Can We Create Our Own Currency?
By Ben Cohen
George Monbiot suggests a completely different way to mitigate the effects of the financial crisis:
In his book The Future of Money, Lietaer points out - as the government
did yesterday - that in situations like ours everything grinds to a
halt for want of money(1). But he also explains that there is no reason
why this money should take the form of sterling or be issued by the
banks. Money consists only of “an agreement within a community to use
something as a medium of exchange.” The medium of exchange could be
anything, as long as everyone who uses it trusts that everyone else
will recognise its value. During the Great Depression, businesses in
the United States issued rabbit tails, seashells and wooden discs as
currency, as well as all manner of papers and metal tokens. In 1971,
Jaime Lerner, the mayor of Curitiba in Brazil, kick-started the economy
of the city and solved two major social problems by issuing currency in
the form of bus tokens. People earned them by picking and sorting
litter: thus cleaning the streets and acquiring the means to commute to
work. Schemes like this helped Curitiba become one of the most
prosperous cities in Brazil.