The crisis in banking, housing, debt and unemployment is a single massive and recurring problem that deserves the examination of systemic solutions including monetary reform. After providing an extremely clear and compelling presentation on monetary reform at the 2009 American Monetary Institute Conference, Ben Dyson is interviewed by Local Future founder Aaron Wissner to discuss the causes of the crisis, how banks make money, and how to prevent a recurrence of this crisis in the future, and perhaps to also bring a quicker recovery now. The current monetary system is structured such that most money is made when loans are made. Under the current “fractional reserve” banking system, when a loan is made, 90% or more of the money of bank depositors can be loaned to the borrowers, but at the same time, the depositors consider 100% of that money available, and everyone treats deposit money as if were the same as cash. The money that is loaned out then is paid to someone, and that money is typically again deposited back into the bank, and again around 90% of this deposit money is lent out by the bank. This process continues until the total amount of checking account “money” increases by 3, 5, 10 or even more times. Banks have very small cash even though they have very large amounts of deposits. The deposits are backed nearly entirely by the loans that the banks have made, and most of these are mortgages. In the consequence that the loans go terrible, the deposits do not have …