Bank Alternatives - Community Trading Options
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The world has been moving quickly and ruthlessly towards a global community. Multinational corporations with familiar sounding names have moved into areas, made use of the local community as a labor force, exported the profits and left the area when a more cost effective location puts in an appearance. It is time local communities took the initiative back from big business and worked to safeguard their own economic interest. For too long too many of us have been at effect in our financial planning. The time has come to take back the reins of power and move to cause.
Back to grass roots: International conglomerates have eaten up small businesses on a global scale. Farms have been squeezed to provide produce at low cost. When the farmer can no longer compete the supermarket chain discards him and takes its business elsewhere, where it repeats the same procedure. Mom and Pop stores have been destroyed by the big chains, the meat packing industry moved from its traditional hub in Chicago to points farther and further west, employing intenerate labor, often at below minimum wage. Too many people have been harmed in the name of profit.
An expanding movement: There is now a growing grassroots movement that has begun thinking out of the box. They see the banks and other financial institutions that charge high interest rates and enforce restrictive practices are not meeting their needs. These community leaders realize a change is needed and have begun advocating returning to bartering as a means of exchanging foods and services.
Ithaca Hours: Ithaca Hours, a US community currency was the brainchild of Ithaca resident Brian Glover. In 1991 he devised a $10.00 legal tender bill based on the premise that $10.00 was an honest wage for an hour’s work. It is a pledge based on trust, just as we have been taught to trust the official currency the $US. Government and the financial services market have debased the value of the dollar so much that our trust is now starting to wane. In the case of “: Ithaca Hours” which are in themselves a pledge that enable the bearer to purchase a range of goods and services in exchange. What is on offer is published in the group’s newsletter that appears regularly. When the scheme started in 1991, 90 people and 5 businesses signed up. Today “Ithaca Hours” are accepted by more than 400 businesses and several thousand individuals. It is estimated that several million dollars worth of the currency has been exchanged in this time and the scheme is beginning to catch on elsewhere not only in the US but abroad in Canada, Mexico and France, too.
Not the only system: Ithaca Hours might be the best known system in the US but Michael Linton came up with LETS or” Local Economic Trading Systems” in Canada in the 1980s. LETS transactions are made between network members buy way of a centralized “Bank” which helps participants barter goods and services. This system began to take off with computer commerce. There are now 1000 such networks worldwide, and it seems this system which has a similarity with the conventional world of cash and banking, is coming to make inroads in the USA. However, most Americans prefer the anonymity of the banking system and there has been resistance in many quarters. As the money supply begins to tighten these alternatives become increasingly more attractive.
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