{"id":19545,"date":"2012-06-11T12:00:02","date_gmt":"2012-06-11T11:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=19545"},"modified":"2012-06-05T19:01:22","modified_gmt":"2012-06-05T18:01:22","slug":"local-currencies-appearing-in-greece-like-they-did-in-argentina-after-the-2001-debacle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2012\/06\/local-currencies-appearing-in-greece-like-they-did-in-argentina-after-the-2001-debacle\/","title":{"rendered":"Local Currencies Appearing In Greece, Like They Did In Argentina after the 2001 Debacle"},"content":{"rendered":"

When it becomes clear to everyone that the all-powerful economists have little to offer other than more cuts, more austerity measures, more insults (\u201cgo pay your taxes\u201d or \u201cyou\u2019re poor because you are lazy\u201d), then people realise it\u2019s up to them, and real human creativity takes over. That\u2019s how a crisis becomes an opportunity.<\/em><\/p>\n

A small but growing movement in Greece is being borne out of the economic crisis and the likelihood of an exit from the Euro. A few towns are using an alternative currency to help them survive the country’s deep troubles. Members take payment for their goods and services in Local Alternative Units, abbreviated in Greek as TEMs, and use them to obtain goods and services from other members in the network.<\/p>\n

The idea is of course not new. In 2001 when the Argentinean economy went into meltdown each province produced its own currency, bypassing in this way the banks that had closed their doors to prevent people from withdrawing their money.<\/p>\n

It is at these moments when it becomes \u201cknown\u201d to everybody that \u201cone\u2019s money\u201d in the bank does not actually exist, that those rock-solid numbers that appear in our accounts are rather virtual electronic swallows navigating at enormous speeds the world\u2019s stock markets whilst making profits for the speculative casino-brokers.<\/p>\n

In southern Massachusetts, US, the Berkshires \u2013 another local currency born as an alternative to the U.S. dollar \u2013 is among the most successful of the country’s local currencies.<\/p>\n

The cimarr\u00f3n in Venezuela, the WIR in Switzerland, LETS – Local Exchange Trading Systems \u2013 in the UK, and many other schemes arise out of a decision of a region to respond to an economic crisis by creating a local exchange mechanism which allows the local economy to keep moving, people to be fed and services to be maintained.<\/p>\n

On the same ideology Credit Unions tend to arise in local communities on the principle that saving can be at the service of funding local projects \u2013 rather than speculation, or accumulation in off shore accounts, as Polly Toynbee<\/a> so poetically describes in her piece about the Royal Jubilee:<\/p>\n

\u201dMeanwhile, defrauding ourselves and world’s treasuries, the sun never sets on the Queen’s dominion over more tax havens than any other country, an archipelago of shame from the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man, the Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos, Gibraltar, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands \u2013 and the City itself. Beneath the splendour, the squalor.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Another interesting form of alternative economics becoming a great favourite as the system crumbles is the concept of the Commons, or the Common Goods. Many examples show that when shared resources (pastures, fisheries, and the internet) are managed on the principle of mutual interest regulation rather than privatised unregulated profit, fields do not dry out, fish stocks do not collapse and a lot of capacity building springs seemingly out of nowhere for everybody to use, e.g., Wikipedia\u2019s use of Creative Commons licence, the Linux\/Ubuntu systems, etc.<\/p>\n

The American political economist Elinor Ostrom<\/a> has been doing research on Common Pool Resources<\/em> leading to some interesting conclusions. In fact, according to her the success of a CPR project rests on the following factors:<\/p>\n