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AHOY, THERE BE A CLOSED SYSTEM TO OPEN This is an article about Open Source Finance. It's an idea I first sketched out at a  talk  I gave at the  Open Data Institute  in London. By 'Open Source Finance', I don't just mean open source software programmes. Rather, I'm referring to something much deeper and broader. It's a way of framing an overall change we might want to see in the financial system. To illustrate this, I set up an analogy between computer systems and economic systems, and I then explore what financial 'code' might be. I then sketch out the five pillars that could underpin an open finance movement. Computer systems as economies Computer systems are great metaphors for economic systems. That's because, in a sense, a computer is a microcosm of our economy, albeit one that is a lot more predictable and controllable. Economies, at some basic level, are based upon people using energy to extract useful stuff from the earth, using tools, proce...

KICKSTART IT BABY My Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign for a finance activism school was a great success. I managed to raise double my initial target, which is a good sign. I also learned a few useful things about the process along the way, which I thought I'd share with people who're thinking about running their own crowdfunding campaigns. Here they are: Choosing a platform There are plenty of articles on what crowdfunding platform to choose , so I won't repeat those here in any detail. I used Indiegogo because it offered the flexible funding campaign - which means you get to keep whatever money you receive even if you don't hit your target. That was appropriate for me because the perks I was offering were limited edition copies of my forthcoming book ( The Heretic's Guide to Global Finance ) and in a sense I was pre-selling them at a premium to fund the School. Thus, even in the event of the campaign failing to hit its target, people still would have ended up with...

I've taken a leap into the world of crowdfunding this week as I launch   my first Indiegogo campaign . I'm aiming to  raise seed funding for a London-based School of Financial Activism . Please do click on the link to take a look at the campaign, and if you feel inspired, I'd love for you to contribute to it! As I've already mentioned in a previous post, I've got a book on the financial system coming out called The Heretic's Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money . I want to launch the School of Financial Activism as a way to build on themes I've developed in the book, and to help everyday people grapple with and challenge the financial sector. As a reward for contributing, I'm offering four uber-cool limited edition series of the book, as follows: The Junior Trader series : 100 softcovers, signed and delivered The Hardass Cityboys : 25 hardcovers, one for each of the 25 wards of the City of London, along with a discount voucher for the ...

COMING TO A CINEMA NEAR YOU Last week I got published in The Ecologist. The article was called A four-step guide to bypassing high street banks . This is my second article for the magazine (my first was on food speculation ), and this time the aim was to sketch out how people might engage in financial protest, not by waving placards, but by changing debit cards. Many people agree in principle that major high-street banks have too much power, and that they frequently abuse that power. Nevertheless, many individuals don't necessarily have the time, or inclination, to protest about it directly in the manner of the Occupy protesters. There's been a lot of discussion about how to make financial protest more inclusive (including this piece by Kenth Gustaffson on a type of ‘ virtual occupy movement ’), but perhaps one of the most profound (and often overlooked) forms of protest is to distance yourself from mainstream finance by withdrawing deposits and avoiding using the services. The...

So I haven’t managed to get a blog post out for a couple weeks. That’s partly because I’ve been having some cash-flow management problems, due to some crap planning on my part and some unfortunate payment delays. This is an ongoing issue in freelance life, to smile through gritted teeth when someone at an organisation tells you the admin guy went on holiday and forgot to process your invoice. In a situation when one’s reserves are marginal, small frictions in the system can wipe you out. Needless to say, when my landlord sent me an sms a few weeks ago saying ‘You haven’t paid your rent, and you have six months of bills to pay too,’ I got a deep down chill. My landlord is a cool guy. He only has one name, and our contract is informal at best, built on trust and belief in human nature rather than legal structures. That’s why he gave me some leeway, and that’s also why I didn’t want to abuse that trust. So I called up my friend George, and asked him what I should do. He wrote a song for m...

Trading floors and paneled offices in Canary Wharf look profoundly hi-tech, and yet they are built on blueprints inherited from the past, in some cases the very distant past. Modern financial institutions like to use the language of innovation, and yet they endorse only a narrow conception of innovation, focused on product innovation. There’s very little tinkering with the base level assumptions from which they are created. To challenge the deep-level normative status quo requires one to move out of the mainstream salons, and into the fringe coffee shops and covert speakeasies. Close to Moorgate station is one such safehouse, down a small alley, behind an austere wooden door. Enter the Finance Innovation Lab . The Finance Lab initially started as a joint project by the WWF and ICAEW , asking the question “What does a financial system that serves people and planet look like?” It’s now a forum for an assortment of financial heretics, some outrightly so, others more subtly so. The commu...