Economic Stability

The Kettle Pond Institute for Debt-Free Money was founded by Joe Bongiovanni and Peter Young in March of 2009.

Every autumn, for two decades, Joe and Pete and several other “fellows” have gotten together for an annual “conference” on Kettle Pond, Marshfield VT.  The event has been called a think tank, which we do not dispute, but is not exclusively policy oriented as fishing, canoeing and barbequeing are among the activities that also take place.

It is characterized chiefly, however, by the vigorous debates that occur around the campfire at night, and the sometimes loud, guitar-led singalongs.

The idea for this “institute” and a website devoted to education and discussion of the idea of debt-free money came from conversations between Joe and Pete  in a canoe on Kettle Pond that began in September 2008, during that phase of the financial collapse.

The “Institute” is at present no more and no less than that, and this website.

Joe Bongiovanni has been a student of the monetary system for over 30 years, continuing the work started by his father,  Joseph T. Bongiovanni (see below.)  Born into a large family in 1943, he grew up on Long Island, NY.  Completely self-educated beyond high school, he homesteaded with his family in the Canadian Maritimes in the 1970’s.

From 1980 until 2003 he lived in Marshfield VT, during which time he served as Chair of the local planning commission and as the General Manager of Washington Electric Coop and the Town of Hardwick VT Electric Dept.  Energy policy and planning are other lifelong interests of Joe’s, and he still serves on the Boards of the Coventry Clean Energy Corporation(methane) and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. He has blogged for many years under the name joebhed.

In 2003, he and his wife of 35 years, the painter Helen Maffei Bongiovanni,  moved to Harborton Virginia, where he continues to study, blog, and speak about debt-free money in his “retirement.”  Joe and Helen have a daughter and a granddaughter, to whom he repeatedly dedicates this work, and an adopted Colombian daughter, recently married, who live in Vermont.

Peter Young grew up  in Allentown PA.  In contrast to Joe, he went to some pretty elite schools.  (He was at Andover when Jeb Bush was, and has a BA from Middlebury, where he studied English and German.)  Rather than entering the world he had been groomed for, he ran a dairy and sauerkraut farm in Marshfield, VT from 1982 to 1999.  Since then he has been a farm business consultant, a political campaign manager, a theater director, and is a founder of Shakespeare in the Hills, a community theater and  theater education non-profit.  He has three sons, Carson, Noah, and Ian.

Like many Americans, Pete was never very interested in macroeconomics until the Fall of 2008, when the prevailing financial crisis made him pay closer attention. Since that time, Joe has become his mentor on money creation and monetary reform, although they have been friends for twenty five years.

The way this site will lead the visitor into the subject of debt-free money will largely follow Pete’s studies with Joe.  And until people catch on to the blog, he will ask Joe plenty of questions.

Joseph T Bongiovanni(1910-2001) was a first  generation American from Weehawken, NJ.  An eighth-grade dropout, he built a manufacturing business employing over 200 people in Long Island, and at other manufacturing plants in California and Indiana.
He became interested in monetary reform when his local banker refused a business loan because their loan policies were supporting speculation in land and development. He founded the Center for Economic Stability (honored in the web address of this site) and testified several times before the Congressional Joint Economic Committee on his proposal for a Socio-Economic National Growth Act, premised upon sound money and economic democracy.