Back to the days of local printed money

This happened many years ago, and is likely to be a good collector's item, where communities create and print their own money that is accepted and exchanged at local banks and stores.

A local TV station just did a story on the Plenty, the currency from Pittsboro, NC, which is just down the road from here. Apparently it was tried there before and failed, but is now backed by a bank. If it will help the locals, more power to it.

Geoff

Of course, you could accomplish 90% of the same thing if people would just purchase 75% of their items made in their own continent.

I was thinking about this some more. Suppose you buy into this idea that a bank is issuing $ 10 worth of "local money" for every $ 9 of US dollars.

They take in $ 90,000 of US dollars and issue $ 100,000 of "local money".

The bank goes under or decides to no longer honor the "local money" because they were bought out or some other reason. (like counterfeiting)

The locals are now stuck with useless paper that absolutely no one will take, and the bankers walked away with the $90 K with US dollars for free.

I guess I was born a skeptic, but if they want to re-price the goods locally, they would be better off buying up some inexpensive currency like a Mexican Peso (very cheap) or the Australian dollar (about 71 cents today) and using that.

Emperor norton dollars went over really well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nort10d.jpg

HarryN said:

Of course, you could accomplish 90% of the same thing if people would just purchase 75% of their items made in their own continent.

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Which is exactly why I advocate Americans buying American made goods, but many people seem to shoot that idea down, saying, "it's a global economy......." Wait till there are even fewer jobs here. Then we'll see how people feel about the "global economy". Help your own countrymen first, I say! Just like when the oxygen masks drop in an aircraft in distress. Put YOUR mask on before helping the person beside you. (You representing your own country, the person beside you representing other countries). It's a no-brainer for me.

HarryN said:

Of course, you could accomplish 90% of the same thing if people would just purchase 75% of their items made in their own continent.

Click to expand...

No doubt. What we really need is a change of how we deal with our own communities. More local store business, more local farming, buying one quality good instead of ten crappy pieces over the years, all leading to an economy that would not be so dependent on banks and imports.

A quality side effect might even be less damage due to colonialism, fostering more quality goods from countries like China, rather than our own companies using them to get work done cheaply and poorly in the short term. Wishful thinking, given our import-addiction, right now? Maybe. But if so, please just let me wish .

The bank being bought or going under is not the only problem. It's that having the currency be a coupon off of a dollar, you're still basically using dollars.

The new currency now has a worth that is tied to the dollar--that is, it is worth 10/9 of what the world thinks a dollar should be worth, in your local area, at the time of conversion. The best that does is drop half a year to two years of inflation from the dollar, while adding more risk. Yet, if it increases in value relative to the dollar over time, it will deflate its way from being a valuable currency as much as the dollar has inflated its way to it. As long as you need to buy things from outside of your local area, it's not any good. Most of what you buy in your area is bought from outside before you buy it there.

The value of our currency is a result of decades of lifestyles that need to be reigned in (including class divisions, public-loss/private-gain welfare, bigger-is-better wasteful attitudes, lack of working class political activism, etc.). It won't be fun for most of us; but we need to accept it, learn to roll with it, and plan around it. Trying to salve it with a funny piece of paper is not going to help.