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"LOCAL
CURRENCIES IN THE 21ST CENTURY"
Conference June 25th-27th, 2004
Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson,
New York, USA
Please join us in June at Bard College for
a conference dedicated to Understanding Money, Building Local
Economies, and Renewing Community.
Why local currencies? In today's global economy
our national currencies tend to flow where money is concentrated,
rather than where money is scarce. As money is centralized,
so is the productive economy–the part of the economy
that produces real wealth. Manufacturing locations are chosen
based on access to cheap labor and technology rather than
out of ecological and humanitarian considerations. This trend
has undermined regional economies and created economic, social,
and environmental imbalances throughout the world. It is a
trend that cannot be reversed by electoral politics or street
demonstrations. Change must happen at a local level aided
by the implementation of local and complementary currencies.
To create a local currency is not a form
of local isolationism; it is not cutting oneself off from
the rest of the world; it is simply a movement of citizens
taking responsibility for the well being of their own community.
Local and community currencies do not seek to replace national
currencies, but to supplement them, hence the increasingly
popular term "complementary currencies." Ultimately
the goals of complementary currencies are to renew and uplift
community, to create a sustainable and environmentally beneficial
economy, and to empower all people with a new sense of what's
possible.
One of the objectives of "Local Currencies
in the 21st Century" is to bring the concept of local
and complementary currencies to a broader audience. We are
very excited about the remarkable group of conference co-sponsors
who have agreed to help with this task, featuring such prominent
publications as The Nation, Acres USA, Resurgence, Orion,
Yes! A Journal of Positive Futures, World Affairs: The Journal
of International Issues, E Magazine, In Business, and Dollars
& Sense. In addition, a host of prestigious and pioneering
organizations are supporting the conference including Co-op
America, BALLE, Investor’s Circle, Chelsea Green Publishing,
Institute for Local Self Reliance, NOFA Mass, Center for Community
Futures, Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, New Economics
Foundation, and the Hawthorne Valley Association. And lastly,
some of the ground breaking practitioners and pioneers of
local and complementary currencies will be joining us from
the ACCESS Foundation, Community Information Resource Center,
Ithaca HOURS, Maine Time Dollar Network, and the Time Dollar
Institute. With this team of visionary co-sponsors we are
confident of taking the local currency movement into its new
role in the twenty-first century. All that is needed is your
participation and enthusiasm to bring this transformative
tool to your community.
We are pleased to announce that Pete Seeger
will be attending as our honorary guest along with Gandhian
economist, Dwarko Sundrani. Pete will be performing Sunday
evening at the Local Food Fest, a closing cookout with festivities
to celebrate and honor local and family farmers. The closing
event will be open to the public; so those with family and
friends in the region, please welcome guests for a night of
home-grown food and entertainment. For conference attendees
who plan to stay Sunday night, Bard College is providing the
opportunity for you to keep your dorm room an extra night
for an additional $20 (less then half-price).
In addition to a stellar cast of keynote
speakers, the conference program, still in preparation, will
feature workshop presenters from all over the world. Joining
us from Sweden is Per Almgren, designer of the interest-free
savings and loans system developed in 1973 and used by the
Swedish JAK bank (/www.jak.se) that is owned and managed by
its 23,000 members. Per will be giving presentations on his
experience with interest-free banking and will talk about
ways to secure a local currency with conventional money.
Another extraordinary person taking part
in the program is Auta Main, executive director of the Maine
Time Dollar Network (soon to be the New England Time Dollar
Network), who has helped build the MTDN into a model for others
throughout the rest of the country and the world. She now
serves as the interim Community Revitalization Director for
Time Dollars USA, where she and other Time Dollar pioneers
from around the country are working with Edgar Cahn (founder
of Time Dollars) on organizational development for the new
national network.
Coming from Japan are Ikuma Saga and Takanori
Yamamoto. Together, they will be representing the Earth Day
Money Association, a community currency in Japan that promotes
environmentally friendly behavior. They will report on the
local and complementary currency movement in Japan and how
it is helping many Japanese communities deal with the problems
facing the nation today.
Chris Lindstrom
Conference Coordinator
E. F. Schumacher Society
140 Jug End Road
Great Barrington, Massachusetts 01230 USA
(413) 528-1737
chris@smallisbeautiful.org
www.smallisbeautiful.org
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The JAK MEMBERS BANK is the first interest-free bank in
Sweden. The bank is owned and managed by its 23,000 members.
The main purpose of JAK is to provide members with interest-free
loans. Members are now also able to earmark their savings
for selected local enterprises through JAK Local Enterprise
Bank accounts (bygdebanker). Another important aspect
of JAK is its commitment to spreading information about
the ill effects of the prevailing interest-bearing monetary
system. There has been international recognition for JAK's
contributions to global monetary reform. |
The
story of money has been obscured from public view. Monetary
reform has appeared sporadically throughout our nation’s
history as a heated topic of aspiring politicians who
championed it as a central platform in their election
bid, but whose passion for reform died down once in office.
According to Thomas Jefferson, "If the American people
ever allow the banks to control the issuance of their
currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the
banks and corporations that will grow up around them will
deprive the people of all property until their children
will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers occupied."
"True
economics never militates against the highest ethical
standard, just as all true ethics to be worth its name
must at the same time be also good economics. An economics
that inculcates Mammon worship, and enables the strong
to amass wealth at the expense of the weak, is a false
and dismal science. It spells death. True economics,
on the other hand, stands for social justice, it promotes
the good of all equally including the weakest and is
indispensable for decent life."
Mahatma Gandhi, Harijan, October 9, 1937
"A way of life that ever more rapidly depletes
the power of earth to sustain it and piles up ever more
insoluble problems for each succeeding generation can
only be called 'violent' … In sort, man’s
urgent task is to discover a non-violent way in his
economics as well as in his political life … Present
day economics, while claiming to be ethically neutral,
in fact propagates a philosophy of unlimited expansionism
without any regard to the true and genuine needs of
man which are limited."
E. F. Schumacher, 1960
"The
power of money creation is an indispensable prerequisite
of 'sovereignty.' Whoever has the money creation power
is sovereign, and the rest is for show."
Richard Kotlartz, 2003
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Via : IJCCR <ijccr@yahoogroups.com
From: Todd Boyle <tboyle@rosehill.net
From: Bill Ellis <tranet@rangeley.org>
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2004 08:09:00 -0500
Subject: Re: [Reg_Coop_Comm_Dev] Local Currences
Reply-To: Reg_Coop_Comm_Dev@yahoogroups.com
From: "E.F. Schumacher Society"
<efssociety@smallisbeautiful.org>
Date: Sat, 27 Mar 2004 00:39:35 -0500
To: <tranet@rangeley.org>
Subject: Why Local Currencies?
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