New England Town Prints its Own Currency

[Hakluyt]

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Business/story?id=2903049&page=1

SOUTHERN BERKSHIRE, Mass., Feb. 25, 2007 — Susan Witt is an unassuming middle-aged woman who drives a Volvo around her quaint Rockwell-esque town and has somehow managed to foment a small revolution.

After years of planning, Witt started printing her own money and spending it around town.

She is not a counterfeiter. She is the founder of Berkshares, a local currency that was introduced last fall in Southern Berkshire, Mass. (where Normal Rockwell lived out his later years).

"The Berkshares are pretty simple to operate," she said. "You walk into a local bank, put down $90 federal and get 100 Berkshares, and then those Berkshares are spent at full value at regional stores."


$835,000-worth of notes were printed on fine-grain paper and distributed to banks that agreed to participate. The notes are now accepted at 225 businesses in the area, and the program continues to grow.

Berkshares were created to stimulate the local economy by giving people incentive to shop in their own neighborhood, rather than drive the distance to large chain stores.


"We want to encourage everybody to do their business locally rather than going to a mall or shopping online," said Sharon Palma, executive director of the Southern Berkshire Chamber of Commerce. "Using Berkshares, you have to do business locally, and the other really nice piece of that is it's face-to-face business."


Several communities across the U.S., Canada and Europe have developed similar programs, but only Berkshares are fully-backed by the U.S. dollar. Several banks in Southern Berkshire have agreed to exchange Berkshares for dollars.

[barbarroja]

oh oh, I wish it will be a "good" thing.
But in my country they were some "experiences" before with such pseudo-legal currency.
There where places (like town markets) wich used some special coupons and there the people trade their own things between them.
First the people grown in business, the currency was very high valuated, a lot of new incomers come and buy the pseudo-money to bring to the markets.
Of course, in that precise moment, where there was a LOT of coupons in people´s hands; the organization become suddenly chaotic: a lot of counterfeit coupons, some markets paying less for the papers, and the end was a couple of big jews with full pockets and some thousands of low class and middle class with a lot of coupons papers in their pockets!
So the big news is not "there is another currency", but if such currency can survive and not be use by the usurers and money-thieves...

In fact, everything was planned in my opinion: in some first moment the currency was so high (inflated artificially by their creators with hidden money), that was at the par with the local money and even more valuable for the poor classes than the local currency. The organization was acused to be preparing counterfeit money, but they showed the new papers with watermarks, hologram tint, bla bla (more authentification measures than a dollar, jaja). So the people eat the lies and later were stolen literally. Of course the State do NOTHING, cause the only LEGAL monet protect by the constitution is the official made by the State (or the foreign money)... so with that temporary excuse the thieves just run out with their caché.

[Scryllak]

Good stuff. Nice to healthy, active localism.