Greetings:
I read a lot of postings in this email list BUT I rarely post any
articles as I choose instead to be actively walking my walk in teaching people
how they can actually experience the reality of usuryfree living by creating and
spending their own usuryfree time currency. I simply ask people: Why are you
continuing to use their money and paying them (the bankers) a FEE (usury) when
you can now create and spend your own money for FREE?
Most people that I talk to are ready and willing to listen about how
easily they can begin their transitional phase from totally depending upon the
orthodox banking cartel's money to shifting their spending habits so that
indeed, they can be using a usuryfree time currency as a complement with their
diminishing amounts of federal cash. I counsel them that they will experience
the reality of usuryfree living as our networks of time-traders keep expanding
so that indeed we can purchase all of the products and/or services that we need
for our personal, family and business needs from within our own loyal database
of time-traders that can serve us locally, nationally and internationally.
In relation to the words 'social credit' some usuryfree creatives with
knowledge of the work and research of genuine 'social creditors' tell us that
these paper notes of time currency that we are using here in rural eastern
Ontario are best defined as 'friendly credit' or 'social credit' where the words
'friendly' and 'social' are inter-changeable. They claim that if the pioneers of
'social credit' were still alive today that they'd be pleased and proud of the
ever-expanding network of people from all over the world who are actually
learning how to create and spend their own usuryfree community
currencies.
Samples of our usuryfree time currency issued by we-the-people
(time-traders who double as usuryfree creatives) who live in the rural community
of Tamworth in eastern Ontario, Canada can be viewed at these
URLs:
generic usuryfree time currency: www.cyberclass.net/currency/tamworthg.htm
personalized
usuryfree time currency: www.cyberclass.net/currency/tamworthp.htm
The June 2005 issue of the Canadian MoneySaver, a national publication
(since 1981) has published a series of two timely article about the usuryfree
community currency movement. Since there has been much discussion about usury on
this email list in recent days/weeks I am sharing these two articles with
readers.
Enjoy this day!
Working with you for 'peace and plenty' by 2020
And
'Brining usuryfree living alive in 2 oh oh 5'
I AM
Tom J. Kennedy
otherwise known as 'Tommy UsuryFree'
www.cyberclass.net
www.usuryfree.net
*****************************************************
Canadian MoneySaver – A local publication with national
appeal ….
Canadian MoneySaver is an acclaimed
investment advisory with a recognized reputation for providing a trustworthy and
down-to-earth service since 1981. Canadian MoneySaver is published by Dale and
Betty Ennis. Box
370, Bath, Ontario
K0H 1G0
Canadian MoneySaver offers
practical information about money matters. Their national team of writers
outlines the various advantages/disadvantages of numerous financial products,
situations, services etc. They describe how and why you may wish to avoid or
accept such opportunities. Canadian MoneySaver encourages each reader to be
his/her own money expert.
As a subscriber you are automatically entitled to the full menu of
privileges. You receive practical investment advice researched, experienced and
described by more than 5 dozen financial practitioners, including financial
planners, tax experts, portfolio managers, investment advisers,
lawyers and successful investors from across
Canada.
Canadian MoneySaver is offered in a
print and electronic version. Read the benefits of becoming a member to the print or online
service. Of course, you can have both services at our special combined
price.
Canadian MoneySaver welcomes online and
print member subscribers. Subscription details are posted at the website:
www.canadianmoneysaver.ca
Jennifer Aitkens, writes a regular financial
column for Canadian MoneySaver called The Informed Investor. Her column,
subtitled ‘Print Your Own Money’ on pages 5 and 6 of the June 2005 issue
of Canadian MoneySaver is reprinted here with permission.
Print Your Own Money
By Jennifer
Aitkens
|
‘The
unreasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress
depends on the unreasonable man.’ – George Bernard
Shaw |
About a year ago, our editor Dale Ennis
introduced me to an unreasonable man, Tom Kennedy, or Tommy UsuryFree as he
styles himself, believes the world would be a better place without interest or
‘usury.’ He’s not alone in this belief: during my research I have discovered a
whole group of unreasonable men and women printing and using their own money.
They believe they’re sowing the seeds of a better world for all of us. Could
they be right?
Most people believe that banks lend out
the money their clients leave on deposit. That’s true to an extent, but modern
banks also create money out of thin air by making loans to their customers. They
do this through an accounting sleight-of-hand known as fractional reserve
banking. By holding just a small amount of money in currency or on deposit with
the Bank of Canada, banks are allowed to loan out far more money than they can
ever redeem. The bank makes a profit on this non-existent money in the form of
interest or “usury” as it was traditionally called, while the borrower must now
earn enough money to cover both the original amount of the loan and the
interest.
For many people, interest payments become
a never-ending treadmill. Driven by the need to pay their bills, people
sacrifice their families, their health and their lives to work at unfulfilling
jobs. Even those who take pride in being debt-free pay the cost of interest in
social malfunction, environmental decline and the debt-serving costs of the
business they patronize. A lucky few get rich; the rest spend their lives trying
to escape the debt trap.
The creation of money by our chartered
banks raises some challenging questions. What is so special about paper money
that we should have to pay interest when we need more of it to buy a house or
operate a business? Why can’t we get a loan for a nominal fee that covers
administrative costs and pay it back, as we are able? It certainly didn’t cost
the bank anything to create the money in the first place!
It is the injustice of usury that haunts
Tom Kennedy and hundreds of others involved in the promotion of various
alternatives to legal tender, including multi-party barter and unbacked
supplementary currency. The multi-party barter system takes simple two-party
bartering to a more useful level. Members negotiate trades among themselves and
an independent, third-party agent maintains an open central record of credits
and debits. While the system works well for the exchange of services, it is hard
to get retailers to sign on. After all, they still have to pay federal cash to
their wholesalers. The recording of the trade also creates additional work, and
many people can be intimidated by the need to negotiate every trade. How many
hours of your time, for instance, are you prepared to give in exchange for an
hour of work by a skilled plumber?
Kennedy champions a non-cash-based paper
currency system that is backed, not by federal currency like
Toronto dollars, but by the
assurance that it will be accepted in trade by other members of the community.
In a non-cash-based system, your “wealth” is your time, the goods you make, or
the services you offer – all of which can be exchanged for supplementary
currency in trade with other members of your community. In return, you use the
currency you receive to make your own purchases of goods and services from the
community. Theoretically, the more members in your group, the broader the range
of goods and services available to you. Retailers who buy wholesale from outside
the group charge enough federal dollars to cover their costs, and accept partial
payment in community currency, which can be used in turn to hire staff from the
community. The system encourages the consumption of locally produced goods,
creates employment for local workers and builds community-strengthening ties
between the traders. And, unlike bank-created money, supplementary currency can
be lent out to actively trading members in good standing at 0%
interest.
Printing your own currency is a maverick
idea and it tends to raise a lot of eyebrows. Why not just use legal tender?
Could counterfeiting destroy the system? Is this a way to avoid paying income
tax? These are good questions that, if left unanswered, will create more
skeptics than converts to the concept of supplementary currency. Let me answer
those questions here.
First of all, supplementary currencies
are most powerful when legal tender is in short supply due to high interest
rates, a lack of jobs or other causes. In
Argentina, for
example, a supplementary currency called “creditos” has helped the people of
that country trade their way around a devastating collapse of the national
currency. With the peso barely worth the paper it was printed on and foreign
currency hard to come by, Argentines were left without a reliable medium of
exchange. They did have time and goods to sell to each other – all they needed
was a currency to grease the system. Before long, barter clubs sprang up around
the country, served by an assortment of home-grown “papelitos” or paper notes
that are still functioning today as currency.
Regarding counterfeiting, early
literature on supplementary currency suggested that counterfeiting wasn’t as
issue. The Argentinean experience taught us otherwise. For everyone’s
protection, supplementary currencies are now printed with serial numbers,
watermarks and other security devices. Poorly rendered imitations can be quickly
spotted and removed from circulation. But more importantly, supplementary
currency has a built-in, self-regulating mechanism against this threat. It
anything threatens the integrity of the system, community members can trade the
currency at a discount or refuse to accept it at all until the problem is
rectified. That’s not an option with legal tender!
When it comes to income tax,
supplementary currency is treated like legal tender. As Kennedy explains in the
context of his supplementary currency, Tamworth Hours, “Whenever you receive or
spend Tamworth Hours, ask yourself: ‘If this were a twelve-dollar bill, would I
report it as taxable income or claim it as a deductible expense?’ If the answer
is yes, then you should pay tax on it or report it as an expense. If the answer
is no, then ignore it.”
To Learn More
There are many good reasons for
supporting supplementary currencies. If you’re interested in starting or
participating in a local currency group, I encourage you to learn more theory
than I’ve been able to offer in this article. Start with Money: Understanding
and Creating Alternatives to Legal Tender by Thomas H. Greco Jr.
(ISBN:1890132-37-3, available from the author via email at: circ@mindspring.com). In
this month’s Products and Services column, I’ve described some supplementary
currency experiments underway in
Canada. It you
live in one of these areas, get in touch with the organization and learn how
supplementary currency is revitalizing their community. For an excellent review
of Argentina’s
response to their currency crisis, see the video “Money” by filmmaker Isaac
Isitan (with Carol Poliquin,
Canada, 2003).
*
Printing our own money is not as
unreasonable as it sounds. And if Tom Kennedy and his colleagues are correct,
the creation of usury-free local currencies may even speed our progress towards
a more caring, sustainable world.
Jennifer Aitkens, Financial Writer, 247
Blair Road, Cambridge, Ontario N1S 2J9
Tel: (519) 620.2626 Email: jennifer.aitkens@rogers.com
·
The Cyberclass Network
offers the ‘Money’ video as a fundraiser. Details at this URL: www.cyberclass.net/moneyvideo.htm
*****************************************************************************************************
Products and Services (Community
Currencies)
By Jennifer Aitkens
Calgary
Dollars
Community currencies have taken off around the world over the past few
decades. Ithaca,
NY has the seminal “Ithaca Hours,” Argentines
salvaged their economy with “creditos,” and Japanese communities are reputed to
be using dozens of home-grown currencies to deal with deflation.
Here in
Canada, a group
of dedicated volunteers have achieved considerable success with “Calgary
Dollars.” This paper currency is printed, issued and distributed by and for
members of the Calgary Dollars Community. Unlike
Toronto dollars,
Calgary dollars are not backed by a
reserve of Canadian dollars; instead they derive their value exclusively from
the promise of community members to take these notes in trade. The organization
boasts one thousand members offering goods and services, with 160 local
businesses participating.
Thanks to the broad support of the currency,
Calgary dollars are accepted as
payment for transit tickets, recreation centre tickets, taxi rides and food. The
currency can also be used to pay the rent in a variety of apartment buildings.
But food, shelter and entertainment are just part of the community currency
equation: the other half is the way a local currency builds a supportive
community that offers al of its members the opportunity to make a meaningful
contribution.
More information on Calgary
dollars is available on the group’s website at www.calgarydollars.com If
you live in the Calgary area whip up
your favourite supper dish and join the group at their monthly potluck and
farmers’ market/flea market/concert series – all of which accept
Calgary dollars. The potlucks are
held from 7 – 9 pm on the second
Wednesday of every month at the Hillhurst-Sunnyside Community Association at
1230 – 5 Avenue NW, Calgary,
telephone (403) 283.0554. If you don’t like to cook, try the monthly happy hour
from 5 – 7 pm on the last Friday of
each month. There is no charge to attend either event, and you’ll get a good
sense of the strength and dedication of community currency members. If you
decide to join, you’ll pay twelve Canadian dollars a year and receive 40
Calgary dollars plus a free listing
of your buy/sell goods and services in the community newsletter.
Community currencies also exist in other parts of
Canada. In
Tamworth, a hamlet in eastern Ontario, Tommy ‘UsuryFree’ Kennedy’s “Tamworth
Hours” are now accepted as partial payment for a wide range of goods and
services (email: tom@cyberclass.net or tel: (613) 379.5131. In Quebed there are Reel
dollars (Granby area – www.reseaureel.org) and in
Cambridge,
Ontario
Gary Jones has launched “Our
Community Dollar,” a turnkey community currency system that can be adapted to
any other community or affinity group. For more information, visit the Community
Dollar website at www.communitydollar.com or contact Gary Jones at (519)
716.3592
Jennifer Aitkens, writes a regular financial column for
Canadian MoneySaver called Products and Services. Her column, about community
currencies on pages 28 and 29 of the June 2005 issue of Canadian MoneySaver is
reprinted here with permission.
Canadian MoneySaver is an acclaimed
investment advisory with a recognized reputation for providing a trustworthy and
down-to-earth service since 1981. Canadian MoneySaver is published by Dale and
Betty Ennis. Box 370, Bath, Ontario K0H 1G0
Canadian MoneySaver welcomes online and print member subscribers.
Subscription details are posted at the website: www.canadianmoneysaver.ca
Timely articles ab
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