Struggling Towns Begin Printing Their Own Cash

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Struggling Towns Begin

Printing Their Own Cash

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/struggling_towns__212.html

 

By Pat Shannan

 

In an echo of the Great Depression, local currencies with their own

special flavors are popping up all over in attempts to give commerce

and communities a lift.

 

Last year, two Detroit businessmen were bemoaning the local economy—no

one in the city had cash, and when they did, they spent it in the

suburbs. Then the pair hit on a solution: Print their own money. Thus

was born the “Detroit Cheer,” a local scrip accepted by a handful of

city businesses, including a pizzeria, an electrician, a few local pubs

and a doggy day care center.

 

Residents can also exchange it at a few area bars for greenbacks, but

the cheer is vastly more colorful. It features a chiseled Greco-Roman

superhero (the Spirit of Detroit) towering Godzilla-like over the city

skyline, cupping a tiny family in one hand and a sunburst representing

God in the other.

 

Detroit isn’t the only city sporting its own currency. Since the market

bottomed nearly 18 months ago, there’s been an interest in local scrips

not seen since the 1930s Great Depression. Law professor Lewis Solomon

states in his book, Rethinking Our Centralized Monetary System, that

there is no legal prohibition to creating a local currency system in

the United States.

 

The IRS, FBI, Secret Service, Federal Reserve and Treasury Department

have all declared the printing and use of local currencies to be legal.

 

Residents in tiny North Fork, Calif., just launched the North Fork

Share and folks in Piedmont, N.C., spend the newly issued the “plenty,”

a currency depicting colorful local flora and fauna. Brooklyn, N.Y., is

preparing to launch the “torch,” while South Bend, Ind., is set to

print Michiana Community Currency that will be commonly known as “MACs.”

 

Susan Witt, the executive director of the E.F. Schumacher Society, a

Massachusetts think tank devoted to decentralized economies, says she

gets calls daily from towns across the nation looking to join the

movement.

 

In most cases, these communities are simply looking to boost local

commerce. The currency has to be spent in town, obviously, because it’s

worthless anywhere else. But a growing distrust of the U.S. dollar is

also at work.

 

When the Treasury floats billions of bonds to get money to bail out

banks and automakers, people look for alternatives. “These folks may

look nutty now,” says one advocate of the alternative systems, “but

wait until the dollar goes the way of the Argentine peso. Then you’ll

gladly exchange your wheelbarrow of cash for a handful of our local

currency.”

 

Towns often find the scrip flowing to the local food co-op, which soon

complains that suppliers won’t take it. Until Piedmont’s “Plenty” was

reissued with the backing of U.S. dollars, it was kept alive mainly by

the local biodiesel seller, who used it to pay his interns.

 

There have been a few successes, though. The western Massachusetts

“Berkshare” is accepted by an estimated 400 businesses and has

circulated to the tune of $2.5 million—not bad for a region with 20,000

residents. The “Hours” currency, issued in Ithaca, N.Y., has been so

entrenched for years that the local transit system is planning to

accept it.

 

Still, University of Southern Maine sociologist Ed Collum says his

study of 82 local currencies revealed a disheartening 20 percent

survival rate.

 

Another system that has been around for decades is the barter

organizations that use “trade dollars” to balance an uneven trade of

goods and services. For example should Joe trade his motorcycle for

Sam’s car worth $1,000 more, a deposit of 1,000 barter (or trade)

dollars would have to transfer from Joe’s barter account to Sam’s, in

order to balance the deal.

 

The bottom line is that people see the inevitable happening and are

looking for their own solutions rather than depending on government.

 

Pat Shannan is the assistant editor of American Free Press. He is also

the author of several videos and books including One in a Million: An

IRS Travesty and I Rode With Tupper, detailing Shannan’s experiences

with Tupper Saussy when the American dissident was on the run in the

1980s. Both are available from FIRST AMENDMENT BOOKS for $25 each.