Posted on 11/13/2012 4:49:25 AM PST by DeaconBenjamin
One recent Saturday morning, Nick Williams navigated the packed aisles of the Glut Food Co-Op in Mount Rainier, filling his basket with organic vegetables, herbal tea, turmeric and local apple cider.
After the cashier rang up his purchases, he pulled out a funny-looking piece of paper instead of a wad of cash. The bill had environmentalist Rachel Carson’s picture where Abraham Lincoln’s ought to have been. Stripped across the top was the motto “In Each Other We Trust.”
Monopoly money? No, just a local currency system in the Mount Rainier and Hyattsville neighborhoods in Prince George’s County, where users essentially trade goods and services using money the group designed and printed called “Anacostia Hours.”
Local or alternative currencies are almost as old as trade itself, but the movement has found new life amid the global financial crisis, as parallel economies outside the traditional monetary system have emerged in countries such as Spain, Mexico and Brazil. These systems are flourishing because the unemployed can either trade skills for local currency or swap their time for other services.
“Obviously the idea of local currency has been around for a long time and historically they do pop up in times of economic uncertainty,” said Julie Gouldener, 40, program coordinator of the Baltimore Green Currency Association. “We view the complementary currency as a win-win. It’s not meant to replace the U.S. dollar. It’s meant to exist alongside it and build more local wealth.”
Gouldener’s group launched a currency called the BNote in April 2011. Locals can trade real dollars for BNotes at eight “cambios” around the city, including Zeke’s Coffee in Northeast Baltimore, and use them at 175 businesses. So far, there are about 28,000 BNotes in circulation.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Private competing currencies sounds good to me.
Here’s a half-hour of my time for a bottle of soda... right...
What do these limp-wristed vegans do when someone refuses to pay up for services rendered or goods purchased? Do the local attorneys take this Monopoly money for a retainer?
Uh-oh...the IRS is going to be so miffed...
Conservatives need to start commercially identifying, and dealing in cash and barter. Minimize the financial footprint.
Remember all the drugged out hippies in the 60’s and 70’s?These are their offspring,more brain damaged than their parents.
Here is one. Interesting and too complicated for me to understand. I would not be against trying if I could figure out the computer usage.
There you go again.
Busting the fantasy bubble with reality.
And silver; actually that’s a very good idea. It won’t ever happen, but it is a good idea. The Gov’t of parasites, by parasites, for parasites can’t steal what they can’t see! And add to that a boycott of any and all businesses, particularly the national chain stores. If we’re lucky we’ll see Best Buy and JC Penney go bankrupt and that’s a few thousand more Obamacans out of work.
Why honey don’t you get it...it’s all based on ‘good faith and credit.’
Now, I did mention just yesterday though that conservatives need to start looking into a conservative barter system of some sort. A private monthly ‘get together,’ to swap goods and services(?) between like minded individuals.
But as rightly pointed out, there are still IRS implications here. But then we all know no one shall buy, sell or trade without the required marks....
But...truth be told, we need to figure out a way to live in this New America.
Rachel Carson? Really? Sheesh!
They call in the goon squad. The squad surrounds the offender, cross their arms and look really, really disappointed until the offender breaks.
It is a backwards-assed approach to "employment"... here's some money for what you promise to do in the future (who thought this up, the Nobel Committee?) Sounds more like a tax-avoidance scheme than anything else. You can't be taxed on "income" that isn't "the coin of the realm". But I'll bet the IRS will take a swing at it anyway.
Spain is mentioned in the article as having alternative currencies... looks like the writer was trying to focus on areas hit hard economically. However, there have been fifty or sixty regional currencies that have sprung up all over Europe in the past decade. Germany is a trend leader in that regard - and it is said to be on much more solid economic ground. Well, regional currencies hadn't been seen in Deutschland since the Great Depression and the Weimar Republic.
Bitcoin is the BIGGEST fiat currency in existence... after the U.S. dollar, of course.
Don’t get sucked into that scam.
I am not saying you should put all of your money in Bitcoin...in fact I am skeptical of it because the market has not really stabilized. It is however interesting because of the inherent scarcity built into the system and the cryptographic guarantees that can be made about it.
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