Local currencies really can buy happiness

From IPS

ATLANTA, Georgia, May 30 (IPS/IFEJ) – In the face of an economic system which seems to be premised on environmental harm and profit-driven growth, a handful of communities across the U.S. and the globe have begun experimenting with alternative forms of local currency as a pathway to sustainability.

Local currencies existing today in the U.S. include the Humboldt Community Currency in Eureka, California; Berkshares in the Massachusetts Berkshire region; Bay Bucks in Traverse City, Michigan; Ithaca Hours in Ithaca, New York; Cascadia Hours, Corvalis Hours, and RiverHours in Oregon; Equal Dollars in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Madison Hours in Madison, Wisconsin, according to the E. F. Schumacher Society, which runs Berkshares.

Canadian community currencies are located in Calgary, Alberta; Salt Spring Island, British Columbia; Tamworth, Toronto and the Madawaska Valley, both in Ontario, which is promoting a “usury-free dollar”.

There are also community currencies in Tlaxpana, Mexico; and East Sussex and Devon, England; as well as a regional currency based in Basel, Switzerland, which can also be exchanged in parts of Germany and France.

What these currencies have in common is that they represent an effort to respond to the pressures of globalisation, like the advent of massive chain stores competing with local merchants.

People in Berkshire can go to one of five participating local banks to trade 95 cents for one Berkshare, at a five percent discount to the dollar. Then, they can spend Berkshares at over 400 participating local stores as a direct replacement for dollars, and thus save 5 cents with every Berkshare they spend.

Even though store owners lose the 5 cents whenever they trade Berkshares back for dollars at a bank – which they have to do to buy something that can’t be produced locally – they are still typically happy with the loyal, local customers they keep instead of losing them to chains like Wal-Mart, Starbucks, and Barnes & Noble.

If You’re Fed Up With All The Corruption, Greed, and Bailouts, Here’s Something You Can Do About It Locally

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From DAVE SMITH
Ukiah

We don’t have to march or protest. We don’t have to write letters to our congresspersons and President. We don’t have to fire all the President’s men.

We have it within our power locally, and only locally, to start dealing with this mess by stepping aside from the economic systems that have created it.

Are your credit/debit card banks relentlessly raising your fees and charging you usury interest? Start using local money instead. It will save you money, and eliminating the bank fees locally-owned businesses have to pay when you use plastic will lower their costs and lower their prices.

Local money cleans up filthy lucre by jilting the banks and investors who have used our money to build pyramid schemes of debt and ponzi schemes of greed. Local money stays home where it belongs instead of lining the bank accounts of billionaires in Arkansas.

Local money, used face-to-face and hand-to-hand, takes back something valuable we have lost: more control over our own local economy.

For locally-owned businesses, creating and exchanging local money is the cheapest and most effective local advertising ever created because it is carried around in our pockets and is passed around the community from neighbor to neighbor, business to business, as a constant reminder to Buy Local.

Local money has its own built-in insurance. It insures the health and wealth of our own communities, and the more it is used, the more community value and sustainability is built.

Local money is backed by the full faith and trust in our community; by the inventory you see through the windows of our merchants; and by the skills in the hands and hearts of our farmers and restaurateurs.
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Villagers in Thailand create their own money

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From the Wall Street Journal

SANTI SUK, Thailand — One way to beat the world’s credit crisis: Start printing your own money.

The villagers of Santi Suk began creating their own cash here on the sun-bleached plains of northern Thailand following Asia’s financial crisis a decade ago.

Decorating their money with children’s sketches of water buffaloes and Buddhist temples, the villagers conceived it as a do-it-yourself attempt to protect themselves from the whiplash of vast outflows of speculative money which undermined local currencies and threw Thailand — and much of Asia — into recession in 1997-98.

At the time, some villagers faced questioning before Thailand’s central bank and were accused by local government officials of plotting a secessionist revolt.

Now, with Thailand’s economy slowing sharply, the DIY cash is beginning to flow freely again.

“We need our own money more than ever now,” says Phra Supajarawat, the wiry, orange-robed abbot of the local Buddhist monastery, who doubles as a “governor” of Santi Suk’s tiny, one-room bank. “Things are turning bad in Thailand and people need something they can believe in,” he says.

Homemade currencies, sometimes known as community or complementary currencies, have a habit of popping up during economic crises. Some towns in the U.S., Canada and Germany introduced their own scrip during the Great Depression. Similar schemes have emerged more recently in Japan, Argentina and Britain.

Keep reading at Wall Street Journal→
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Another Local Currency Launch in Britain (with video)

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From Transition Culture
Brixton Pound Promo Video Below

David Boyle’s speech at the launch of the Brixton Pound

One of my first experiences of currencies along the lines of the Brixton pound was in Ithaca in upstate New York, where they have had an amazing printed currency for the last 15 years. You can get loans in it. The biggest loan was for $36,000. Not bad for a local currency. Some of the notes are printed on paper made from Angora rabbit fur, which is an innovative solution to the problem of counterfeiting which has not yet struck the Bank of England. But I met a man there who had been mugged in Manhattan. The mugger searched through his wallet and said, hey what are these?. He brandished a pile of Ithaca notes.

My friend explained that they were a way to keep local economies moving, and the mugger was fascinated. Wow, he said. You’re right about the world: money doesn’t work for people like us, does it. And of course it doesn’t work very well. It works beautifully for a very few, for whom it is endlessly elastic and flexible and forgiving. When Robert Maxwell fell off his yacht, he owed twice as much as Zimbabwe. But he had a yacht.

For the rest of us, it is very concrete. We have to pay what little we borrow back according to the rules. Because otherwise, well its moral jeopardy, isn’t it. We might learn bad habits. We might get perverted somehow from the straight and narrow. Then there wouldn’t be enough to bail out Citibank again! But then Americans, it seems to me, understand these things better than we do. Their new kinds of money caused the War of Independence in the first place. Benjamin Franklin with his printing machine. They had 5,000 depression currencies in the 1930s which luterally kept people alive through the Great Depression. Some of them were made of wood, which is a bit bizarre.[!!]

The Stroud Pound Hits the Streets in England

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From Rob Hopkins
Transition Culture

This weekend saw the launch of the Stroud Pound. Four denominations have been published, and over at Josef Coates-Davis’s blog, he tells the story of the design of the notes.

“The notes, designed by local artist Ronan Schoemaker and produced by local currency collector Steve Charlwood, are like miniature histories of the economic and cultural life of the Five Valleys. The most prominent local celebrity to feature is Laurie Lee, author of Cider with Rosie, who was born in Stroud and is buried in the Slad Valley. Local wildlife is represented by the rare Adonis Blue butterfly found on Minchinhampton Common. Stroud’s economic heritage is commemorated by the teazle itself, while the lawnmower, invented in Stroud, the green felt cloth that is still made in the town and Thomas the Tank Engine also feature”.

The launch has generated a fair bit of coverage. The Telegraph focused on the fact that Laurie Lee (author of ‘Cider with Rosie’) features on one of the notes, and here is a piece from the local paper. Local councillor, Philip Booth, on his excellent site Ruscombe Green, discusses Why We Need the Stroud Pound. The Stroud Pound is the work of the Stroud Pound Co-op Ltd which in turn, grew out of Transition Stroud. You can read their take on it here. They state that the reasons for the currency are;

• Retain more locally created economic values within the locality and prevent leakage into the global economy, as happens with sterling exchanges;
• Increase and sustain local economic activity and help insulate Stroud’s economy from the worst effects of Recession;
• Increase trade and support the creation of more jobs
• Help consumers identify which businesses support the local economy.
• (Reduce the length of supply chains for local consumers;)
• Stimulate greater local production

Keep reading at Transition Culture→

Food Backed Local Money

Mendo Food Futures Credits→