Local Currency

This forum is for those who wish to explore ideas and experiences for the issue and use of local currency.

For background reading I would strongly recommend the Crash Course in Economics at http://www.chrismartenson.com/crash-course
I quote from the site:

Ready to learn everything you need to know about the economy in less than two hours?

The Crash Course is a condensed online version of Chris Martenson's "End of Money" seminar. The first chapters of the Crash Course are already available; additional chapters will be added as quickly as time allows. Watch the Blog home page to find out when new chapters are posted.
What is it?

The Crash Course seeks to provide you with a baseline understanding of the economy so that you can better appreciate the risks that we all face. The Intro below is separated from the rest of the sections because you'll only need to see it once...it tells you about how The Crash Course came to be.

How long will it take?

Chapters are between 3 and 20 minutes in length. All 20 sections take 3 hours and 23 minutes to watch in full.

You will learn about:

• Intro (on this page, above)
• Section 1: Three Beliefs (Time: 1:46)
• Section 2: The Three "E"s (Time: 1:38)
• Section 3: Exponential Growth (Time: 3:07)
• Section 4: Compounding is the Problem (Time: 3:06)
• Section 5: Growth vs. Prosperity (Time: 3:40)
• Section 6: What is Money? (Time: 5:55)
• Section 7: Money Creation (Time: 4:19)
• Section 8: The Fed - Money Creation (Time: 7:13)
• Section 9: A Brief History of US Money (Time: 7:14)
• Section 10: Inflation (Time: 11:48)
• Section 11: How Much Is A Trillion? (Time: 3:28)
• Section 12: Debt (Time: 12:32)
• Section 13: A National Failure To Save (Time: 12:06)
• Section 14: Assets & Demographics (Time: 13:41)
• Section 15: Bubbles (Time: 14:10)
• Section 16: Fuzzy Numbers (Time: 15:52)
• Section 17: Peak Oil (Time: 17:52)
• Section 17 PART B: Energy Budgeting (Time: 12:15)
• Section 17 PART C: Energy And The Economy (Time: 7:05)
• Chapter 18: Environmental Data (Time: 16:22)
• Chapter 19: Future Shock (Time: 8:02)
• Chapter 20: What Should I Do? NEW! - October 22 (Time: 19:48)

Another topic for consideration is what to base the 'currency' on some towns have used an hour of labour, some are related to the local national currency and a third idea is to relate it to energy - i.e. 1 unit of currency = 1 litre of alcohol fuel.

links:

Wairerpa http://www.transitiontowns.org.nz/node/861

the transition ddollar http://www.transitiontowns.org.nz/node/376

Livining economies http://www.transitiontowns.org.nz/node/186