Why Do We Need Local Money?

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From ROB HOPKINS
Transition Network UK

[Foreword to the book 'Local Money']

The power of holding your community’s own money.

September 2009, Lambeth Town Hall, Brixton. On a beautiful evening with just the first hint of autumn in the air, hundreds of people are packed into the large room for the launch of the Brixton Pound. In the days running up to the launch, the media was full of stories about the currency; it even made the front page of the BBC website on the day. Alongside explanations of how it is intended to work and interviews with advocates were mainstream economists who, somewhat patronisingly, assured readers that this could never really work and that it was all tremendously naive and foolish. Clearly that was a sentiment that those gathered in the hall, and the 70 traders already keen to accept the notes, had chosen to overlook – or, more likely, would fervently disagree with. This event was both a celebration of the new currency and, perhaps most importantly, of Brixton itself.

Derrick Anderson, the Chief Executive of the local council, which had partly funded the initiative, told the audience that he would be using Brixton Pounds, that he hoped they would become ‘the currency of choice for Brixton’, and that he was delighted that this was a good news story about the area. When I spoke to him later, I explored with him how deep the commitment of the council to this new currency would actually run. Would it accept the currency in payment of Council Tax? Would it accept rent from stallholders in Brixton Pounds? The answer to both questions was yes: a national first.

At the end of the evening, the notes themselves were unveiled to rapturous applause. Each note featured a prominent Brixtonian, chosen via a community-wide ‘Vote the Note’ poll. They showed Vincent Van Gogh on the £20 note; C. L. R. James, a local historian, political theorist and cricket writer on the £10 note; Gaia theorist James Lovelock on the £5 note

Mendo Moola: Ukiah Businesses Create Local Money

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From DAVE SMITH
Ukiah

Three local business are now creating and circulating our own local currency, Mendo Moola: Oco Time Japanese Cuisine, Mulligan Books, and Ukiah Brewing Company. The Mendo Moola Blog explains how and why a local currency works. Almost 20 other locally-owned businesses in Mendocino County, listed on the blog, accept and trade Mendo Moola as payment for goods and services; they include Local Flavor Bake House, Paula’s Hair Salon, Westside Renaissance Market, Mendocino Bounty, Mendocino Lavender Farm, Incognito Fun Store, and RespecTech.

Money connects buyers and sellers. Communities across the country and around the world are issuing local currencies, as they have for many years, to protect themselves against recessions, depressions, bank failures, tight money, credit crunches, risk aversion, hoarding, and leakage that dries up the money supply, kills jobs, and destroys local economies. The more money that is available to be used locally and kept circulating locally,the more jobs are created and the more a local community becomes prosperous and sustainable economically.

During the Great Depression, more than 5,000 local currencies helped keep Americans alive. Over the past two decades, over 2,500 local currencies have sprung up nationally.

Over the past 50 years, the expansion of national businesses into local domestic markets, and now the Internet, has diverted and redirected circulating money to centralized corporate coffers. ‘Leakage’ occurs when, every night, money spent that day in chain stores and franchises is sucked out of our community electronically to their headquarters elsewhere.

An Interview with Peter North, author of Local Money

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From TRANSITION CULTURE

In past recessions and depressions, a popular response from communities has been to create their own forms of money. How can local money help communities in times of hardship and cut as much carbon out of their economies as possible?

Pete North’s new book ‘Local Money: how to make it happen in your community’ will be formally launched at the 2010 Transition Network conference and will be available to order here at the end of this week.  The latest book in the Transition Books series, ‘Local Money’ is a comprehensive overview of local currencies, and how to plan and implement such a scheme.  It is written with Transition initiatives in mind, drawing from the experience of Transition currencies such as the Brixton Pound and the Lewes Pound, but it also tells the fascinating stories of other alternative currencies, including the story of how local money was a key element of how communities survived the Argentinian crash.  To celebrate the launch of the book, I interviewed Pete about the book, and about local currencies….

‘Local Money’ is about to be published… can you tell us, in a nutshell, what the book covers?

In a nutshell, the fruits of looking at local currencies over the past nearly 20 years distilled into 240 pages. I’ve tried to cover both the longer standing alternative currencies like LETS and Time Money and the newer kids on the block, transition currencies, in as much detail. I’ve also tried to give the reader an understanding of why money is in the form it is now, what is good about different forms of money, and how it could be improved.

Local Mendocino Slow Money

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From E. F. SCHUMACHER SOCIETY

Lowly, unpurposeful, and random as they may appear, sidewalk contacts are the small change from which a city’s wealth of public life may grow. –Jane Jacobs from “The Death and Life of Great American Cities.”

One of the features of BerkShares [and Mendo Moola], the local currency circulating in the Southern Berkshire region of Massachusetts, is that it fosters this wealth of sidewalk contacts (www.berkshares.org).

Use of BerkShares, a paper currency, requires face to face economic exchange. The citizen/buyer must meet the merchant/owner and enter into conversation about the item purchased. In the course of these multiple transactions an understanding begins to grow of the nature of the business, how it fits in the streetscape of the town, the working conditions of its employees, availability of locally made goods, the impact of new regulations, the necessity to respond to the changing tastes of consumers, the hurdles to prosperity, the many roles the merchant plays in the community as volunteer ambulance squad member, school board official, community theater player.

When purchasing directly from a producer with BerkShares the information shared may be even more deeply sourced in the local landscape. You may learn how to detect the first signs of a blighted maple tree plaguing the maple syrup industry, or learn how heavy spring rains kept bees from pollinating the apples blossoms, resulting in fewer apples to market.

BerkShares are a “slow money” to borrow a term coined by Woody Tasch. It takes more time to process a transaction, time for graciousness, time for building connection with community of place.

“Inconvenient,” some will say. Yes, when compared to the hastiness and anonymity of an internet purchase. But rich with information needed for conducting public life. A democracy only thrives when its citizens are informed and engaged by public issues.

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.

Go to Mendo Moola→
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Announcing – Mendo Moola Circulating Now

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From DAVE SMITH
Ukiah

August 17, 2009 Ukiah Valley, Mendocino, North California

The more money is used locally and kept circulating locally, the more jobs are created and the wealthier a local community becomes (see Why NOT To Shop In Santa Rosa below).

Mendo Moola is smart money… a local currency, issued by locally-owned merchants and circulated only within Mendocino County. It is accepted in payment by participating, locally-owned merchants. The first merchant to issue its own currency is Mulligan Books in downtown Ukiah using wooden coins as change for purchases, and as “gift certificates”.

By using Mendo Moola in trade – face-to-face, hand-to-hand – money does not leave our community as it does using Federal Reserve Notes and Credit/Debit Cards.

Communities across the country and around the world issue local currencies to protect themselves against “tight money” and “credit crunches” that kill jobs and local economies. See Mendo Moola website for more info and a growing list of local businesses and services accepting it.

Mendo Moola Proposed Rules:

1. Mendo Moola (MM) as a Local Currency can initially be issued by any merchant, in branded wood coins or paper, with a store front that stocks inventory. It is then backed by the full faith and credit of that particular merchant’s inventory and cash flow, and by the health of the community’s local trade. (Eventually, any business or service could issue its own currency.)
2. MM will always be redeemed for cash by the issuing merchant upon request by either customers or other merchants, although using MM to purchase products is preferred.
3. MM will only be issued into circulation as change, direct exchange for cash (not sold as a taxable product), or as “gift certificates”.
4. MM will not be issued into circulation by being “spent” by the issuing merchant for products or services, i.e. merchants will not use their own issued currency from storage to purchase products themselves.

Local Currency in Lewes, England

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From Transition Towns
Lewes, East Sussex, UK

July 29, 2009 Ukiah Valley, Mendocino, North California

The Lewes Pound is a creative yet practical way for local people to make money work for Lewes. The Lewes Pound is essentially a voucher or token that can be traded locally as a complementary currency and used alongside pounds Sterling.

Money spent locally circulates within, and benefits the local economy. Money spent in national chains doesn’t. The Lewes Pound encourages demand for local goods and services. In turn this builds resilience to the rising costs of energy, transport and food.

The Lewes Pounds is driven by three main considerations:

* Economic: According to the New Economics Foundation, money spent locally stays within the community and is re-used many times, multiplying wealth and building resilience in the local economy.
* Environmental: Supporting local businesses and goods reduces the need for transport and minimises our carbon footprint.
* Social: By spending money in local outlets we can strengthen the relationships between local shopkeepers and the community. It also supports people finding new ways to make a living initiatives

The Lewes Pound also benefits shoppers by creates stronger and more local shops, increasing a sense of pride in our community, decreasing CO2 emissions and increasing economic resilience.

Mendo Moola – Local Money Here Now

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From DAVE SMITH
Ukiah

June 22, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California

Open Money Manifesto
From Open Money

The problems with money stem entirely from how conventional money is normally issued – it is created by central banks in limited supply. There are three things we know about this money. We know what it does – it comes and it goes. We know what it is – it’s scarce and hard to get. And we know where it’s from – it’s from “them”, not us.

These three characteristics, common to all national currencies, determine that we constantly have to compete for a share of the limited amount of the “stuff” that makes the world go round. This money can go anywhere, and so it inevitably does, leaving the community deprived of its means of exchange.

It is simply the nature of conventional money that by its coming and going it creates conditions of competition and scarcity, within and between communities.

So we have to scramble for money to survive, we are forced to compete for it, often ruthlessly. Intent on getting the most for the least, we strive for the best bargains, as individuals, businesses, non-profits, governments, and nations.

As a society, as a generation, it seems we are determined to have everything ourselves no matter what consequences our excesses and negligence bring for others, now and in the future.

We rely on this money. It seems there isn’t much choice, despite its evident failings. Some people have little or none and cannot do what they need to live in this world –

Mendocino County Supervisors. Ukiah City Councilors. We CAN print our own money! Just form our own bank!

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From Web of Debt

May 27, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California

[Fiscally solvent North Dakota is doing it . . . and so can California. So can Mendocino County! So can Ukiah! And save our own economy. Seriously! Right now! -DS]

Money in a government-owned bank could give us the best of both worlds. We could have all the credit-generating advantages of private banks, without the baggage cluttering up the books of the Wall Street giants, including bad derivatives bets, unmarketable collateralized debt obligations, mark to market accounting issues, oversized CEO salaries and bonuses, and shareholders expecting a sizeable cut of the profits.

A state could deposit its vast revenues in its own state-owned bank and proceed to fan them into 8 to 10 times their face value in loans. Not only would it have its own credit machine, but it would control the loan terms. The state could lend at ½% interest to itself and to municipal governments, rolling the loans over as needed until the revenues had been generated to pay them off.

According to Professor Margrit Kennedy in her 1995 book Interest and Inflation-free Money, interest composes, on average, fully half the cost of every public project. Cutting costs by 50% could make currently-unsustainable projects such as low-cost housing, alternative energy development, and infrastructure construction not only sustainable but actually profitable for the government.

If all this seems too radical and unprecedented to venture into, consider that one state has had its own bank for 90 years; and it has not only escaped the credit crunch but is doing remarkably well . . . .

North Dakota has also managed to avoid the credit freeze, through the simple expedient of creating its own credit. It has led the nation in establishing state economic sovereignty. In California and other states, workers and factories are sitting idle because the private credit system has failed…

Keep reading at Web of Debt→
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See also Mendo Moola→
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