The banking
elite sees a phenomenon that doesn't like at all, flourish all around
Europe: local currencies. Regions that reside inside the eurozone and
out of it, have already made the step towards a local currency, which
gives them a lot of degrees of independence. Local currencies could
be used by local communities to direct policies towards the benefit
of the community as a whole in contrast with the big scale, where
hard currencies, like euro, have become the tools of the elites to
impose austerity and brutal neoliberal policies.
Barcelona is
one significant European center that is about to try the solution of
local currency. As ElPais
reported last year:
Barcelona
City Hall has announced it is to press ahead with a pilot scheme to
roll out a cashless local currency over the course of 2017 and 2018
in the working class Besòs district in the northeast of the city.
The idea is for the currency to become legal tender in 2019.
The
Bank of Spain has warned against the initiative, which was first
mooted by Mayor Ada Colau after she won local elections in May 2015,
describing it as “informal, with no legal framework, or
regulator or adequate supervision.”
Colau,
who made her name campaigning against mortgage foreclosures and home
seizures, heads a left-leaning coalition. The idea is for local
stores and residents to be able to exchange euros for this new
currency, and use it to purchase products and services at a discount
or with other kinds of advantages. Municipal workers may also receive
part of their salary in the new money. The exchange rate would be
one-to-one.
[...]
There
are numerous precedents, both in Spain and elsewhere: the Bristol
pound in Britain, the Chiemgauer in the German region of Bavaria, the
sol-violette in the French city of Toulouse, the ekhi in Bilbao, the
res in Girona, and the puma in Seville.
As also
reported by ThinkSpain,
“Barcelona will have its own 'virtual currency' by next year,
despite the Bank of Spain warning the move is
'ill-advised'. From January 1, 2017, the town of Santa
Coloma de Gramenet will accept its own local currency in 108 shops,
restaurants and other business premises. And the so-called 'social
currency' will be in operation in the Eix Besòs cluster – the Nou
Barris, Sant Andreu and Sant Martí neighbourhoods of Barcelona city
– from the same date. By the year 2019, the whole of the
metropolitan area will accept the local money.”
Indeed,
“On January 13th, the first 6.000 Gramas (the name of the social
currency in Santa Coloma), started circulating throughout the city.
[...] The Grama is not the first social currency of Catalonia, but it
is the first currency to be established in a city with more than
117,000 inhabitants. In addition, Santa Coloma is the first city
council that channels public spending through a social currency. The
Grama, which has a 1 to 1 value to the euro, is not a physical
currency. It is managed with an application that allows transfers
from one user’s account to another user’s account using Internet
and mobile phones.”
The reaction
of the Bank of Spain tells a lot of how much the banking cartels
afraid that may lose control of their debt colonies in Europe,
through a local currency 'epidemic'.
As Michael
Krieger reported
almost two years ago: “TEM—a sophisticated form of barter
whose name is the Greek acronym for Local Alternative Unit—was
founded in 2010 in the early months of Greece’s debt crisis with
less than a dozen members. Now it includes dozens of participating
local businesses that use the system to sell goods and services,
including prepared food, haircuts, doctor visits, or even for renting
an apartment.”, concluding: “You’ve gotta love the Greek
spirit. You can knock them down, you can embarrass them, but you
can’t kill their spirit. Everyone else on the planet must recognize
that what is being done to Greece will be done to us all in turn. We
must show totally solidarity with them against the euro-fascists.”
Recall that,
while Greece was the major victim of an economic war, Germany used
its economic power and control of the European Central Bank to impose
unprecedented austerity, sado-monetarism and neoliberal destruction
through silent financial coups in Ireland,
Italy
and Cyprus.
The Greek political establishment collapsed with the rise of SYRIZA
in power, and the ECB was forced to proceed in an open
financial coup against Greece when the current PM,
Alexis Tsipras, decided to conduct a referendum on the catastrophic
measures imposed by the ECB, IMF and the European Commission, through
which the Greek people clearly rejected these measures, despite the
propaganda of terror inside and outside Greece. Due to the direct
threat from Mario Draghi and the ECB, who actually threatened to cut
liquidity sinking Greece into a financial chaos, Tsipras finally
forced to retreat, signing another catastrophic memorandum.
So, the next
big question is: could local currencies inside the Greek territory
become the solution for Greece to escape the euro-prison? Local
communities could build their own currencies and start gaining
independence from the Bank of Greece, which of course is completely
controlled by the Frankfurt headquarters.
This sounds like a subtle attempt to introduce electronic (bitcoin/blockchain) currency into society with the intention to eventually eliminate all cash. Naive locals see this as an answer to Euro domination, when in fact they are critical test cases being monitored by Brussels and the ECB (as well as IBS and worldwide central banks) enabling the study of the social dynamics and acceptance filters of non-cash electronic money transactions. This could provide templates for a future global single currency eliminating all financial privacy and total state control of all things economic.
ReplyDeleteBe careful what you wish for!
We are talking about local currencies. Therefore, the opposite of any centralized control, which is actually the nightmare of the big central banks who control money supply and flow either physically or electronically.
DeleteIn my article, 50 Ways to Leave the Euro: Greece and the Global Crisis,(https://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/11/06/50-ways-leave-euro-greece-and-global-crisis), I pointed out at that Greece (as well as everyone else) needs to create domestic and community liquidity. Community and private currencies, alongside private trade ("barter") exchanges that enable businesses to trade without money, are the weapons that need to be employed to escape from the debt-trap that has been imposed on the Greek people by the banksters and their political minions.
ReplyDeleteBut currencies need to be issued in such a way as the be sound, credible and scaleable. My work over the past 35 years has focused largely upon promulgating sound principles of currency issuance, and designing currency and exchange models that can make a real difference. Thomas H. Greco, https://beyondmoney.net/.
Thank you for your valuable contribution. Interesting info.
Delete