They
may be talking funny money, but it's not funny business.Residents
from the Milwaukee neighborhoods of Riverwest and East Side are scheduled
to meet Wednesday to discuss printing their own money. The idea is
that the local cash could be used at neighborhood stores and businesses,
thus encouraging local spending. The result, supporters hope, would
be a bustling local economy, even as the rest of the nation deals
with a recession.
"You
have all these people who have local currency, and they're going to
spend it at local stores," said Sura Faraj, a community organizer
who is helping spearhead the plan. "They can't spend it at the
Wal-Mart or the Home Depot, but they can spend it at their local hardware
store or their local grocery store."
Incentives
could be used to entice consumers into using the new money. For example,
perhaps they could trade $100 U.S. for $110 local, essentially netting
them a 10 percent discount at participating stores.
It's
not a new concept—experts estimate there are at least 2,000 local
currencies all over the world—but it is a practice that tends
to burgeon during economic downturns. During the Great Depression,
scores of communities relied on their own currencies.
And
it's completely legal.As
long as communities don't create coins, or print bills that resemble
federal dollars, organizations are free to produce their own greenbacks—and
they'd don't even have to be green.
In Wisconsin,
could that mean dough that looks like cheese?
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-talk_moneydec03%2C0%2C2902061.story
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