The Greek Town that Already Opted Out of the Euro

Jun 11th, 2012 by stuartbramhall in The Global Economic Crisis

An interesting  BBC feature about a flourishing Greek town. They have plenty of money because they have their own local currency – the TEMS.

If video fails to play go to free link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9y9R0v96K48&feature=youtu.be

A Video About Greek Time Banks

A second BBC video about Greek time banks, where services are exchanged without money:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=dz1KQkUJPkA

From the Wall Street Journal

Also check out a fascinating article (from the Wall Street Journal Market Watch, no less) about all the countries (including the US) that are setting up barter systems and local currencies in their determination to alleviate the human misery causes by the global economic crisis:

“China, France, Ireland and other countries are seriously examining the feasibility of launching their own government sponsored barter systems. On December 8, 2011, The City of London released a report titled ‘Capacity Trade and Credit: Emerging Architectures for Commerce and Money’ with the goal of creating a barter hub of sorts for Europe in London. In the U.S. more than twelve states have legislation pending to create State currencies to serve as an alternative to the currency distributed by the Federal Reserve and commercial banking system.” Link to Full Article

Re-introducing the Drachma as a Complementary Currency

And James Skinner’s  A dual-currency solution to the Greek debt crisis, with a a proposal to address Greece’s money shortage by keeping the euro and re-introducing the drachma as a complementary currency:

According to Skinner:

“Like water, money is the magic liquid that enables humans to create prosperity out of natural resources. Without water, fertile soil and the plants that grow in it can only dry up and die. Without money, humans sit idle and watch their economy wither and die. Equally, too much money or too much water will cause devastation instead of prosperity. Greece is suffering from a lack of money because the only source, the single currency, has dried up. But there is no law that states that there has to be only one currency.”

3 Comments

  • There are laws against that. At least historically, the Cantons of Switzerland e.g. had the alone right of issuing a currency. Then the Swiss Franc came and almost imploded after WWI.

    I quote from wikipedia:

    In order to solve this problem [of redundancy and confusion], the new Swiss Federal Constitution of 1848 specified that the Federal Government would be the only entity allowed to make money in Switzerland.

    Well, there you go. Traditionally, this is only accepted because our institutions played well on the international money market. Now it seems, this ceases to be the norm. Meh, this will change pretty fast after the first bank run. Further, a monetary unification only works when the central bank is conservative and the nation able to produce *anything* to export or has massive internal growth. Mixing those two states will lead to chaos. And the first one is the more rational and sustainable one.