.  In many ways in the long now of finance, modern money has been an interesting and roller coaster interlude powered by a sixties style revolution of individual credit (the “pill” that liberated consumerism) and the glamour of an ultimately self absorbed and hedonistic elite (LSD replaced by CDO’s and other ‘exotic’ derivatives). Lehman’s was the gorilla /butterfly crushed by in this case a wheel of its own making. 

We are now prepared to consider the idea that you can have ‘enough’ money and be happy, it doesn’t leave you empty and wanting more.  Those who believe you always need more money are those which betray the stresses of the reality of servitude that underpins modern money’s promise of liberation.

However, the “economics of enough” are not just a closed loop of self reliance and drawing in of ourselves to our nearest and dearest, but about how individuals will negotiate their share of market returns and rewards for risk when it becomes clear that some investments needs to be made collectively to produce economically enabled social goods, and as such need to be made fairly and transparently to ensure that both sides of the bargain get a fair return or reciprocation.

8 Habits of Successful, Authentic Brands

Being authentic in a super premium or local niche is becoming just “the ticket to the game” for marketing savvy consumers.

As niche brands, they benefit from the value of being ‘discovered’ and ‘secret’ and can afford to invest in developing complex and deep reciprocal relationships with individual customers.  These brands (such as Rapha or my own "baby" Monkey Shoulder) also benefit from the investment customers are themselves prepared to make on behalf of a brand over which they feel a sense of ownership.

Encouraging such reciprocal ‘investment’ is vital to brands who want to build and maintain their authenticity as they become ‘mainstream’.  Mainstream brands that rely on authenticity need to develop new habits to avoid becoming standardised and commoditised in their approach.

Habit 1: Turning discovery into currency
First Direct was made service part of its ‘authenticity’ – and succeeded by delivering key moments of truth which had their own social currency for their customers.  In the years following the launch the constant refrain of the First Direct customer centred on the fact that they could call them whenever they wanted.  This investment in 24/7 service was reciprocated many times over in word of mouth marketing and brand building by their customers.

Habit 2: Having a good memory (and mining the data)
Starbucks relies on customisation (and its customers) to deliver the illusion of personalisation.  An authentic barista will remember your drink by the third time you walk in.  Customer data enables brands to tailor the experience and choice to their local customers but it is made all the more powerful when those customers feel that they have left their mark on a place – the retail equivalent of a favourite chair in the pub.

Habit 3: being generous – gifting with interest
Anthropologists know that there is no such thing as a ‘free gift’.  Gifts always carry an implicit obligation of future relationship (and payback with interest to acknowledge that relationship).  Brands which give away stuff that is valuable create customers who want to give something back.  Financial incentives and discounts do not carry the obligation of a gift unless they are connected to the recognition of a relationship (and hence undermine value in the long term) but there are plenty of things of value which a brand can give for free which do create value in the long term.

Habit 4: Giving employees a sense of ownership and responsibility
Retail brands live in the hearts and minds of their people – but only if those people see the brand as something they have a part in creating and not just a constant constraint on what they can and can’t do.
Brands like Innocent and Leon benefit from making their employees part of the story and (mythical) history of the brand and by maintaining that connection even after they have left (and left their mark) on the brand.

Habit 5: A conversation from the ‘front of the stage’
According to the science of semiotics, it is useful to understand the brand’s relation to its audience as if it were the actor in a play.  Conventional mainstream brands stand at the back of the stage where like the gods and kings of theatre, they speak over the heads of their audience.  The front of the stage is where the likes of Falstaff josh and banter with the pit. Authentic brands maintain that front of stage approach even when they are crowned king of their market.

Habit 6: Shared experiences – a sense of community
Consumption is fundamentally social.  Shared experiences between customers are as valuable as experiences between the customer and the brand.  Brands which facilitate the creation of connections and community between their customers give customers a greater sense of ownership over what the brand means to them and greater salience by playing a role in the creation and maintenance of their social network.

Habit 7: Creating a language (but don’t forget a lexicon)
Authenticity for the mainstream consumer needs to be accessible. Any customer should feel that the language of the brand, its people and its customers should be both a rite of passage – you learn the lingo to feel part of the brand experience – but also easy and intuitive for new members to pick up and use.

Habit 8: Making fans rather than managing failures
It is a well established myth that customers who have a problem resolved are more loyal than those who have never had a problem.  However, measuring the loyalty of the lucky against the apathetic majority does not create customer advocacy.  Successful authentic brands don’t try to please all of the people all of the time but rather focus on making fans of their customers – as their recommendations will count far more in the long run.

Share your music taste and your guilty pleasures on mflow

Well, it seems 10000 people can't be wrong.  With hardly a marketing big gun needing to be fired mflow is really taking off - all down to succinct creative, clever PR and media packaging. Shows what you can do when you listen out for what culture is telling you.

I have 50 invites to give away - just go to www.mflow.com and enter the code FREELUNCH.

I am hoping that they will soon start a flow called 'guilty pleasures' where everyone can recommend anonymously the tracks that they listen to but don't always admit to - whether you are an indie fanatic with a penchant for girls aloud or punk lover with an ABBA collection, the research says you are not alone. We all have guilty pleasures in our playlists and now you can earn free music for owning up to them!

Music as currency: Mflow, Foucault and the nature of consumer ‘value’.

Just in case you are thinking that all my ranting on about gifts, currency and flow is just another cultural researcher with bucket load of theory, here is a plug for someone who had the courage to listen and turn a theory into something real –

www.mflow.com. It launches on 15/4/10 but is available in beta to invites and codes via Facebook and lot of other funky social media stuff.

The underlying product benefit of mflow is simple. It rewards users who pass on recommendations of music they have bought to their friends which they in turn buy for themselves – with 20% of the purchase price as a credit to buy more music.

The rational response to this would be to talk about the value this represents – 5 recommendations taken up = 1 free song, 5 recommendations of an album take up by your followers = 1 free album, you get the picture. However, this ‘equation’ has a problem which is that it fails to address the reason why we already share and recommend music in the first place, an insight which has become mflow’s strapline; "music’s better shared".

The next response might be to talk about this as a revolution in buying music. Again, this draws from the idea of consumerism as somehow progressing towards a better life, throwing out the old and in with the new. Again this is the opposite of what why we buy music legally rather than download it. We buy it because we want to keep it and value it as a thing – music is a form of memory and to some people their whole story. We want the content of our music to create new ideas but we don’t need a revolution in music to do something we are already doing. The research identified that illegal downloading of music was much more a function of feeling disconnected and fluid in society – i.e. a problem of liquid modernity not necessarily the rampant criminality of ‘youf’.  Freeloading happens because the music no longer represented something of value, rather than because of a desire to somehow get valuable music for ‘free’. Music is only as valuable in economic terms as the social and cultural capital it creates. When the airwaves and TV channels are saturated with new music – new music itself loses its currency and becomes vulnerable to being ‘used’ for free because it is perceived to be being given away without obligation to ‘buy’ it.

So like my favourite scene from Mad Men, mflow is not about the future of music, or some evolution or progression from the past, but is something which taps into the contingent reality of the way we use and value music in everyday life. Brands sometimes unconsciously play with different philosophies – presenting the world from an Hegelian, Nietzschean, Marxist, etc perspective without necessarily grasping the implications of those positions and how they inform or motivate the consumer practice which ultimately they seek to promote. This prompted an old colleague of mine from the dim and distant past to write a tongue in cheek book about how different philosophers would approach marketing (playing on the vogue for brands to have a ‘philosophy’ which more often than not generated some gnomic phrase which only the marketing director understood and made the sales guys reach for their blackberry).

Mflow’s relationship with culture is there one of trying to understand the genealogy of music, and accommodating the accidents, ambiguities and discontinuities in what music ‘is’ in everyday cultural praxis – which you might call a Foucaultian brand strategy if I didn’t know that would get me posted to Pseuds corner by one or two of my more cynical readers.... : )

As such they ‘get’ music and their chief marketer is a true example of what Grant McCraken would call a Chief Culture Officer.  Although he would hate me for saying it!

 

Local liquid money? –the new Stroud pound, demurrage and ‘gift economy’.

It has been a while between posts, in the main because I have been grappling with the very real problem of creating a completely new form of financial product which promotes investment for the mainstream without conforming to the conventions of the investment ‘market’ of the City. However, the new Stroud pound was profiled by the BBC (here) but for me the report missed out the most important point which is that for the first time in the UK the currency will be subject to ‘demurrage’. Essentially it is negative inflation (-3% per 6 months) which requires stamps to be purchased on 1st April (3p per pound) to pay for the costs of running the currency and encourage its usage. Any currency without a stamp on that date will no longer be accepted as tender.

The pounds also cannot be exchanged for sterling – they have to be ‘spent’ and circulate in the local community.

While I have posted before about the benefits of such an initiative in the local community and the perception of money that is created, this example does begin to sound not so much as an alternative ‘money’, but rather the promotion of a form of gift exchange with a built in depreciation to pay for the creation of the gifts themselves. Each transaction is no longer an end in itself – the objective agreement of the value of a good in terms of a price between two individuals – but rather the beginning of a series of transactions within the community which, I would guess, establishes both social as well as economic relations and ‘capital’. A gift is not something to be hoarded and taken out of circulation but rather something to be passed on, like the well known examples of kula shells and potlatch ceremonies with Mauss’s own essay (and the excellent book "The Gift: how the creative spirit transforms the world"  by Lewis Hyde)

The store of value which is created by this currency is therefore in the social relations created by its usage. The Stroud pounds will come to represent the value of exchange between people who come to know one another rather than the anonymous exchange of the supermarket check-out. As such it aims to do more than some whiat I perceive to be slightly contradictory messages about ‘local consumption’ – there being no real guarantee that the participating businesses are truly local in their sourcing and environmental credentials.  Instead, the Stroud pound represents a form of capitalism which thrives from the creation of community rather than anonymous competition. The surplus therefore which creates this momentum and encourages the flow is therefore in the intangible social capital which these transactions represent – the hidden obligations and reciprocations upon which a local town survives and thrives.

So perhaps rather than the surplus being allocated to a local charity, which is admirable but merely replaces a function which can be carried out by sterling, the money should be used to create and promote further collaboration and collective enterprise which aims at enriching the social life of Stroud and transforming the nature of social relations between the individual and the collective identity which the town encompasses?

New year's resolutions - time for a change?

The first week of 2010 has brought out the usual clichés of a grid-locked UK ravaged by a couple of INCHES of snow and the first financial services advertising of the traditionally ‘January’ period. Zopa is offering a lenders' bonus to get ready for the officially "most depressing" day of the year and the busiest period for borrowing (something like the 21^st Jan when we all get out credit card bills for the Christmas excesses and start really paying for that hangover). I have already seen the first loan advertising although interestingly it was for Nationwide to its own customers offering 7.6% to people they already know!

Financial ‘health checks’ are being offered to shed those excess pounds by cross selling insurance (oh, there goes my new year’s resolution to be less cynical!) and both RBS/ Natwest and Lloyds seems to be competing for ‘friendly face of banking 2010’ with grinning customers and cartoon bank managers reassuring us that they have a ‘mastermind’ qualification in finance. Nice to see that nothing has really changed following the financial crisis then. Further down the rabbit hole we have the starting pistol of the election year being fired and old dividing lines being drawn up between those who believe that we should allow individuals to ‘work themselves out of recession’ or that society should tell individuals how to work themselves out of recession.

Such simplistic debates delivered with such relish by Today never get us very far. Neither side can really prove that they are right – doing something is always going to produce some sort of qualitative and quantifiable effect, but it is very hard to predict whether that effect is sustainable or not. Labour would appear to believe (for the most part) that an unsustainable (in the longer term) level of taxpayer funded stimulus is what the economy needs maintain confidence. The Conservatives seem to be pinning their hopes, behind the scenes at least, on the so-called ‘fourth sector’ (although this message is getting lost in their obsession with telling Gordon that he is wrong). I am with Stumbling and Mumbling’s assessment that the ‘fourth sector’ is nothing new in itself. What the contemporary fourth sector actually means is still being lost in a flurry of RedTory jargon and academic theory, but I think there is some truth in the idea that as individuals we have lost the art and belief needed to start collaborating effectively. And perhaps not surprisingly, I would assert that this comes down to some misconceptions about the nature of money and trust.

For the last 3 decades or so we have been comfortable with the notion that money is the most effective way of making the world go round. Money works as a universal incentive and neutral medium for the exercise of rational self interest which in turn will produce economic and social value through individuals trading off their short term needs with their perception of the wider longer term good. Money in this context is seen as replacing the need for trust or a ‘promise to pay’ between individuals, as it instantly ‘values’ what is contributed and allows instant pay back of what is owed through markets and currencies. Any longer term promises are kept by a central institution underwritten (as it turns out) by the taxpayer in perpetuity.

Money has become a coldy mechanistic enabler of society – generating competition (for the right with whom it seems we feel more comfortable in a world of ‘scarcity’ or ‘austerity’) and choice (the paradoxical euphemism for competition for the left which is what we voted for when money was perceived to be almost infinitely abundant). As a result, rather like banks, politicians now seem to find it hard to tap into new forms of incentive and collaboration which involve money but use it to create trust and cooperation rather than undermine it through individuals seeking to maximize individual returns. What is missing is a rhetoric of sustainability which is progressive rather than conservative and an understanding of money which moves beyond that defined by banks and economists and moves out in the "real economy" where it is trust not money that makes the world go round. Where is Mauss when you need him?

Kiva and the nature of money

Listened to a very engaging conversation between Premal Shah and John Grant at NESTA last week. At one level it was an inspiring point of view from a successful entrepreneur, but I was left feeling that a lot of Kiva’s promise was going unrealized because of the way they constructed money and credit relations on the site.

Kiva’s aim was to transform the relationship between the ‘rich’ countries and ‘poor’ both in terms of economic injustice (which modestly Premal claimed to have had little real impact on at this stage) and in terms of the social relations between ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ countries. John Grant was very sympathetic on this point, citing his own experience of working with disaster relief charities which have the effect of painting all Africa "south of Tunisia" as victims and needy individuals.

Even this picture from my local Starbucks demonstrates everything I personally find abhorrent about the way we construct ‘need’ in Africa – the down turned headed, pleading eyes, lack of adults, lack of context (always need is personal and close up) – which may well be effective at picking the purses of consumers but also serves to distance us from the individuals (objectifying them as problems rather than encouraging a more productive, risk based assessment of potential – or capability). Why do marketers feel the need to justify their cause by quoting numbers? Is it particularly effective to reduce humans to statistics?

Back to Kiva. Premal Shah characterized Kiva as consumption rather than capitalist/productive experience. His illustration of why we feel ok buying things we don’t need when there is need elsewhere (i.e. it is literally distant), a distance which the stories and requests on the Kiva site eradicates and brings into our living rooms and laptops in a very personal and interactive way. His users display ‘addictive’ behaviours (checking status of loans at 2am) and seem to get a buzz from both the act of giving and getting the feedback of a successful loan application. This perhaps explains why people are so angry about the fact that there is little real connection in terms of money with the people you loan to in reality (the loan money is pooled rather than being supplied directly). However, this positions Kiva as just a more internet savvy, internet 2.0 charity experience rather than a ‘social lending’ site (I, and other zopaites in attendance, kept politely quiet when it was trailed as the ‘world’s first….’). Kiva is not channeling money as "investment", but rather encouraging us to consume for moral purpose (giving to another in need). Nothing wrong with this in itself, but I am not sure that it transforms the relationship between rich and poor – just makes the perception of inferiority personal.

For me, Kiva has missed a trick in encouraging people to take risks on others, driven by SEC regulatory fears rather than any philosophical bias, as this meant they had to make the loans interest free to avoid their being defined as ‘securities’ (which have sunk the aspirations of many social lending sites in the US). The problem is that this interest free status has the effect of transforming the loan to a simple donation. Now as Premal quoted, there are plenty of examples where loans exist without interest payments, but such systems are not without reciprocal obligation. As I have noted on this blog before, Athens had such a system of loans between family, friends and fellow demesmen called ‘koinonia’ finance; but in that case, there was an implicit ‘favour’ which could be called upon for a similar loan at a later date. There is no such obligation implied on Kiva. In essence, by writing off any sense of ‘return’ – beyond the return of the money which is then recycled into another loan – I am avoiding making any risk assessment on the loans instead judging them on their emotional pull or potential social value. I can do much the same thing through Oxfam (‘choosing’ what my money is spent on - although such choice is illusory).

Perhaps if Kiva was more creative about the way it characterizes the concept of return (and made into something which the recipients of the loans can return to their backers) then it could get around the regulatory issues. It would require them to deal with the distribution issues they have faced from their local lending partners in each country but surely it would be more in keeping with their overall philosophy.

Living without money II

There seems to be a lot of interest in the idea of ‘living without money’, seemingly sparked off by the ITV journalist’s televised experiences over two weeks (as well as the well publicized twitter and "around the world in 80 trades" travel experiences.

I have also been living without money for a few days – exploring the lives of people for whom the idea of "money" is entirely defined by the benefits system in the UK. What transpired was that ‘money’ did not really exist for many of them as anything more than a means of subsistence; and as such a very precarious and potentially uncertain ontology created by the constant threat of re-assessment, claw back and the seemingly arbitrary decision making by ‘professionals’ who are empowered by the state to take control of vulnerable peoples’ lives.

While the middle class view (or Weberian spirit?) of money as a valuable commodity to be ‘stored’ and ‘invested’ for personal gain and consumption of goods for status, creation of meaning or more basic comfort and security reifies money as something with ‘objective’ value and existence – ‘solid money’ if you like – the view of those living beneath the ‘working classes’ (be it blue or white collar) is very different. Money in that context is essentially fluid and subjective – its value and purchasing power defined by a system of service valuation and distribution which operates not unlike a Soviet Supermarket.

Not surprisingly such individuals find it hard to envisage taking control of such ‘money’ for their own benefit and control of their own life when they have become institutionally dependent on the ‘charity’ of the state and reliant on its gift – a gift which as Mauss would describe is not given without obligation or even transfer of ownership (hence the ‘claw back’ mentality).

Of course, the middle class view (and the premise of ‘living without money’ – a bit like saying living without society or culture in my view) is equally in thrall of a different myth about money as a solid and tangible commodity with a defined ‘natural value’ rather the reality of the majority of its production in the creation of credit money and relations.

While bankers and the bank of England form an easy political protest target for allowing one form of money to defy gravity before crashing back to reality – it is not the only form of money production in our economy. The state now ‘produces’ many different forms of credit and money in its own right – be it shared ownership of property for key workers, subsidy of low income families, provision of social services – all of which contribute to effects of supply, demand, price and inflation in the ‘real economy’. This aggregate demand stimulus (and hindrance) goes much further than Keynes envisaged with his hole diggers and its effects on the value of our economy as a whole (and on the value of ‘money’ in our economy) seem to be remarkably undocumented and overlooked.

Weber and Schumpeter (and Keynes) sought to bring ‘money’ out of its state of neutrality and contextualize it within the social institutions of the economy, the reality of capitalism and the idea of the social state – each a response to what they perceived to be the ‘problems’ creating a successful economy and society. The failure of rational science and technology to tame money as a cultural thing suggests we need new approaches to understanding not just what money ‘is’ but what it could be. Rather than trying to live without money, surely we should allowing our next generation of entrepreneurs to invent new forms of money (with an intentionality that goes beyond reductive notions of profit and rational value)and reap the benefits of the entrepreneurial creative destruction of what went before?

The spirit of 'money'

Did your bank send you a Valentine? This year (as happened last year) I will be both sending and receiving Valentine’s messages from my zopa borrowers and my zopa lenders. I personally have always found it fascinating that anyone would even consider sending me a message ‘of love’ just because I lent them money. Is it Mauss’ theory of gifting in action – a ritual of recognition of the inalienable quality of the money I have given and the obligation to reciprocate (with interest)?

I don’t expect such a message from my bank (or perhaps even a thank you) because, ironically, the personal finance revolution has had the effect in reality of ‘de-personalizing’ my money. We made a virtue of the fact that being ‘financially savvy’ meant liberating your money from your own personal world and social relations to benefit from the abstract, impersonal world of finance – freed from the moral economy to join the global /consumer economy. My money became digitized, objectified (in a card) and productized and somewhere in the process I became alienated from my money (both in my eyes and for some individuals within the banking system).

One of my big marketing 'soap boxes' is the shift from 'needs' to 'meaning' when trying to understand the "why" of consumption. In essence, talking about 'needs' is to focus on what a product 'does' (usually defined in terms of some essential functional or emotional benefit). By contrast, talking about "meaning" is to look at what a product 'creates' through its usage - where the 'social life' of the product can transcend its manufactured or 'designed' utility and it end up performing a very different role and value in my life. Importantly, meaning is not always something that can be articulated by a respondent as it is often implicit or ‘understood’ in our actions and not always "rationalized" and made explicit.

In essence, my money was now organized around my financial ‘needs’ – rather than any wider sense or meaning that I was trying to create – my ‘who’, my ‘why’, my ‘place’, etc. Money was there to provide utility, to satisfy my needs and in doing so I would (so Howard and the others on the TV would tell me) I would find happiness and security.

This seems to be an increasingly relevant point of view given the many macro-level debates about 'banking' as utility vs. the role of banking in providing an individual 'service' or being about my money (as opposed to the state's or anyone else's).

Consigning banks to the realm of 'utility' will only serve to complete this process of objectification. Money - economic money - will become about 'need' and then it will present an interesting dilemma for the nationally sponsored bodies which would run such hypothetical organizations. If money is about need - and I need a mortgage for a house - how is the state going to decide who gets what in the distribution of credit?

It puts a whole new spin on the phrase ‘right to buy’ and suddenly money is going to get simultaneously very personal and very political.