No money? Then make your own

Can printing your own cash actually help revive a struggling economy? That's just what traders in one London shopping district are hoping for, as they begin accepting a new local currency.

Short on cash? Then why not make your own. There's no law against it, so long as you don't try to pass it off as sterling.

And you can use whatever you please to make your money, whether cigarettes, rabbit skins or paper notes.

That's what's happening in Brixton, a south London neighbourhood where shoppers, from Thursday, will be able to hand over 10 Brixton Pounds (B£s) in return for their groceries.

Currently, 6,000 Totnes pounds are in circulation from an estimated local economy of £60m.

It is, stresses Mr Brangwyn, a radical experiment, still in its very early stages, but he can see a day when England has 2,000 local currencies.

Other towns joining the experiment, started by environmental group Transition Network, are Lewes in East Sussex and Stroud in Gloucestershire which introduced the Stroud Pound this week.

"We are in London, the financial hub of the world, and are trying to do something that goes against the grain of the big banking system that we are living on the edge of."

He is also optimistic the recession can work in its favour.

That's the view of Susan Witts who co-founded the BerkShare, a local currency launched in 2006 in Berkshire, Massachusetts.

She puts the growth of BerkShares (from 1 million to 2.5 million in three years) down, in part, to the recession and a lot of hard work.

news.bbc.co.uk...

This is a good idea...
This may very well be the way to undermine the power and control the big fat cats have got over us.
Use their system to bolster a growing economy and when the new money is stable and maybe even tradeable between counties, then you can pull the rug from under the banks.

Get your local currency established and then blank off the big banks.

Legally.

Like it says, as long as you don't try to copy money that is already in legal circulation.. you can't be touched..

You don't even need gold to back up its value..
All you need is faith that people will use it as having a value.. as we already currently do with our countries currency now (although blindlly)

This could be the way to go until the venus project kicks in.. it might even help to get it going faster

Either way, breaking free of the currently controlling money will hurt the bankers.. this would help to stop any suggested NWO... This will help stem the flow of many other things and, I feel, increase community awareness and allow the people to help and work with each other again.





[edit on 17-9-2009 by Extralien]

reply to post by Extralien


I love this idea...

It's using the same concept as printing more without the negative of effect of devaluing itself.

So instead of printing more of the same currency, thus devaluing it... print more of local currency instead!

As long as there is a healthy market which can exchange these for goods the participants of that currency require for living, then it will continue to flow.


This could mean the end to income tax too!

I was wondering where would sales tax come from. Surely the governments won't accept local currencies for taxes...

Then I realized, that since you are not using Federal tender for the transaction, there is no actual sale for all intents and purposes. If I get paid with it, there is no actual income either!

Hrmm...



UPDATE: As I read further....

All businesses have to report all turnover and as every local currency is tacked to sterling, every sale, whether paid for in cream cakes, polar bears or carrots must be reported to its sterling value, the HM Revenue and Customs says.

And if you are not running a business, the HMRC has no interest because where there's no profit motive, there's no taxation consequence. The Treasury, meanwhile, views them as little more than gift vouchers.

Yet even though not a tax dodge... it does make sense in the aim toward locality and decreasing transitivity in financial energies...

[edit on 17-9-2009 by HunkaHunka]

Good idea, but I wonder how the government will valuate the money for taxation purposes. Technically speaking, the instant they assign a taxable value to these local currencies they essentially ratify it's value as an equity. You just know that our mutual enemy in Washington won't just sit back and allow people to circumvent the system our bankster overlords have laid upon us without claiming a sizeable piece of the pie.

Originally posted by burdman30ott6
Good idea, but I wonder how the government will valuate the money for taxation purposes. Technically speaking, the instant they assign a taxable value to these local currencies they essentially ratify it's value as an equity. You just know that our mutual enemy in Washington won't just sit back and allow people to circumvent the system our bankster overlords have laid upon us without claiming a sizeable piece of the pie.

So according to the article, (I updated my post above yours), you still have to report the sale. And since they are exchanging one currency for another, there is a currency exchange of sorts.

The main result I can see coming out of this is two fold.

1. Increased locality and less transitivity of wealth.
2. Greater faith in the local currencies although based on another currency will cause it's value to fluctuate.

You could operate it on a barter style system.

If a carrot is worth 1 and if you give 10 then you get 10 carrots. An apple would also be worth 1, so would a potato. The moment you introduce a carrot worth 0.99 then you start to get a problem. You might sell more carrots than your neighbour, but you will be short of stock..and it could be your neighbour who has bought all your stock and is now selling each carrot for 1, therefore creating profit. Profit is the taxable issue we want to steer clear of.

Therefore, to have no profit. it must be an exhcange of goods.. the face value of the new money is a 'good' and not a 'promise to pay'. You worked to earn 'goods' in order to buy goods to continue to work for more goods..

You don't really even need it to be backed or exchangeable for/with normal currency.

If everyone agrees on a 'goods' value, then there is no profit.. The demand for the use of the 'goods' in question would increase the amount in circulation. Everything would have a value of exchange, nullifying any profit margine.

It could eliminate greed, or at least help to reduce greed. Getting something that is expensive much cheaper would not be of such importance as it would be almost freely available to everyone anyway.

If you see what I mean..

Well, all up to the point where they tied it to the Sterling, it was looking like a voucher based barter system. One they tied it to the sterling, it became another fiat system. *shrug* still a good idea, I guess.

Originally posted by rogerstigers
Well, all up to the point where they tied it to the Sterling, it was looking like a voucher based barter system. One they tied it to the sterling, it became another fiat system. *shrug* still a good idea, I guess.

Not necessarily... there are many different currencies in the world, most with exchange rates between them. So it costs you 1 Sterling for 1 Brixton pound today... however the BerkShare currency in Massachusetts has actually grown in value.

Just because the exchanged rate for 1 BrixtonPound today is 1:1 with the Sterling doesn't mean it won't fluctuate tomorrow... at the end of the day it's all about the faith in the currency.

axxa the govs cant to sh*t! LOVE THE IDEA AND GOD BLESS THE INVENTORS,now we wont be slaves of the stupid banks!
i cant wait to relocate to london

reply to post by rogerstigers


Yup, and that's the daft thing.. I reckon they tied it to that in order to stop anyone trying to get the new currency stopped.

Imagine all the bankers who lose their jobs because people have a new currency that blanks out the banks.

The bankers could end up working for nothing.. hoping to keep alive an age old monster that just wont die.

Whereas everyone else could be enjoying a new method of exchange that should not be tied to Sterling or the Dollar etc.

If you kept it completely seperate from that system, then it reduces the work load required to sustain it.. everyone would understand it ...and maybe, everyone would use it.

We know that banks create 'money' out of thin air... printing our own money in order to sustain growing communities would solve a few problems.. like how do you afford to keep the streets lit at night..

Well, really, it shouldn't cost anything anyway.. the infrastructure is there. All we have to do is maintain or improve it.. and of course this requires goods for which we work to earn 'goods' in order top buy goods.. (like I said in my last post)

Profit only comes into play when you are overcharging, ripping off, extorting and/or otherwise stabbing everyone in the back for a greater return on your efforts. Get rid of the profit and we could all afford what we need or want.

Take a look at how much profit some companies make a year.. it goes into the billions.. but what do they do with it all? Return it into research and developement? Yeah, right. .sure.. more like bonusses for the fat cats.

Marco Polo did not do what he did for profit, neither did Colombus or Darwin.
Jesus didn't perform a few party tricks to turn a buck or two..
Mother Theresa didn't become a global name by making a profit.
Florence Nightingale made her nme helping the sick. She didn't make a profit.
Closest she ever got to having lots of money was being printed on the back of billions of notes.

i just want to say again how exited i am,it turned out my day upside up reading this,finnaly a way of actually DOING something,and shovving it in the face of the banks haha rock on brothers!

This all sounds fine and dandy until people start giving you your change in bottle caps.

All wishful thinking. What happens when you need to procure new supplies of goods from the outside? You still gotta exchange it.

reply to post by eldard

so what ?the jewish bankers anyway will only swallow their saliva

win win situation: not temptation to sin for them, no reason for antisemitism for the all others...

[edit on 18-9-2009 by ZenOnKwalsky]