When I first heard about the “bailout” money going to large banks with no requirement to make sure that money helped local homeowners facing foreclosure, I felt sick to my stomach. I had a feeling like I did after hurricane Katrina when I realized that instead of helping the stranded victims of the flooding, the federal government was flying over in helicopters and shooting people.
Inspired by the actions of community groups in New Orleans who realized that no one was coming to help, they formed their own recovery networks. They did a great deal to help each other by organizing networks of volunteers on their own. I got the idea that here in San Francisco where our business is, we can do the same. If we wait for Obama’s stimulus money to trickle down to our local level, we may find ourselves dead.
I came up with the concept for a “neighborhood new deal” involving local currencies and pooling resources at a grassroots level. It means taking inventory of the assets right here in our own neighborhood and collaboration on a plan to keep money local, to facilitate the evolution of de-centralized sustainable economy, or economy 2.0.
If the Fed can print money, why can’t we? It’s time we each take responsibility for local economic revitalization. If this sounds crazy to you, read on and watch this video on ABC: USA Today posted an article and ABC covered the printing of money by local communities just this week:
This is not a new idea. Systems known as LETS (Local Employment Trading Systems) have been in place throughout Europe and Australia as far back as the 1980’s. Wikipedia lists many cities throughout the US that have local currencies. I am contacting my Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi to initiate this here in SF. Solari.com has an excellent blueprint for creating local sustainable banking and purchasing Co-Ops.
Please contact us or leave a comment here if you want to participate or know of resources. Right now we need a list of local businesses who would take the local currencies as partial payment. In exchange, we’d get some good publicity and a bit more business. Count Bardic Media (web design and marketing service) in!
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Jct: Best of all, when the local currency is pegged to the Time Standard of Money (how many dollars/hour child labor) Hours earned locally can be intertraded with other timebanks globally!
In 1999, I paid for 39/40 nights in Europe with an IOU for a night back in Canada worth 5 Hours.
U.N. Millennium Declaration UNILETS Resolution C6 to governments is for a time-based currency to restructure the global financial architecture.
See my banking systems engineering analysis at http://youtube.com/kingofthepaupers with an index of articles at http://johnturmel.com/kotp.htm