Friday, April 17, 2009

Local Currency thoughts


Someone asked what I had learned about local/alternative currency during the Asheville Currency Project in 2005.



Two answers:
A- As best my quickskim of Bill's link above seems to say that between 1863 and 1912, a bank could apply for a National Charter. If it got it, then it could print money. No idea what the qualifications, checks & balances were for this.
I wish had taken Econ 215 at UNCA [A study of commercial banking, the Federal Reserve System, the United States
Treasury, how money influences the economy, demand for money and monetary policy.
Prerequisite: ECON 101. Fall.] Maybe I should this fall.
B- When I was at the PLENTY annual meeting in Chapel Hill in Nov. 2005, it was held at the UNC-CH Currency Collection
http://www.lib.unc.edu/ncc/gallery/currency.html

I couldn't pull off getting the Curator, whose salary at that time included him the opportunity (and obligation?) to ....
lecture at various places in North Carolina about the collection, among other topics.
But we should bring him to Asheville.

And we should think about raising funds-- equal to, say, 0.5% of the CVB budget of 4.3 million-- this would be $20,000, to fund research into such an effort.

1 comment:

Foto-Jennic (Jen Bowen) said...

I like the idea of an electronic currency, and then just have some funny money maybe for tourists to purchase, but for the most part keep our locals with the option of having a local currency ebt card.

It needs to happen, the ideas are out there, folks are asking for it, how to we bring folks together and actually get a ball rolling in some significant manner?

I'm very much looking forward to the AVL ABC conversation on this come Septemember