Is it time for the rise of local currencies?

It's an almost long forgotten historical fact that most trade was undertaken by local based currencies right upto the 20th Century. Australia had a number of colonial currencies before federation in 1901. The United States of America had a number of currencies issued by private banks before the Federal Reserve Bank was formed in 1913, and individual states of the European Union had their own national currencies before the mega-currency, the Euro was launched in 1999.

However given the trend to larger and "stronger" currencies, the hype of the Euro, the protection of the US Dollar as the major trading currency, a very quiet trend has been going the other way. In contrast, more than 2,000 local currencies, in some form or the other, have been launched in various communities around the world.

Literature on the phenomenon of the local currency almost doesn't exist in contemporary economic literature. Therefore the purpose of this article is to have a look at local currencies, and try and answer the following questions; Why do communities launch them? Do local currencies have any benefit to these communities?, and What is the real potential of these currencies?

A local currency, sometimes referred to as a community currency, is a means of exchange used by members of a community that have some common bonds. Local currencies are usually not backed by a national government, nor is it officially a legal tender within the region it circulates within. A local currency is usually intended for trade within a limited geographical area.

Money is essentially an agreement to use something as a means of exchange. Any local currency can be denominated by the prevailing national currency, or measured in any commodity, or even labor units to determine comparative unit value, so people know how to use it as a medium of exchange. This redemption measure, if realizable, is usually a major factor giving users confidence in its present and future value.

A local currency is a potential tool of monetarism, where it can help to define an economic boundary where certain groups readily accepts it as a medium of exchange.

Local currencies are usually created on the value judgment, supported by E.F. Schumacher's ideas that there should be a focus on the development of local economy. The proponents of local currencies would usually aspire towards developing a diverse local economy full of diverse micro-activities which would promote local production, local self sufficiency, and the maintenance of profits within the local area by local businesses. They would hope that the local currency and the corresponding changing spending habits (use of a local rather than national currency) would promote a preference and loyalty to local products and businesses, rather than goods and businesses from outside.

The proponents of local currencies would also probably aspire towards developing personal relationships in trade and desire to get away from the "McDonalds landscape" where the same restaurants, stores, and service businesses exist in everyplace with an emerging mono-culture. Thus the introduction of a local currency would be seen as a method of encouraging the de-standardization of their local community through promoting the development of vibrant diverse community activities.

The success of any local currency depends upon the assumption that a single country may not be an optimum currency area, where different regions within a country may be better off with different currencies. This would allow the development of local comparative advantage over national comparative advantage. This is very much against the spirit and purpose of macro-economic policy during the development phase of most economies, which has generally promoted centralization, the growth of SMEs into larger corporations so that economies of scale are developed to the point where firms can exercise competitive advantage in the international market.

Even though local currencies worked extremely well in the 19th Century (remember they were most often redeemable in gold then), the track record of the contemporary local currencies hasn't been good. The successful ones like the Berkshare have been proxy currencies with an a generally agreed par value with the national currency. In fact, it is only the Berkshare used in the Berkshire region of Massachusetts, that has been touted as the success story of local currencies. The Berkshire has a large number of users, which manages to keep the currency circulating within the local community. However in the Berkshire case, the community was already pre-disposed to producing local products for the local community. Many others have failed or ceased to exist through low levels of support within communities. While others like the Kelantan Dinar launched in 2006 was effectively sabotaged by the Malaysian Federal Government through repeated statements that the Dinar was not legal tender.

One of the impediments of any successful local currency is developing a critical mass of community support that would keep the circulation velocity high enough to maintain its perceived value.

A more notoriously use of a local currency was in the Cocoas Islands, where the Malay workers once ruled by the Clunies-Ross family were paid in Cocos Rupees, a currency John Clunies-Ross created and which could only be redeemed at the Clunies-Ross owned company store. Large retail corporations have successfully used forms of complementary local currencies as coupons, gift certificates, and point systems, to enlist customer loyalty.

Although there is scant evidence that any local currency to date has actually promoted local economic wealth, the mediocre track record of local currencies does not mean they don't have great potential in the future as a means of achieving specific economic objectives needed in many economies today. From a macro-economic point of view, a local currency is a perfect tool for local micro-economic management, where the objective is to develop micro and SME industry to serve the immediate community. This will more and more become an important objective both in developing and developed economies around the world due to poor local enterprise diversity in many places.

A local currency, coupled together with a hybrid of crowd funding organized by local cooperative banks, would be a powerful alternative for providing credit to local enterprises that the conventional 'big' banks have been hesitant to service.

There may be another philosophical reason for adopting this approach as well. The banking sector has become so centralized, that most governments across the world have deemed their local banks 'too big to fail", where these privately owned institutions are almost above the law, or worse still, become a law unto themselves. All lending, trade, interest rates, and other credit facilities are controlled by these banks. No government took any great effort to regulate these institutions post 2008, because the job was too difficult and very few had the political will to do it.

The nature of a national currency has given banks great power to create money through debt creation. Most money that makes up the currency system is actually electronic. There are no notes or coins or supporting wealth to back up this money. It's just a figure on a computerized ledger system where, if any bank was asked to produce the physical currency, it would be impossible. Technology has allowed this system to evolve, which arguably has been one of the underlying causes of financial crises i.e., electronic selling mortgages and derivatives etc. This is upsetting the balance of wealth in every country, where GINI indexes are actually widening.

Centralization has generally meant higher interest rates over time since single currencies and centralised banking came into existence. This suited government which found it easier to deal with a more centralised banking industry and fund economic activity. This also caused a rural crisis which was partly solved through the formation of specialized and subsidized rural banks in some cases.

One could also argue that the housing crisis was also caused by central currencies where investments made in land as a ledge against inflation of a national currency was encouraged and promoted.

However a local currency may be able to challenge the dominance of these banks, which impose their credit policies upon communities from outside. The local currency may help to provide some economic freedom from the interest rates banks apply to communities, and the prevailing inflation rates on the national scene.

This can be done by using local currencies to provide new means of obtaining credit and capital funding for businesses that banks won't fund. It is here local currencies can help most, where governments all over the world have failed to influence the banking sector to step into the area of micro-finance. In this period, nearing on deflation, i.e., real wages are relatively decreasing, a local currency may enable local trades people to exchange labor for local goods much more effectively.

The means of trade is typically changing today where the traditional means of exchange with state currencies are being discarded for electronic and cyber alternatives. One thing is for certain is that national currencies will be weakened by the number of alternatives to currencies and banking that are springing up on the internet and social media today.

The potential of local currencies has become a forgotten tool of development. New employment in the future is likely to be created through small business with limited capital. Very few large corporations will dramatically increase employment as they are looking for ways to reduce employment.

Many multinationals open and shut in the developing world, and move on to places where they can make larger profits, leaving vacuums in employment. Therefore micro enterprise and SME development, as well as seeking to diversify local economies should be a major economic objective.

 A local currency should go hand in hand with a local community banking system. Any local banking system should have a simple system that is easily understood, be consistent with existing system, be redeemers of currency (i.e., current currencies are not redeemable in anything, if a local currency is redeemable against a national currency gives it intrinsic value), provide a universal measurement of value to provide a sense of security, eliminate interest and install discount rates on loan repayments - i.e., voucher, and be organized at a local and community level.

Credit unions have existed for a long time and this is not far away from the concept espoused here. However governments through their support for 'big' banks, and banks through acquisitions and aggressive commercial practices have done their best to destroy this type of institution, which has stood in the way of banks taking over control of the economy, through central lending policies.

One must not forget that money is a social instrument. Local currencies are a 'bottom-up' approach to development rather than usual policy initiatives which come from a central government. Local currencies seem to have one thing in common, which may be the primary reason that promoters create them in the first place. That is the enhancement of local identity and sense of community within a region. Advocates of local currencies would argue that a local currency helps to form a sense of community which may lead to localized entrepreneurial start-ups in ventures that serve these communities. This would primarily be in specialized food businesses, etc. Thus local currencies could be seen as a source of social justice in helping to promote local entrepreneurial activities. Opportunity is also a human right.

A local currency, imaginably used, may be able to promote a micro-business sector to cover the local economic void that now exists in many communities. Local businesses can be nurtured through using hybrids of local currencies for alternative financing linking into variations of local crowd funding, and thus reflect local economic value better. 

Local currencies may be more protective of international exchange rate fluctuation, thus protecting local economic buoyancy, which appears to be on the rise of late. A local currency may even be able to assist in lowering the high cost levels many developed economies, which has destroyed the simple economic model of local production to serve local communities. It is all about going back to the future in macro-economic policy to recreate local comparative advantage once again.

As pointed out by the author of Sacred EconomiesCharles Eisenstein, it was Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea, which fostered local production through import replacement protectionist policies in the 1980s that have prospering middle classes today. Compare this with Mexico which opened up free trade and openly allowing in foreign investors, gained very little in knowhow, technology, and permanent capital. Further, countries like Brazil and Thailand are taking measures to protect their economies from the flood of cheap US dollars buying up domestic assets. In both these cases the currency acted as a protection mechanism from the outside world in a form of economic sovereignty. Compare this to the situation in Greece which does not have its own currency.

Perhaps the real reasons why local currencies are introduced are non-economic. Local currencies are more about building community pride and developing 'cultural capital' against national and international trends.

The objective of a local currency and the attached value system to it, is to create or recreate a local community, product and service economy that meets the needs of local society from the local society itself. It aspires to develop a self financing community.

This is a very powerful tool for community development, to create micro-economic activity back in the communities that have become economically barren, and then to capture the value of local trade and hold it within the community.  

As Bernard Lietaer said, 'civilization needs a new operating system and fast'. This is indeed very relevant for many parts of the world today.