Julia Pergolini — Not Your Grandma’s Wooden Nickel [complementary currencies]

The American idiom “Don’t take any wooden nickels!” predates the 1930s, but that era’s bank crises did lead to the actual use of wooden currency. When local banks failed or were inaccessible in the Pacific Northwest, some merchants and towns issued wooden money as a stopgap. The wooden nickels circulated as IOUs until the banks became accessible.

The principles behind the wooden nickel are still at work in today’s alternative currency movement. Bernard Lietaer and Jacqui Dunne, authors of Rethinking Money: How New Currencies Turn Scarcity into Prosperity, argue that the more than 4,000 alternative and complementary currencies in circulation worldwide have the power to help communities solve their monetary woes. The currencies—minted as a complement to (rather than a replacement for) money backed by national governments and usually administered by an independent local agency—not only provide local liquidity in the event of a cash shortage, but can also boost local economies.

In These Times
Not Your Grandma’s Wooden Nickel
Julia Pergolini

Paul Glover — Print Your Own Money [The Story of Ithaca Hours]

Twenty-two years ago, I designed colorful paper cash for Ithaca, New York, featuring local children, waterfalls, trolleys, and bugs, printed stacks of it then convinced several thousand people and 500 businesses that it was real money. Since then, millions of dollars worth of Ithaca HOURS have been traded. Each HOUR is worth one hour of basic labor or $10. Professionals can charge multiple HOURS per hour, but we remind residents that all labor is respected. Loans up to $30,000 have been offered interest-free and grants to more than 100 local groups have been made. Community cash enables good things to happen wherever dollars are scarce.
The program made such good sense that it was embraced by Ithaca’s most conservative residents, its most liberal, and most apolitical. That’s because everybody wants more money. We wanted to create more jobs, strengthen small businesses, and stimulate friendly trade. Some of us also wanted to shift economic power to ecological enterprise, especially to organic farms. We wanted to reward peaceful labor instead of warmaking. Some of us used the money to take control of health costs by creating our own grassroots health system. Others of us were eager to trade our skills with people who could become new friends.

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Print Your Own Money
Paul Glover | founder of 18 organizations and campaigns, including HOURS, Philadelphia Orchard Project, Citizen Planners of Los Angeles, and League of Uninsured Voters. He’s the author of six books and a former professor of urban studies at Temple University