Local Currency

1 Pages 282 Words

When I was first told about the guest speaker we were going to have in Geography class I was not very interested. Then we were told that he would be speaking about local currency. Then I thought, “great, some quack is going to talk to us about how we should take matters into our own hands and make our own money.” Well, I was pretty curious about the idea of local currency. I had never heard of such a thing. Chris Grobbel did a wonderful job of explaining local currency to our class and he made it very interesting. The portion of his presentation on money in general was also very interesting and enlightening.
Local currency seems like a great way for local businesses to boost business and revenue. It would also allow the Grand Traverse area to become less dependent on the global economy, and with the economy not doing so well lately, that would allow our region to be separate and not reflect the global economy. There are also many family and locally owned businesses in this area that would benefit greatly from the recognition they would receive from participating in the local currency program.
There are three different systems of local currency. The system that may be implemented in the Traverse region is an hours based system. In this system, paper currency is given in return for an hour, or half hour of work. The currency can then be used to purchase goods at local stores. In the local currency system tied to federal dollars the local currency is given in addition to federal currency....