Mahoning Valley Forum

Why should we wait for federal funds to trickle downtown to Youngstown to stimulate our economy?  I suggest that we join forces with the Buy Local movement and pick a day to intentionally spend some money in the city.  The money could be spent to buy something made in Youngstown, dine at a Youngstown restaurant, or use a service provided by another Youngstown resident.

Are YOU willing to participate?

Hey Jay,

OK I'm willing to participate in implementing a local complimentary currency. check out this link for information about Berkshires, http://www.berkshares.org/press/tv.coverage.htm (http://www.berkshares.org/press/tv.coverage.htm)

If you or anyone else wishes to look into this I can be reached through www.tbmw.org (http://www.tbmw.org)

Best Regards,
Tony Budak

I like the concept of a local currency.  If I understand correctly, the local currency could only be spent at participating local businesses.

Will there be a formal presentation about a local currency anytime in the future?

I'm a little disappointed that so few have responded to this call to stimulate our city's economy.

I guess everybody is waiting for their stimulus response from President Obama....and Governor Ted......

Dennis Spisak

I have to agree with Dennis, and add that I need to hear from Tim Ryan.

As I said he is in a position to help Youngstown, but at this point I have little confidence that he will step up to the plate and do right by the city.

As for the Governor, at this point My confidence is zero.

It's extremely difficult to compile a wish list when you don' t have all the information.

I do know that Congress and the President told the states that they have a fixed period of time to apply for funds, and if they miss the deadline that the state legislatures would have to turn in applications.

I just hope and pray that V&M gets some of the money. We desperately need good paying jobs that aren't here today and gone tomorrow.

Right Jay, the local currency could only be spent at participating local businesses.

Here is a link for some background and context information should anyone here wish to look into it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_currencies

Undertaking a project like this requires a small group of committed individuals to get things going. So, of course that begs the question, who would take on this as a research project. A study groups could look at the concepts and practices and evaluate whether or not to continue and attempt at organizing a complimentary currency for our own use here in the Mahoning Valley area.

Anyone have any ideas?

Cheers,
Tony

Would you need an actual "bank" to get this started?

Who is going to give you the 10% start-up discount?

Who would produce the "currancy"?

How do you keep the currancy from being counterfit?

Dennis Spisak

It's called cupon books. Federal law prevents you from printing currency as in cash money, but I have read about communities doing something like that, and in fact here in Youngstown each year a thick cupon book was printed thick with cupons which were redeemable at participating businesses. The cupons had no experation date other that the year the book was published.

I don't know if this book is still published, or why they stopped publishing it.

That is script as opposed to currency. You can't take it to a bank and exchange it for cash.

Before there was a National Currency script was used, but it had no secure backing, and problems arose because there were so many forms of script that it became totally unmanageable.

Case in point. How is it destributed?

If a person works for script how do they conform to law (Social Security, local, state and federal taxes)?

As Dennis pointed out, how would you prevent counterfitting. With all the software available anyone could pump out a closet full of the stuff, and if the printers put in anti-counterfitting divices and used special paper the cost to print it would not be cost effective.

Here's the link to what Jay was referring to:

http://www.ithacahours.org/

There are different forms or definitions and uses of complementary currencies, see the link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complementary_currencies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complementary_currencies)

Here is a good overview article on the subject,
http://www.nexuspub.com/articles/2003/july2003/interview.htm (http://www.nexuspub.com/articles/2003/july2003/interview.htm)

And of course I can't be remiss, there is our own local Time Dollar Bank at
www.tbmw.org (http://www.tbmw.org)

Cheers,
Tony Budak

Hey Dennis,

Here a link from a Green Party blog regarding local currencies
http://buildgreens.blogspot.com/ (http://buildgreens.blogspot.com/)

Cheers,
Tony

It's amazing what Googling turns up, here is Tucson just starting to work through creating a local complimentary currency,
http://tucsonlocalcurrency.org/

Also you can follow their activities in their discussion forum at
http://groups.google.com/group/TucsonLocalCurrency

For us here locally the problem is the human dimension. Is there a group, passionate about our community, willing to create the service.

As for the counterfeiting,  start up costs, distribution problems etc. they have been resolved elsewhere and are model tools for replication most anywhere. However, no one has been able to copy commitment and passion and transfer those features from one person to another.

If you are reading this, and if you willing to do some work to research to investigate the possibility, get back to me at the TimeBank site in my signature. The possibility I'm referring to is, will people come forward and work to accomplish the object of creating a complimentary local currency.   

For the effort itself, I will establish a Time Dollar Bank Account and you will be rewarded for your civic labor. The issue is not is this technically possible, as there are many local currencies having been around for years. The issue is do you want it.

Cheers,
Tony Budak
www.tbmw.org

Tony:

I support items like Berkshares and a local currency. I just wish I knew how I could help get things like this started in our community. It's harder for me to time share with my family schedule, but I would love being able to support local independent business while receiving a 10% or so discount. I believe my fellow Green Party members feel the same way.

Dennis Spisak
Mahoning Vallley Green Party

Hi Dennis,

Ok, I understand.

Would you put the call out to your Green network and ask those interested if they would be willing to join with their neighbors to form a committee to look into a complimentary local currency project.?

I would think that by going to various groups, there are a more then a couple of folks that would come together to check this out.

Cheers,
Tony

Hello,

If you are thinking about how to get by, "When money is scarce or stops flowing, alternative currencies can keep a local economy afloat. They convert time, skills, and other resources into wealth, and keep resources circulating among community members so there is greater demand for local businesses' goods and services."

http://www.changemakers.net/en-us/node/13072 (http://www.changemakers.net/en-us/node/13072)

Now if you are ready to take the first step, lets ORGANIZE around the issue, by joining the TimeBank. It's the place to start at www.TBMW.org

Cheers,
Tony

For those of you still following this thread, I strongly encourage
you to download this report from CHIEMGAUER REGIOMONEY:
THEORY AND PRACTICE OF A LOCAL CURRENCY, by Christian Gelleri

After you pull in the site at the link below, download the pdf
link at the top right with the name, CHIEMGAUER REGIOMONEY:

Cheers,
Tony
------=======-------====-----======------=======-----=====-------
Announcing the publication of a new
report in the 2009 volume of IJCCR:

CHIEMGAUER REGIOMONEY:
THEORY AND PRACTICE OF
A LOCAL CURRENCY
Christian Gelleri

http://www.uea.ac.uk/env/ijccr/

best wishes,
Gill
------------------------------
Dr Gill Seyfang
RCUK Academic Fellow
School of Environmental Sciences
University of East Anglia
Norwich NR4 7TJ

tel: +44(0)1603 592956
personal: http://www.uea.ac.uk/env/~e175/
department: http://www.uea.ac.uk/env/

*** NEW BOOK ***
The New Economics Of Sustainable Consumption:
Seeds of Change by Gill Seyfang (2009),
Palgrave Macmillan.

Editor, International Journal
Of Community Currency Research
http://www.uea.ac.uk/env/ijccr/

A global movement.

Main Street Cash

http://www.mainstreetcash.org/

Some communities are printing their own currency ...
See this recent CNN video at
http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/wayoflife/04/22/printing.own.currency/#cnnSTCVideo

The Financial Times says...

Noted for trust; Towns around the world are fostering community spirit with alternative currencies, reports Fiona Leney

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/ecdee98a-03a0-11de-b405-000077b07658.html

In the US there are now at least 12 local currency schemes, created not to overcome financial hardship – though that might prove a side benefit in the current economic climate – but to emphasise traditional small-town American values and those linked with the contemporary transition town movement, with neighbours supporting one another against a hostile outside world.

FT WEEKEND SUPPLEMENT - HOUSE & HOME

Leney, Fiona
1632 words
28 February 2009
Financial Times

Surveys RES1
01

Do you want to know how to stimulate the local economy?

Check out this web site data base of local efforts at local currencies, http://www.mainstreetcash.org/ (http://www.mainstreetcash.org/)

Do you wish to have a discussion off line, face to face, while earning time credit rewards to spend in the core economy of home, family, and neighborhood?

Then join a TimeBank "Earn and Learn" group to explore the feasibility of establishing a local currency. Click here, http://tbmw.org/contact (http://tbmw.org/contact)  and post your contact information under the subject title of "Local Currency".

Cleveland Heights and University Heights learning about complimentary currencies, read the article at

http://www.heightsobserver.org/read/2/11/taking-charge-of-our-community-with-local-currency

Also take a look at the right side bar "Most recent question" survey 

Build community and have a discussion off line, face to face, while earning time credit rewards to spend in the core economy of home, family, and neighborhood?

Join our TimeBank "Common Security Club" http://commonsecurityclub.org/ to explore the feasibility of establishing a complimentary local currency.

Click here http://tbmw.org/contact and post your contact information under the subject title of "Local Currency".

How long until the IRS starts wanting a piece of the action?

I can't come up with a better response than John Rogers' remark;
http://artigos.immagazine.sapo.pt/en/article/newcurrencies/#/6 (http://artigos.immagazine.sapo.pt/en/article/newcurrencies/#/6)

Birthing a Community Currency is an act of social and economic justice. We are so conditioned by the availability of money in both our personal lives and our community economies, that our thinking about potential realities is often maimed by it. As Edgar Cahn, developer of time banking, puts it: ,,The real price we pay for money is the hold that money has on our sense of what is possible - the prison it builds for our imagination."

I don't like the idea of using "scrip" to replace real currency.....

I DO, however, like the barter system - it can work and work well if
done the right way - and it's a way for people who are struggling to
supplement their standard of living without using currency in the
process.

The ideas you mention in your comment tell me that you have not read or researched any of the earlier posts.

Complimentary and or community currencies do not replace Federal dollars. As for the barter approach it is an individual process and has no multiplier effect and does not work to improve the system failings of Federal Dollars, one being leakage and trickle away from where currency is really needed.

A regional and or local economic currency transfer system parallel to the Feds currency either on new paper or digital would be quantifiable and qualitative a entirely different exchange method designed to achieve objectives that the Feds system can not achieve.

Tony,

You are right, I did not read or research any of your earlier posts.  I was simply
stating my feelings regarding the topic being discussed - this requires
neither reading nor research.

:)

Wednesday January 20, 2010

Taking charge of our Community with Local Currency
Cleveland/University Heights Local Currency Exploratory Meeting

7:00 pm – 8:30 pm
Brody/Nelson Meeting Room
Cleveland Heights-University Heights Public Library
2345 Lee Road, Cleveland Heights

Sponsored by Future Heights and the Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee

Learn about and share your views on whether Cleveland Heights and/or University Heights should establish a community currency program to better meet the needs of residents and local businesses.

Background article from November Heights Observer
http://www.heightsobserver.org/read/2/11/taking-charge-of-our-community-with-local-currency

A discussion forum on the Heights Observer website has been set up to ask/answer questions and share comments prior to the January 20 meeting.
http://www.heightsobserver.org/deck/viewforum.php?f=10&sid=2b09745f15048affd32035abc4be4f5c

<http://www.heightsobserver.org/deck/viewforum.php?f=10&amp;sid=2b09745f15048affd32035abc4be4f5c>

The initial posting contains links of community currency/exchange models across the country. Check it out.

Please mark Wednesday, January 20 down on your calendar. Plan to attend. Spread the word.

For more information, please contact Future Heights, 216-320-1423 or AFSC, 330-928-2301 / gcoleridge@afsc.org
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
TimeBank Mahoning Watershed Members are eligible to earn Time Credits
for attending this event. Email info@TBMW.org for details

DOWNLOAD FLYER HERE