Finance Crisis? -- Alternative Money!

LISTEN TO TOM GRECO TALK:
http://miscellaneous-sonstiges.blogspot.com/2009/04/thomas-greco-talk-on-radio4all-notes.html

Barter-Card is a form of alternative currency!!

Bartercard biggest trade barter company in the world!
Barter thrives in recession Business to business transactions only
No interest, new customers Joining fee high, commission for buyer and seller, international trade possible

It works well in Auckland, New Zealand.
Here is today's advert in the Corporate-embedded FAIRFAX Sunday rag:

click here to enlarge the picture!

TEXT: Do you have regular cash clients who have fallen on tough times and are struggling to pay you? -- Contact Bartercard in April and we will give you a special gift of T$200 Trade Dollars* in your account and help you recover bad debts! *on full cash new memberships when you mention this ad. www.bartercard.co.nz 0508 BARTER 0508 227837 We mean business ...

Helen said: I imagine by joining they'll be able to access goods to the value of accounts reveivable, rather than the cash they're owed.

me: Now translate "access goods" and "accounts receivable"

Helen: ..get products and services in liew of the money they're owed.

me: Yey!



Banks create Money out of Nothing... nice humaine explanation by KOP:

http://ibes.orconhosting.net.nz/

http://www.complementarycurrency.org/ccDatabase/report_admin.php?action=report&s_typeId=13&specId=202&whereClause=le_year=1991%20and%20stopDate=0

powerful statistics:
http://www.complementarycurrency.org/ccDatabase/report_admin.php

OLD INFORMATION:

The LETS Review have done an excellent job of keeping the New Zealand LETS Directory up-to-date. So after you've sent LETS-linkup your amendments, don't forget to send them to The LETS Review as well. (Publishes list on a bi-monthly basis.) email: review@ihug.co.nz web: http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~cave ABC C/- J. McKenzie 102 Centenial Ave Alexandra. BEBS [ BULLER] C/- Helen Devine 116 Palmerston St. Westport CVBA C/- Rongo Bentson Box 5 Broadwood Northland GISBORNE G$ EXCHANGE Carol Tautuhi Box 1396 Gisborne H.A.N.D.S. P.O. Box 156 Takaka phone: 03 525 8286 or 03 525 8448 e-mail: goldenbayhands@ihug.co.nz website: http://hands.goldenbay.org.nz/ Hawkes Bay G$ email: HBGreen@hyper.net.nz C/- 16B Te Mata Peak Rd. Havelock North HOROWHENUA COMM EXC P.O. Box 104 Otaki IBES email: drobbie@es.co.nz D. Robbie 41 Oreti St. Invercargill KARAMEA BARTER NETWORK C/- Sam Major Rd. 3 Karamea MATES Box 138 Matakana MOSS MOTUEKA SKILLS SWAP P.O. Box 350 Motueka NELSON G$ 57 Collingwood St. Nelson NOTES L Canfens 48 Tee St. Oamaru PAHIATUA G$ H & R Martin 9 Huia St. Pahiatua Plains Exchange and Barter System (PLEBS) 455 Worcester street, Linwood, Christchurch phone: 3661992- answerphone REBS (River Exchange and Barter System) (Wanganui) President: Judith Paxie Treasurer: Ngaire Wallace 9 Brooking St, Gonville, Wanganui NZ ph: (06)345 5127 email: ikitara@xtra.co.nz (treasurer) Rotorua LETS c/- K. Oliver 35 Clinkard Ave, Rotorua email: rotorua_lets@hotmail.com TAURANGA EXCH AND BARTER Box 2358 Tauranga Taranaki LETS New Plymouth Contact: Denise Hunter (Office administrator) email: taranaki_letsnz@yahoo.co.nz C/- Disability Resource Centre, 28 Young St, New Plymouth ph: (06) 7591515 (24 hr answering service) TATS Timaru Alternative Trading System Inc. (situated about half way down the East Coast of the South Island of New Zealand) C/- 41a Heaton St. Timaru TATS started in 1990 and has been going well ever since although the Membership is reducing and now stands at about 40 families. We are currently exploring ways to boost Membership. Recently TATS hosted a South Island Regional Meeting, most groups were represented as well as one from the North Island. Many issues were discussed and solutions put forward and most people learned quite a lot about LETSystem that they were not aware of. This meeting was run for 100% LETS Credits much to the amazement of many that attended. TATS was declared to be the best run system in the S.I. and perhaps in the whole country. Thames LETS email: plumbing@e3.net.nz web: http://homepages.e3.net.nz/~plumbing/thamesg$.htm Box 229 Thames W.A.G.E.S C/- 510 Richmond Rd Auckland email: wages@joynetwork.com web: please supply web address Wairarapa Green Dollar Exchange Inc email: helen.alf.dew@contact.net.nz C/- Helen Dew 12 Costley St Carterton Ph/Fx: 06 379 8034 WANAKA G$ EXCHANGE C/- Resource Centre Dunmore St Wanaka Wellington G$ email: norm_h@hotmail.com P.O. Box 9491 Wellington W.E.S.T email: leah.odriscoll@xtra.co.nz C/- Postal Agency Kumara 7871 Westland WHATS C/- E. Jones 9 Eaton St Waimate WINGS email: wings.bm@xtra.co.nz C/- Maxine Wain 121 Charles St. Blenheim ZACS Exchange email: zacs@kiwihosting.com web: http://zacs.orcon.net.nz

How to close an exchange > Regretfully, HamLETS G$ Exchange will be closing from 30th June 2004. For those that are interested, I have attached the documents that form the process of the winding down of HamLETS as an example of 'how to close an exchange'. Ditch or Pitch - HamLETS.doc HamLET Closure.doc HamLETS - Report May 2004 Regretfully HamLETS Green Dollar Exchange will be closed from 30th June 2004. Since our last AGM the committee has not been effective with meetings not being attended by principle office holders and overseeing of worker being almost non-existent. Effort was made during January and February this year to contact all members to establish support for the group and commitment by members to help in the running of the group (Ditch or Pitch doc). Although members supported the concept of HamLETS there were not sufficient people available with the skills and time required for the ongoing management of the group. Letters have now been sent to all members advising them of their current balance and requesting them to close their accounts (HamLETS Closure doc). Members, of which forty remain with balances (some have already zeroed) have until 30th June 2004 to settle their accounts when any remaining credit balances will be transferred to management and debit balances will be sort in cash. The end result will be that the entire system is zeroed out. We anticipate busy trading over the next short while as members close out. As part of the closure, any remaining assets will be donated to another community group as per the rules of our constitution. _______________________________ INFLATION AND GREEN DOLLAR GROUPS. Presented By Jim McCaughan to the 2002 G$ Conference. There are two ways that a Green Dollar Group can get Inflation, one is by inheriting it from the National currency over which we have little control. At present this seems to be at a reasonable level. The other is by internally generated Inflation and this is what I wish to focus on. Until recently I would have said that G$ Groups, being zero balanced, should not have inflation problems. But for some time I have been puzzled by the low performance of some G$ Groups. The gradual drop in Membership after the first surge, the steady decline in trading and in some cases the total collapse of the system. If your System has Members complaining that they can not spend their credits then you probably have Inflation. If you have had Members in debit leaving without zeroing their account, who have not been followed up by your Management, if your Management has a large Green Dollar debit, or if your System has a large Credit on LETS Connect, or all three, then you do have Inflation. These all represent Goods and Skills that are no longer available to balance the Credits held by other Members in your System. TOO MUCH MONEY CHASING TOO FEW GOODS. Any departing Member leaving a debit should be encouraged to clear this before leaving, once they have left, a debit becomes a debt and should be recoverable. If they do not clear this, another option is to ask them for goods that can be offered at Markets or through a Newsletter and once sold the persons account can be credited. The next option is to collect K$s from them up to the value of their debt and if they cannot afford the total get them onto a drip feed. Each time there is a payment their account should be credited with G$s out of a Membership Debt Account until it is paid off. If it proves impossible to recover the debt (and sometimes this will be the case) then the account should be paid off out of the Member Debt Account and closed. This does not improve the inflation on your System but it does put those debits under your control. A large Management debit should be steadily reduced as rapidly as possible. On LETS Connect a large stagnant Credit represents a Debit on the LETS Connect Account on your System and this means you will have extra credits circulating on your System with no matching Goods or Skills available, except through intertrading. To deal with these problems your Management needs to remove credits from the System, especially from high earners. In the K$ System this is achieved by raising interest rates but this is not an option open to us. However we can do this through trading and this is what each Management will need to do. Use any K$s collected from departing Members and any spare cash that you may have to purchase goods in bulk and offer them to your Members, targeting the high earners and those with high Credit balances. The goods will need to be attractive to your Members and should be sold with a markup. It may be possible to get surplus Goods donated or at least be very cheap. It also may be possible get funding to do this, I suggest you try it. Another way is to import Goods from another system provided you can find a group that isn't trying to do the same. The same applies, buy in bulk at the best available price and resell to Members with a markup. This will reduce the LETS Connect Credit and any surplus gained can be used to lower the amount in the Member Debt Account. Also it should be remembered that the LETS Connect Member Debt is a part of the overall Inflation and it is in the interests of all Groups to get this reduced as rapidly as possible. As you reduce your own Inflation you should also send regular amounts to that account. One other thing that could be done is to target low earners, help them achieve a better turnover to allow them to earn more. The more they earn the more they will be able to spend and they will be happier with the system and will be more inclined to stay with it. By Management actively importing Goods via the K$ system or through LETS Connect and then selling to members the turnover on your Systems should increase markedly and you will have many more happy traders and less complaints from those unable to spend and they will be much more likely to remain a member rather that give up in disgust. I believe that this is a serious problem that effects most Groups and I think it is the main reason that a number of Groups have failed. G$ Systems, with their accounting systems, will be in a much better position to deal with these problems than other alternative currencies who do not have records and therefore do not know what is going on in their Systems. I have to say that Systems that use manual accounting are also quite vulnerable as it is more difficult to retrieve the information and keep track of trends. Please tell us about your successes and failures by writing a regular report in the LETS Review. Remember your experience may help others, we are all in this together, lets make G$s in this country really work. Jim McCaughan email: jpmc@paradise.net.nz ******************************************************* I feel that the above needs to be widely distributed. Groups in NZ are now slowly coming to the realisation that Inflation is a real issue and some are now beginning to address the problem. As well as being a TATS Committee member I am Treasurer and Bookkeeper for LETS Connect NZ. This is a group that other LETSystems join to allow Intertrading. International trading is not done at present, it was suggested some years ago but at that stage the Intertrading system was not in very good order. Over the years a number of Groups had failed, most leaving large Debit Balances and these had to be moved into an account which we called Member Debt account. The result was that eventually practically all Debits in the system were in this account and at one stage this amount reached more than -G$18,500.00 and most Member groups had large Credit balances. The result is that Intertrading had seriously declined as Member groups refused trades that were going to disadvantage their Balance and some were even insisting on zero trading for visitors, that is if you purchased you had to spend an equal amount. These problems are now being seriously addressed and maybe we will soon be able to consider international trade.

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