2 neighborhoods consider printing own currency for exclusive use in local stores
They may be talking funny money, but it's not funny business.
Residents from the Milwaukee neighborhoods of Riverwest and East Side are discussing the printing their own money. The idea is that the local cash could be used at neighborhood stores and businesses, thus encouraging local spending. The result, supporters hope, would be a bustling local economy, even as the rest of the nation deals with a recession.
"You have all these people who have local currency, and they're going to spend it at local stores," said Sura Faraj, a community organizer who is helping spearhead the plan. "They can't spend it at the Wal-Mart or the Home Depot, but they can spend it at their local hardware store or their local grocery store."
Incentives could be used to entice consumers into using the new money. For example, perhaps they could trade $100 U.S. for $110 local, essentially netting them a 10 percent discount at participating stores.
It's not a new concept - experts estimate there are at least 2,000 local currencies all over the world - but it is a practice that tends to burgeon during economic downturns. During the Great Depression, scores of communities relied on their own currencies.
And it's completely legal.
As long as communities don't create coins, or print bills that resemble federal dollars, organizations are free to produce their own greenbacks - and they'd don't even have to be green. Anything else, whether paper or coins, goes.
Local currencies are a more or less common occurrence in many localities in Britain, for instance, where they can be used in local participating businesses. In some instances it is a kind of barter system in other s it is a more or less fully fledged paper currency.
I do know that there are some that claim that it is illegal in the USA to mint coins and that only Congress may do so, this is not, as far as I know, the case. There are many “trade rounds” in circulation which are, after all, .999 pure silver (or even gold) and which could be used thus by someone accepting silver or gold in payment – and there are indeed some places that do accept those “trade rounds” in the USA.
In all cases of such local currencies we are talking about the equivalent of “vouchers” and “coupons”, though they may be called something else, to the point of having a currency name and such, that are only accepted by businesses and individual that are participants of such a scheme. It is, basically, barter by another name.
The local currencies of this nature in the UK are not something you exchange your ordinary cash for but if you do a job on a barter kind of system you take those “notes” in exchange for money which you can then spend at another business or such in the same way. This is, in a way, a way of getting around paying taxes, as well, and in some instances it is a kind of tax protest.
There are schemes like this also in Canada and in other parts of the world and this could even become something that could be used in a virtual world.
© M Smith (Veshengro), January 2009
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Milwaukee neighborhoods could print own money
