DEBT-FREE Money Is A Reality NOW

According to the Ithacahours website http://www.ithacahours.com their debt-free money is going global. Great slap at the central banksters. While they may not state it in wording they have apparently discovered the basic axiom for debt-free money:

"There is a basic axiom on money that is either unknown by monetarists or ignored in favor of the many schemes used to enrich the few at the expense of the many. It goes like this:

"As universal prosperity is dependent upon the ability of Money to flow (its "velocity"), nothing may be done to money that would in any way impede that flow."

"This would exclude things like using commodities for money (gold, silver), adding bankers' gimmicks like interest to money, or in giving money additional uses beyond its sole legitimate use as a "medium of exchange."

"Money needs to be "created" into circulation by a system's wealth producers, never "borrowed" or "spent" into circulation by its bankers or consumers. It needs nothing backing it but the integrity of its issuers (in a second-rate democracy there can be no integrity).

"That is the rule, though it cannot be applied in this time and place. Money issuance is government's most sovereign prerogative, yet in honest form is as unobtainable as is the only workable FORM of self-government, a Republic.

"Had we a Republic, one of the very few prerogatives granted to the upper levels of government would be money issuance, a completely worthless medium of exchange, which being worthless would never be hoarded but would be quickly spent for something that one coveted for its intrinsic value. This velocity is what produces UNIVERSAL prosperity. Lack of velocity is what creates wealthy and impoverished classes of people, plus the struggling middle class that actually produces the wealth, and unfortunately, their ranks are constantly diminishing."

While debt-free money cannot be instituted at this time by corrupt governments, obviously it can and is being utilized by some communities around the world. This is the biggest advance in monetary policy since the '30s when thousands of communities and counties across America issued currency that circulated during the Roosevelt bank holiday. Damn shame they quit it when the banks reopened. They proved we don't need the banksters leeching off our productivity. Another great advantage with Ithicahours or any local currency is that it is not acceptable outside the local economy and is therefore not siphoned off like a national or international currency would inevitably be. Central banks, including and since the first Bank of the US started by Hamilton do nothing for local economies but allow wealth concentration in the hands of the few while impoverishing the many.

This budding concept needs widespread distribution. It must be instituted when present governmental structures and the monetary systems they spawn collapse of their own internal rot and putrefaction.

Best regards,.
Bob Taft
The Taft Ranch
Upton, Wyoming, USA
"We hang the petty thieves and appoint
the great ones to public office." Aesop
http://www.freedomclubusa.com/the_tun
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/ar ... read=74897



Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 11:56:32 EST

From: keepshorse@aol.com
Subject: The Case for Local Currencies (Part Two)

Click here: Ithaca HOURs Online: Home Page

The case for local currencies (Part Two)

Posted: January 27, 2004 - 11:12am EST

WASHINGTON - Ithaca Hours is a local currency issued in the Upstate New York
town of that name. One Ithaca Hour is worth $10 in goods or services among the
merchants and individuals who accept Ithaca Hours - that is, $10 in spending
power for every Ithaca Hour. A number of denominations have been printed.

The Hours began in 1991, the brainchild of urban planner Paul Glover. In one
of many national news pieces on the Hours phenomenon, Glover pointed out that
he only set the table. The community came to the feast, so to speak, with its
participation.

That participation made sense in an economically-declining region where
skills and time were more plentiful than dollars. The local currency permitted
barter by a third party: one party issues it, another party accepts it, but a
third party - perhaps an entrepreneur who might never go into business if the only
way to start was to invest capital in dollars - can barter services for as
many Hours as others may spend for those services. They can sell their skills
and services where they cannot work for dollars. (A reminder: they are not
bargaining over the value of Ithaca Hours, which has been established - as legal
tender in local law no less - as $10 worth of goods or services. They are
bartering the goods and services - what goods does one party need that another can
provide?)

In other words, that third party can offer services they might never offer
otherwise, knowing that people may be willing to pay the local currency for the
service offered - cutting and delivering firewood, let’s say. Those same
people may be willing to spend the local currency where they would not or could not
spend dollars.

Local currencies don’t make earning a living any easier, for labor must back
the Ithaca Hour - that is its value. But the point is: it makes it possible to
labor for profit where the dollar economy might not.

For example, a woman in the Ithaca region drives a delivery truck in return
for Ithaca Hours, and spends them on piano lessons from another Hours
participant. A bicycle shop in the town accepts them as payment for any kind of repair
work. A day care provider accepts them as partial payment, keeping it partial
because if too many people paid in Hours - the program would run out of
services it could pay for in Hours. Many low-wage workers who cannot increase their
dollar salary (employers only reluctantly pay overtime, and in the Ithaca
economy raises were few and far between) can increase their earning power by
offering services for Ithaca Hours.

But they must then have suitable ways to spend the Hours among participating
merchants and other service providers. Thus it is the circulation of the local
currency among participants that increases its value. Or referring again to
Glover’s phrase, circulation of the local currency is what makes for a feast.

The Hours began as a luxury currency: something people would spend at movies,
or in restaurants. This is because only the more well-off merchants felt they
could afford to participate: they had plenty of greenbacks. The decision of
more and more merchants to accept the currency for basic needs, especially food
and rent, made all the difference. Crucial in this development was a farmer’s
market, where many of the merchants were accustomed to barter. That meant
anyone accepting the Hours could get value in return for it, so that not only
those with plenty of greenbacks could feel secure in participating. Eventually,
it came to mean that participating merchants could profit more if they accepted
Ithaca Hours.

Little more than five years after their introduction, $60,000 in Ithaca Hours
had generated the equivalent of $6 million in transactions among some 2,000
participating merchants and service providers. To date, $105,000 in Ithaca
Hours has been issued.

With success like that came many other considerations. Yellow pages of
participants and places to spend the Hours, had to be printed and distributed. Notes
had to be designed so as to foil counterfeiters drawn by the success of the
currency. Damaged notes had to be repaired.

But the latter was a good thing, for damaged notes were notes that had passed
through many hands - they had circulated. And that meant they had been the
occasion for barter between people, who generally went away from the transaction
feeling better about their fellow townspeople. In fact, the Hours generate
many new relationships, and many of these are friendships.

Because firms outside the region, much less in Taiwan or Mexico, tend not to
accept the local currency, the success of Ithaca Hours has also meant a
measure of discipline in community reinvestment: participants had shopped at home,
keeping the "money" local, growing the Main Street economy.

Ithaca Hours is the best-known of numerous local currencies in America. More
information, including a "starter kit" for local currencies, can be found at
http://www.ithacahours.com.

(Continued in Part Three)

This article can be found at http://IndianCountry.com/?1075220028