Mayor Wayne Fournier holds $ 25 in wooden money, in Tenino on July 10, 2020 (AFP)
New York:
Tenino had become a ghost town, and small businesses were struggling to survive amid the coronavirus pandemic, so local officials revived an unconventional idea of the last century: print the town’s own currency on thin wooden planks.
“There was no business, no sales and the city streets were dead. They looked the same at 3 p.m. as they did at 3 a.m.,” said Wayne Fournier, mayor of the city of 1. 800 residents of Washington State in the northwestern United States. .
“We were getting a lot of calls from companies saying they weren’t sure they could hold on,” he told AFP.
The city museum had a printing press, so it was used to make $ 10,000 bills on wooden rectangles, each worth $ 25 nominal.
They present a portrait of President George Washington and bear a Latin inscription which translates as “We have it under control”.
The money is given in the form of a subsidy to the inhabitants who demonstrate that they have been economically damaged by the pandemic. Each resident is entitled to up to $ 300 per month.
Known as “Tenino dollars”, “COVID dollars” or, sometimes, “Wayne dollars” according to the mayor himself, invoices are exchanged in almost all stores in the city at a fixed rate equivalent to 1 $.
Currency is only good within the city limits.
Desperate times
The idea is not new: city officials tried it for the last time during an even worse period of economic devastation, the Great Depression of the 1930s.
A national shortage of dollars at the time prompted Tenino officials to print money on spruce bark.
“The concept went viral in the 1930s,” said Fournier, along with other communities, businesses and chambers of commerce eager to emulate the example of the city.
Media attention has piqued the curiosity of investors, and over the years wooden coins have become collectibles sold on eBay and Amazon.
The contemporary version of wooden currency, like the previous edition, aims to help the city through an economic crisis that has forced businesses to close nationwide.
“This is more of an advertisement for the city itself,” said Chris Hamilton, director of the city’s main grocery store. “It brings a lot of people into town who may not even know Tenino and want to check out this place that makes its own money.
“They could stop here, buy an ice cream or go down the street and buy a hamburger.”
Similar complementary currencies exist elsewhere in the U.S. and Europe, not to replace the national currency, but to support the local economy – a key distinction because U.S. authorities have a bad opinion of anyone trying to create a bill. to compete with the almighty dollar.
The US Treasury declined to comment on its position on local currencies.
The Swiss WIR system, created in 1934, is considered to be the oldest local currency in the world, used daily by thousands of small businesses.
– Response to globalization –
Faced with an unemployment rate of 11.1% in June – one of the highest rates since the Great Depression – American defenders of complementary currencies say it is time to consider them as a way to help residents .
“The municipal funding crisis is driving creativity. Administrators are exploring the concept of issuing their own currency instead of bonds to fund their COVID response,” said Susan Witt, director of the Schumacher Center for a New Economics.
The research center developed BerkShares, a currency in circulation since 2006 in the Berkshires region of western Massachusetts, which is distributed by local banks. Witt advises several American municipalities interested in similar initiatives.
Defenders of local currencies also see them as a bulwark against unbridled globalization.
“People are starting to realize that we have become too global, too fast and that we have lost our local skills,” said Chris Hewitt, founder of Hudson Valley Current, a currency in northern New York that works like a mutual credit system.
The supporters hope to create a national movement.
“If this happens organically across the country, it could help save us from a severe recession,” said Fournier.
(This story has not been edited by GalacticGaming staff and is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
