Rome: A committee to create a Bank for cc settlements - Jan 3, 2007


On 3 January in Rome there was a meeting that originated a committee for an international clearing house to deal with local and complementary currencies - namely 'cc'.

The clearing house is named:
Bank for Transcendental Settlements (BTS).

The committee to establish the BTS is formed by:
- Guglielmo Maria Lolli Ghetti;
- Marco Saba;
- Luciano Taurino;
- Giorgio Vitali;
- Leo Young Zagami (a.k.a. Khaled Saifullah Khan)
The names are given in alphabetical order because the committee act as a round table.

The aim of the institution - that will operate like SWIFT or CHIPS - is to bring together all the issuers of complementary currency in a common environment to sustain international trade and exchanges,

There is two ways a cc issuer may deal through BTS: as a partner or as a customer (or both).

Possible partners are filtered-in by the round table and must follow some simple rules:

- the cc they use must not be issued as a debt-backed-currency
(i.e. backed by treasury bonds or other future-tax related debts);

- the cc must operate in a sharia-compliant environment
(i.e. loans issued in that cc must not carry any kind of interest);

- the cc must float in a free market environment against other cc without any fixed-exchange agreement.

- the cc must not work in a currency board regime and must not be backed by usurary currency reserves
(i.e.: USD, EUR, YEN, etc.)

A further meeting is envisaged for mid-february to charter the BTS and to choose the definitive location where the headquarters will be located.

For any further information, please contact Marco Saba at:
m.saba(AT)email.it