Fantopia by James Gibb Stuart
A book which deals directly with the biggest social, financial and economic problem of our day: the dominance of private finance over publicly issued money....
The Greek philosopher Plato, wrote some 2400 years ago, "I wonder if we could contrive some magnificent myth that would in itself carry conviction to our whole community."
Fantopia could epitomise that "magnificent myth", updated for the new millennium. It examines the problem repeatedly aired by money reformers that the private banking system has taken upon itself a virtual monopoly of credit creation; whilst seigniorage, the historic right of the Sovereign or Governing Authority to issue money in the name of the people it serves, has been eroded.

In the UK today no more than 3% of money in circulation is created by the government. That money is the notes and coins, which are created, debt free, by the process described by Mike Rowbotham in the April 2000 issue of Prosperity. The rest of the money circulating is electronic transfers and cheque-book money created by, and owed to, the private banking system.

Yet for the preservation of social services, community life and national infrastructure, the right of the government to create money remains vitally important. Just how important, it is both the purpose and the significance of the Fantopian myth to place beyond any doubt. By quote, cartoon illustration and allegorical role-playing it spells out the consequences for our national life and wellbeing, as private finance is surreptitiously allowed to take the place of publicly issued money.

But in Fantopia at least, the problem is there for the solving; and the solution emerges when representatives of banking, economics, politics, the media and academia get together. After slightly acrimonious debate, during which the orthodoxies of banking and economics take a beating, there is a refreshingly new spirit of compromise, and that which had seemed intractable, so rigid and so immovable, could in fact be subject to change.

It appeared in the end that the answer was simple, so simple that only the self-important dogma of macro-economics and the smothering omnipresence of banking mystique could have kept it under wraps for so long. It meant breaking the monopoly of credit under which private finance, no matter how well intentioned, was slowly strangling the social and community life of the nation; and restoring a healthy proportion of public finance such as had formerly been made available by the Governing Authority of the day. But why only in Fantopia? That's the question asked on the front cover, and it might legitimately be repeated as you read the final page... Why only in Fantopia?

William Krehm, publisher-editor of Economic Reform (Canada) wrote, "James Gibb Stuarts Fantopia has the down-to-earth directness of Adam Smith... a dry-as-dust but terribly vital subject is transformed into a highly readable tale."