Solamid Notes for Funders

Solamid Notes for Funders

 

Fiat currency constitutes a promise whose base was unclear from the start and whose fulfillment at some point in the future is uncertain.

Solamid  fulfillment is specified and unchanging regardless of time.

All commodities and artifacts have functioned as currency somewhere in history.

Raw energy has never been used as a currency.

 

some of its forms, coal, seal oil or firewood as a base for transactions in other goods certainly must have been used regularly.

electricity, energy provides the ultimate in scale, ease of measurement and transportability.

 

Lower level energy commodities like coal, oil, natural gas and the newcomer hydrogen offer an interface to virtually every human endeavor.

Only in the past century have world energy networks been developed to fully drive the commercial economic machinery.

 

In that time and for several centuries before, well established currency mechanisms were in place. Hence the primacy of fiat currency based trade.

it is hard to imagine energy not being instantly adopted as the functional currency.

as human civilization and commerce has developed, fiat currency mechanisms which, although highly flawed and unstable, operated well enough to allow the economic development which we enjoy today.

Despite this, the weaknesses of our monetary systems, even in the commercial domain, are all too apparent and the effects of human activities on the environment are well past the alarming stage.

the inherent problems of fiat currencies are well recognized and the global network of energy “arteries” matches the breadth and depth of international commerce.

Sola_Mid Stable Currents is a universal integrator for an enduring currency base.

IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS

Upgrading our monetary systems to be more be robust and more clearly representative of the entire real wealth creation process.

This can be done one step at a time and can be started very rapidly.

The world of commercial transactions involves a galaxy of financial instruments. Energy currency contracts (promissory notes) can be introduced as one more star in the heavens. Their advantage of course, will be their vastly higher level of certainty.

As energy currency contracts grow into the market, they will replace the less reliable fiat currency instruments on a displacement basis as the market adopts the more efficient, less fluctuating “promises”.

Energy currency will have to be internationally regulated to assure the solid foundation of the contract notes. A scientifically measured, easily conceptual base for a currency has never been possible before. All previous fiat currencies have been based on government edicts and the realistic hope that the notes will be convertible into real goods as expected. There has never before been a real, easily quantifiable base, used to underwrite a major currency. The added attraction is the very high degree to which energy is a major component in every real good, process and service.

Energy currency will not only add stability and certainty to a turbulent international trade market, it will offer better illumination of the true structure of our economy and society.

The decision makers whose cooperation and initiative are vital to energy currency adoption are national political and industrial leaders. It is unlikely energy currency will be promoted by financial traders whose livelihood depends on the imprecision, volatility and uncertainty of the currency market as it exists today.

As energy currency comes to increasingly dominate the market for international transactions, national currencies will have considerably less dynamic pressure placed on them. However, in the place of volatility, will be a long path to alignment with the real currency of energy.

At some point, energy currency will begin to replace fiat currencies in domestic economies. This will have to be a trend which national governments run ahead of and lead rather than run from. Pegging national currencies to the kilowatt will require a set procedure and disciplined timing. Many governments have pegged their domestic currencies to foreign currencies in the past and there is a great deal of precedence for this procedure. The difference will be the involvement of scientific measurements of energy (internal and external) upon which the new currency will be based.

At some point in the distant future, should energy networks become so pervasive or battery storage capacity become so highly compact, raw energy will become the currency for all transactions from a single piece of candy at a neighbourhood store to the purchase of blocks of office towers in large downtown cores. Energy based fiat currency will have given way to just simple energy as the universal currency.

The rapidity of adoption of energy currency for all levels of transactions will depend on the ability to maintain the scientific integrity of the process of energy money creation ie the notes printed must never exceed the real deliverable (in the timeframe specified) energy base.

The confidence this process provides will inspire the rate of adoption.

The reverse but reinforcing feedback of this process might well be the loss of confidence in fiat currencies causing pressure (ie a hopefully slow motion run) towards energy currencies.

ROLLOUT PROCESS 

1. Establish International Energy Currency Board to verify the integrity of the energy assets on which to base promissory notes.
2. Create series of large notes by energy producing states for purchase by sovereign nations in place of foreign fiat currency reserves.
3. Expand to series of smaller notes by energy producing states for use in large international transactions.
4. Establish an advisory board responsible for assisting governments in converting their national currencies to energy based currencies.

To avoid introducing instability in the system, there must be a sufficient reserve of energy currency that if a run from a national currency to an energy currency occurs, the reserves can be used to stabilize the national currency until conversion can take place in an orderly manner. Pressure on national baseless currencies must be anticipated.

 

Environmentalists measure in real physical units, not monetary units.

 

Money was developed to facilitate the trade of disparate real goods across a broad range of distances where direct exchange of goods was impractical. But money has many shortcomings in representing the full real wealth creation process and assets especially over time.

 

Environmentalists have waited patiently for the commercial economics side of the real wealth creation process to develop monetary measurements which will capture the stocks and flows of environmental processes and non-renewable resource assets.

Without such common measurements, no broad based and unified initiatives on our planets many environmental challenges can easily take place. There will continue to be strong resistance from the commercial economics sector to any environmental sector efforts to make radical policy changes based on factors which do not show up in their monetary based accounting system.

If we wait for commercial economists to develop a unit of measure which clearly represents all processes, we will wait in vain as it is not in the interests of the finance sector to change.

 

It is up to the science community to provide a monetary basis which will adequately represent both human and natural processes.

Fortunately there is now an opportunity to combine the real wealth creation sectors demand for a representative currency with the need of the commercial economics sector to change the currency used as the basis for international trade.

The proposal by Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of China’s central bank, in March 2009, to establish an international financial reserve currency based on a basket of national currencies is only the start of the process to replace the US dollar as the medium of trade and finance.

But a basket based currency, even if it is more stable, also adds more complexity. It is still based on printed money valuations and incorporates all of the other weaknesses inherent in currencies which are not hard asset based.

Even though the Chinese proposal was widely rejected, the need for a stable international trading currency is clear and is the subject of ongoing discussion.

 

But why settle for another fabricated currency? The opportunity exists to advance to a real and stable standard.

Upon which bedrock can an upgraded currency be based to facilitate accurate valuations, stability, fluidity to represent any scale of asset or transaction and offer resistance to speculation? Gold is limited by scarcity and scalability.

 

Although it can dampen the gyrations of national currencies, it doesn’t represent in and of itself, the real wealth creation process.

There is only one commodity which is universally produced and consumed with both the scale and resolution to represent the full scope of any human endeavour. We already measure it in tremendous detail and it is central to every economy and process.

Energy based currency would represent real wealth creation potential and would not be subject to the shifting valuation issues to which every national currency is prone. Energy represents the value of work already done as well as the potential of work which can be done.

Some 800 years ago, the Mongols avoided inflationary pressures on their currency by performing inventories of their assets and matching the money supply to it. The Mongol empire did not suffer from the boom and bust cycle generated by the currency inflation which has plagued other monetary economies.

 

Energy based currency would eliminate this cycle by representing constant real product and illuminating actual input costs.

Energy underwrites all commercial and environmental activity. It is the most widely measured, consumed and produced commodity on the planet. In contrast to the gold producing club, every nation produces energy from a wide variety of sources.

Energy currency? Fine. But which units should be used? A barrel of oil in raw energy numbers, contains 5.9 million btus, 1729 kilowatt hours, 6.2 billion joules or 1.49 billion calories.

 

Awkward, to say the least. Currently a US dollar (at $50/bbl of oil) translates to about 120,000 btus, 35kw hours, 120 million joules and 30 million calories.

 

Kilowatt hours is the best known and the most widely used measurement.

The closest thing to being a round number while having roughly the same magnitude as the current US dollar would be 100,000 btus or 100 million joules. Will we settle on “beatees”, “julies” or “watties” as the base currency unit?

Scientists would help monetary experts decide. That would be a new partnership.

 

The first of many paradigm shifts necessary in the integration of real world physical accounting and the representation of commercial economic activity.

A kilowatt hour (or BTU, joule, calorie) is the same in Canada as it is in Kazakstan. It represents the same potential now as it would have centuries ago or will centuries into the future. As a scientific unit of measure, there will be no speculation about what a kilowatt will be worth in 10 years.

“Speculating”, “hedging”, “converting”, “runs against” – these would be superfluous activities of the past.

 

Energy currency is elemental, timeless and universal; three qualities which arbitrary currencies or other commodity based currencies do not possess.

In moving to energy based currency, we will have made a huge step forward in stabilizing and rationalizing the economic process at every level.

 

And when the technology is ready in 30 or 300 years, we can step easily from energy based currency to energy actually being the currency.

If energy storage technology can be developed to the point at which several thousand kilowatt hours can (safely) be carried on something the size of a credit card, then we will have developed the perfect currency.

Commodities, services and goods will always fluctuate in relation to energy but those fluctuations would be no longer be speculatively driven on the monetary side – they would be real cost and real demand driven.

 

And there would never be a stampede away from energy. To what? Time?

Our current national policy focus on monetary flows is one of the prime reasons for the disconnect between policy makers and environmentalists.

 

The GDP/monetary metric simply does not represent the physical processes or the assets of the real world which environmentalists see as essential, uncounted and rapidly degrading.

Energy currency very readily yields energy accounting which can provide a more comprehensive description of real output and resource consumption.

 

Compared to monetary analysis, it is a 3D catscan for programs associated with alternative energy and carbon emissions.

 

These issues need energy accounting to avoid negative sum game red-herrings like corn ethanol at northern latitudes which can survive only in the fog of our current monetary system.

In contrast to adopting energy currency, the process of dumping the US dollar in favour of a spectrum of other national currencies is a political minefield loaded with huge implications for the many players.

No matter who champions it, no one nation will own energy based money. It will be the first truly international, non-political currency base.

 

No nation will be able to manipulate it to avoid the consequences of its own economic mis-steps or to beggar its neighbours.

The recent Chinese efforts to promote the creation of a new standard for international financial reserves have not produced results although the reasons for the proposal remain obvious and valid. A move to energy based currency offers a graceful and non-political avenue of monetary reform as a logical step forward not an abandonment of a failure.

Despite the rejection of Mr. Zhou’s initiative, the ball is still in his court and will remain there until a successor to the US dollar is found.

In the face of rapidly deteriorating environmental conditions as well as the necessity of retooling international finance, change must come to our monetary system. Conversion to an energy standard will take full advantage of this opportunity.

Energy Currency has all of the positive attributes of arbitrary money without many of the large problems. It opens the possibility of addressing environmental problems in a comprehensive fashion – something that baseless currencies cannot do.