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Greeks Flock To Grassroots Alternative Currencies In Affront To Euro Debt Slavery
Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
When Christos Papaioannou noticed his car needed new tires, the Greek computer engineer bought them with euros—but used an alternative currency, called TEM, to pay his mechanic for the labor.
His country has avoided a catastrophic exit from the common currency, at least for now. But a small but growing number of cash-strapped Greeks, who are still grappling with strict money-withdrawal limits, have found another route in TEM and other unconventional payment systems like it.
Before then, Ms. Sotiropoulou said she was only aware of two such programs. No official record of the number of alternative currencies and local bartering systems appears to exist in Greece. But according to an Athens-based grass roots organization called Omikron Project, there are now more than 80 such programs, double the number in 2013. They vary in size, from dozens of members to thousands.
– From the Wall Street Journal article: Alternative Currencies Flourish in Greece as Euros Are Harder to Come by
Hundreds of millions of people throughout the Western world are being forced to admit an obvious, yet uncomfortable reality. Democracy is dead. Your vote and your voice doesn’t matter. Not at all.
No group of people understand this as intimately as the Greeks. They voted for one thing, got something else, and in the process were unceremoniously reminded of their political irrelevance. The Greeks are now in a position to show the rest of us how it’s done. Communities need to take matters into their own hands and tackle challenges at the grassroots level. Nowhere is this more impactful and necessary than in the monetary realm, and some Greeks are already leading the charge.
From the Wall Street Journal:
When Christos Papaioannou noticed his car needed new tires, the Greek computer engineer bought them with euros—but used an alternative currency, called TEM, to pay his mechanic for the labor.
His country has avoided a catastrophic exit from the common currency, at least for now. But a small but growing number of cash-strapped Greeks, who are still grappling with strict money-withdrawal limits, have found another route in TEM and other unconventional payment systems like it.
“Money is sparse right now, but people still have the same skills and knowledge they had before the crisis,” said Mr. Papaioannou, part of a cooperative that founded TEM in the port city of Volos and one of nearly 1,000 registered users of the alternate currency there.
“Money is sparse right now, but people still have the same skills and knowledge they had before the crisis.”
Read that line over and over and over again until you realize how simple, elegant and accurate it is.
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.
It is a localized version of what Greece might have to turn to if a tentative bailout agreement reached this week is derailed, or ultimately fails. Before his resignation last month, former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis floated the idea of setting up a parallel-currency system based on IOUs in the event that Greece could no longer stay afloat using euros. Without a rescue, the idea of using IOUs is seen as the country’s most likely alternative.
Before then, Ms. Sotiropoulou said she was only aware of two such programs. No official record of the number of alternative currencies and local bartering systems appears to exist in Greece. But according to an Athens-based grass roots organization called Omikron Project, there are now more than 80 such programs, double the number in 2013. They vary in size, from dozens of members to thousands.
“The problems that existed have only gotten worse, and the new deal is going to create problems of its own that will deepen the crisis in certain areas,” said Mehran Khalili, one of the founders of Omikron. “The logical response is to create groups to react to that and fill those gaps that are going to exist because of the unsustainable situation that Greece has found itself in.
Experts say TEM and other local currencies work best side-by-side with the euro, not as a replacement.
“Experts” say. Yeah, the same so-called “experts” who destroyed the world economy and turned the planet into a thieving oligarchy. I think I’ve had enough “expert” economic advice for one lifetime.
One notable example of alternative currencies used during a crisis was in the 1930s during the Great Depression, when the Austrian town of Wörgl decided to fight the economic downturn by printing its own money. Economists called the result a miracle: Employment boomed, while inflation remained subdued. During the economic depression that struck Argentina in 1998 and lasted till 2002, people formed barter networks and several provinces introduced their own currencies.
The alternate currencies have their limitations: The use of TEM, for example is restricted to those people and local businesses that choose to accept them, and won’t directly help people struggling to meet their monthly utility bills.
Maria McCarthy, a British woman who lives in Volos with her Greek husband and children, has earned and spent over 10,000 TEMs in four years by offering English and guitar lessons. She also sells secondhand clothes and other material goods in Volos’ biweekly marketplace, where almost everything besides euros are exchanged.
Mr. Papaioannou says he has paid for renovating parts of his home as well as food and clothing with the currency, and an increasingly larger share of his computer-repair work is done through transactions with TEM.
“You’re used to a method of doing things,” he said, “and suddenly, you realize there are other ways too.”
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.
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More power to the Greeks. The people seem to be waking up to the real problem. The fact that the banksters only provide "Monopoly" money that will bring the world to financial catastrophe>>
https://biblicisminstitute.wordpress.com/2015/08/14/when-money-is-the-pr...
Greekcoin FTW
Print money to fund economic activity, jobs, startups, research and production.
Then cancel the money that pooled at the hands of the few. Rinse and repeat.
Oldie but goodie
Economics are dead simple: If Joe wants a new roof made by John, John makes the roof and Joe writes him an IOU (worth of a new roof). So next time John want something done he knows Joe is good at, John can use this IOU to trade for Joe's work.
When it becomes ridiculous is when Joe can't write this IOU, but only James has the power to write IOU's. Now Joe has to lend an IOU (worth of a roof) from James who writes this IOU with his magic pen. So now Joe uses the IOU to pay John.
What happened?
Joe is in debt with James (who has done no work) equal to the worth of a roof + interest
John has a IOU equal to the worth of a roof.
Joe has to work for James to repay the IOU (worth one roof + interest)
So John has worked hard to provide Joe with a new roof, Joe is breaking his back doing work for James.
And James is best of, doing no work at all but getting Joe to work for him with a strike from his magical IOU pen.
One could say 2 slaves and one master were created, with the power of writing IOU's
Now James can control the economy of their little community, since only he can write IOU's. If he wants a economic boom, he will write IOU's easily without questioning. But if he wants to create a crisis, he refuses to write a single IOU, without these IOU's Joe and John can't trade, so all activity stops..
Its not that simple...because joe would be found out and nobody would take his IOU...Joe would have to infiltrate the education system in around 1901 thru the rockefeller foundation...then joe would have to take over the economic system in 1913 thru the rothchilds, ...it has taken them a century to do this thru social engineering, dumbing down the public, making laws obsolete, building a police state, bombing countries around the world thru brainwashed people with the rah rah american flag to set up central banks, poisoning the skies with chemtrails, more dumbing down and sterilization with flouride in the water, kardashian distractions, taking over all forest lands, printing money, etc. THis has been a plan from centuries ago. But it came to the Republic in 1776 after they lost the war and decided to use other tactics to accomplish thier goal...All wars are banker wars. People got into wooden ships to cross the atlantic to find freedom, with a good chance of them and their family not making it.. Today, people are too scared to even blink an eye to it all.
The smaller the currency base, the more vulnerable to shorting it is. Only global unity can fight the criminal moneychangers.
"From the entry in his journal of 12 October 1492, in which he wrote of them, "Many of the men I have seen have scars on their bodies, and when I made signs to them to find out how this happened, they indicated that people from other nearby islands come to San Salvador to capture them; they defend themselves the best they can. I believe that people from the mainland come here to take them as slaves. They ought to make good and skilled servants, for they repeat very quickly whatever we say to them. I think they can very easily be made Christians, for they seem to have no religion. If it pleases our Lord, I will take six of them to Your Highnesses when I depart, in order that they may learn our language."[47]
- your writing is very compact
- would guess the talk of the Americas triggered conspiracies relatively quickly after 1493 to take advantage of gold findings, and to extract either taxes or usury
The one that really gets you is how the fuck can someone get between Joe and John and skim off a lot of what both or them are producing.
To make matters worse, joe has a government job where he gets paid in IOU's that james creates, so really, there's two master's and one slave. Also, Roofer john better pay his taxes for the priveledge of doing business in this fine 'community'.
The Greeks doing this type of startup should go find a man of the Lakota nation by the name of Payu Harris. He has been working with First Nation tribal leaders and elders on something called the BTC Oyate Initiative for a couple of years.
In a nutshell, a turn key to rebuilding a national economy, in this case the First Nations tribes across tribal regions that adopt MazaCoin. A crypto economy that is working, transpearent and equal distributed fairly based off the BTC source code to function properly given the requirements he spent years drafting. MazaCoin has it's challenges but Payu is sharp, driven and has a solid technical grasp of how to use crypto currencies in areas that have been demolished and improvished in terms of working trade systems because of the idea of a central bank.
The Greeks need to wrest control of their government from the latest sell outs before they worry about the national ecoomy.
In terms of a broadly accepted effective and functioning parallel barter currency in an environment where official currency is in short supply they might look to something like the WIR franc which has endured for 80 years (since the Great Depression).
You are getting close to the dirty little secret the private bankers do want want shared. Ironicly it was revealed by Keynes who said that as long as demand does not exceed supply, adding money is not inflationary. This means if you are careful about how much money you print you can do it and use it to support the poor the sick, the unemployed and the elderly without causing inflation. Money is an essential commodity, much like water and power and the right to create money should be in the hands of the people in the same way that theyy should have control of their water supply.
It get's better, you can print money to increase specific supplies. There really is no need for the Capitalist at all. Just print to fund jobs/supplies, and as the people spend their money for their own work, cancel it, and then start printing again, etc.
All "democracies" need to die. They need to be replaced by what the Greeks used to be...a republic. There is a big difference Tyler.
Let's see how much crude the Sauds are willing to sell Greece for anything except euros. That's right, none.
It ain't over in Greece until half the population dies and the other half has gotten back to the land in a big, big way. Which is a far better future than most of the world can hope for.
Here it is again, the only chart that matters:
http://mazamascience.com/OilExport/output_en/Exports_BP_2015_oil_bbl_GR_...
Straight off the cliff.
Ok. nissan Leaf + a few solar panels will decrease oil demand. there's alternatives.
How will they PAY for that Nissan Leaf and the solar panels? Do you expect anyone outside of the country (or even inside) will accept Drachmas? At their "official" exchange rate?
Nobody stated they're off to easy living. Their standard will drop, but there's no reason for people to lose all of their decency.
All currencies represent working hours so it's not a question of whether or not anyone will want to trade using one currency or the other, but will they require Greek services. If yes, they'll be able to trade.
It isnt over until they lose their dignity.
The market has determined greek services to be valued at far far far less than the collective greek nation would require to pay for everything they import.
The Greeks can take matters into their own hands- the option to stop funding all of this was always there. If they really do want change, they need to to go on tax strike.
They have successfuly gone on tax strike for years if not decades. Please remind me, who is going to pay the pensioners?
No, they still largely pay their taxes, though maybe not to the levels of other countries. What I mean is stop paying anything at all. That is the path to change. Electing politicians isn't going to work, though dragging them out into the streets and hanging them might.
let those who promised the pensioners pay the pensioners
I am tired of other people promising the moon with the intention of stealing my money to make good on their promises.
Some of us offshore tax-havens use currencies that have no value outside our borders - so in that respect they must count as "alternative currencies". As a former Manager and sometime Director of the Cayman Islands Chamber of Commerce (although not an economist by any stretch), I try to keep aware of the virtues of the Cayman Islands Dollar - which for the past 43 years has been tied to the USD at the rate of US$1.20 to CI$1.00, based on the old British and Jamaican ten shillings.
We don't have a Central Bank, only a Monetary Authority; and we are not an independent nation, only a British colony. So we are protected from many of the problems that come with national Central Banks. Ours is a fiat currency, but the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office (our colonial master) is diligent on our behalf in keeping our government borrowings and our money supply under control - as best it can in the face of defiance from our irresponsible local politicians.
How safe will we be, in the event of a worldwide crash of currencies? I really don't know. Hopefully, safer than we would be without the Brits to take care of us! It's probably not a bad place to keep our money.
I worked for CUC (with Sacha Tibbets and Richard Hew) for 2 1/2 years so I know your islands. In a crash of currencies you will be in trouble because you import nearly everything. The little farmers market you have is nice but just too small.
Bitcoin Last Price $267
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201...
$650 one year ago
$1200 two years ago
$38 three years ago
$2 four years ago
$0.01 five years ago.
Picking data points is fun isn't it.
Meaningless. Bitcoin is a zero sum game theft scoreboard. A bunch of geeks trying to outsteal ech other.
a dumb comment with no basis in reality. i suspect you've never used bitcoin, so you don't know what you're talking about. i use bitcoin, i haven't stolen any, and i haven't had any bitcoins stolen from me.
as far as zero sum game:
one group of people uses the us dollar and the banking system - they lose 3% of every transaction for credit card fees, are restricted by arbitrary bank rules, fees, and hours of operation, and are subject to government capital controls
a second group of people uses bitcoin, which is decentralized - they transfer funds freely in any amount, any time they want, to anywhere in the world without restriction, they pay no fees, are not subject to capital controls, "know your customer" regulations, or other assorted government bullshit.
which group do you think will be better off over time?
Only number three, those with gold will be better off over time. Bitcoin is fiat without the paper.
gold is not opposed to bitcoin, they are complimentary - gold is a store of wealth, and bitcoin is a useful gateway for transferring wealth. they work well together and they have complimentary functions.
bitcoin is defintitely *not* fiat. fiat is a latin word, it means "let it be so". fiat is that which has value by government decree. no government backs bitcoin. bitcoin is definitely not fiat, people use bitcoin voluntarily, not because government insists that people use it
Mintcoin Last Price $0.000054
During the depression in Alberta my great grandfather paid his county taxes by renting out a team of horses and a fresnoe to repair county roads. Other people would trade sawn lumber or do a certain number of days labour to pay taxes. There was no money in circulation in rural areas. Federal taxes were simply ignored as there was no income to report. It got so bad the Alberta provincial government started printing their own money. It took that measure before the feds in Ottawa finaly forced banks to make loans to the prairie provinces again.
My father remarked that the government had no money for powdered milk to give kids with rickets but once war was declared there was a lot of money for uniforms, tanks, trucks and Bren guns.
There still is a LOT less "income" than most people know. Trading labor for money does not derive income.
How many TRUMPS does it take to buy a gallon of gas?
(Oh boy, take your best shot.)
nigelfarage.jpg
Ha Ha, guess you can force .gov to take the Euro, but every day citizens have options. Enjoy and when in Greece go to Bitcoin Meetups such as the two in Athens. Also use the Airbitz wallet, for secure, zero knowledge bitcoin spending.
People forget that the original purpose of money was to simplify transactions, not make bankers filthy rich.
original purpose of money? i didn't realize it had an original purpose.
so, what's the original purpose of people?
as far as making bankers rich, it does not - bankers don't deal in money, they deal in debt instruments. being able and willing to take advantage of simple minded dupes is what makes them rich.
you voice matters just not the way you think it does
.
its better to work hard than work smart
wait
Thank you for this read.
While the Greeks haven't gone to the lengths they need to in order throw out the pariah that is their own government neither has the rest of the EU members (with the exception of Iceland of course) and most importantly America for it's own government's indiscretions of thievery against it's own peoples -let alone every other place it invades and occupies through theft and murder.
I'd like to think that Americans would have this same level of resolve, organization and solidarity for an alternative monetary system in order to change the abuse and violations to their freedoms and sovereignty which we should have already done after 9/11 and again in 2008 (long before the Greeks did) wiith the banker bailouts, but I'm not confident whatsoever that we will ever rise to that level of ingenuity and creativity simply because we are told every day by the thieves robbing us every day that we are "exceptional" and worst of all because the majority truly believe the lie... Maybe pockets within the Country will but not collectively where the welfare mentality is alive and well. This is where the idea of civil war becomes a reality in the U.S.
And as long as we buy that self-delusional pipe dream looking in the rear-view mirror that we are the indispensible Nation on the hill without looking at the here and now and where we are being taken willingly we will have no hope for our future.
If you think that barter is effective, imagine howmuch more effective it would be if low denomination silver coins were circulated in conjunction with the barter system. Effectively, silver, because it cannot be banked, can act as the barter economy's official unit of exchange and remains in circulation amongst the people thus adding to the sophistication and general acceptability of the barter system for goods and services.
Isn't it wild, but in the USA there are still many people alive today who once transacted in silver daily (silver dimes and quarters). It's really not such a wild stretch.
However the face value of those silver coins must be less than the value of the silver contained in them. Otherwise they will simply be melted down.
Or if you have a floating rate and silver coins in fractional weights. But again, if a merchant is getting greater profit from melting down the coins, that will happen.
Nononono. You really don't understand. The original purpose of metal money WAS the value of the metal if melted down. The coining simply provides an official guarantee of weight and purity. In a metal-based system, the whole point is that if you melt down a 1 oz silver dollar, you have 1 oz of sterling silver suitable for making jewelry, photographic salts, or silver bullets. Cigarettes have been used as currency in the same way (in prisons and during WWII) -- because almost everyone using them smokes, anyone can either smoke the cigarette, getting immediate use out of it, or pass it along in trade. The only excess value the currency has is its flexibility -- instead of ONE commodity usage, a commodity currency can potentially trade for ANYTHING. What you can NOT have, is a "legal value" that is significantly higher than the commodity value of the currency, in which case it will immediately revert to its commodity use like pre-1982 pennies.
Actually the first coins minted were denominated at more than their gold/silver content. Look up in Roman times, that people would "trim" the edges of coins but the coins still had the same value. It was the denomination that mattered, not the actual weight of metal. The denomination was more "valuable" than the metal.
Officially minted coins were never about the full value of the metal. They were to reassure people that the coins held some value.
It was the beginning of a fractional reserve banking system.
absolutely right - except, you said 1 oz sterling silver (92.5% pure) from a silver dollar coin.
silver eagles are 1 oz 99.9% pure silver, also referred to as fine silver
old silver dollar coins (morgan, peace, trade) are 90% pure and weigh less than 1 troy ounce in any case (~27 grams)
This is no different than the bank bailouts/greatest heist in history of mankind
People wrote 10:1 against, but Congress knows who butters their biscuit and wrote the check anyway
TEM money????...sounds like Greek to me...
It would be interesting to know how big the "underground" US economy is. The one that avoids taxation by using cash only...
Shuussshhh. Don't say such things. The U.S. has no black market. The countryside is NOT full of scofflaws avoiding their child support extortions by working for cash under the table. The tomatoes all get picked by the Magic Of Modern Technology, not illegal immigrants earning untaxed subminimum wages and living stacked like cordwood in cheap unregulated apartments and rental hovels. There are no drug dealers, no unlicensed daycares, no farmers' markets and no backyard auto mechanics. That's why we don't need to have cash any more, just credit limits in the Goldman-Sachs Universal Online Banking System.
We are all now terrorists. We are all now soldiers. We are all now a captive and evolving hostile population. Calling John Connor and John Galt.
"Democracy is dead. Your vote and your voice doesn’t matter. Not at all."
Actually, it's proof that democracy was very much alive. The people found they could vote themselves all the money from the Treasury and did so repeatedly and now the Treasury is completely empty and nobody will lend them any more money. Democracy is working exactly like it should and the people are getting exactly the results they voted for.
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.
Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee, Alexander Fraser, 1854 (paraphrased)
Here is the site: http://omikronproject.gr/
There is a huge problem with barter systems. They cause a stagnation of all economic activity. Same thing happens if the barter uses PMs.
For every purchace/trade, you will need full value in trade at the time of the transaction. How many people buy a house and pay for it fully in cash/trade/barter? You want some equipment to start a small business? You would need to pay for all that equipment up front. But if you need that equipment to earn money to pay for it? Too bad, save up for the next decade....
But you're not paying taxes at least...or go into debt. You think it is ok that after you paid off your house after let's say 30 years you actually paid 2 to 3 times the value of that house (that can be repossessed any moment you miss a mortgage payment and lose it all)?
But that's still a choice you have. You can choose to live in a decent place and pay more for it over a long period of time, or you can live in a cheap hovel for 30 years until you've saved up enough money to purchase your new home.
Even living in a hovel, say you are renting because you don't have enough money for a house, you are still paying money every month.
But the ability to borrow is far more important for business, both large and small. They wouldn't be able to expand, or even start unless they have all the cash up front that they need. For businesses, it becomes a chicken and the egg problem.
As for your comment about having your house repossessed if you miss a payment? Try not paying your rent, or what happens if you don't pay your property taxes? No different than a mortgage.
In the end we are all debt slaves and in the hands of the money changers. Sure borrowing money makes businesses grow but we now have a situation where there is so much debt there is no easy way out. Recalling Glass Steagall and Clinton wanting to give every gang banger and trailer trash 'the right to a house' got us into this mess. The system became TBTF cause politicians (in the pockets of WS) let it.
When you borrow, you don't get cash. Just a bunch of ones and zeros on a server somewhere.
Also, they "buy a house" mantra is getting really old.
You overlook one small FACT. Without credit even major items such as homes are much cheaper. Take for instance the house I live in. When credit crashed in 2008 I purchased the house I now live in for CASH that I saved from 1YEAR of savings. Or even consider my Pakistani co worker back in the 90s when prices were inflated because of credit. He purchased his house with 5 years of savings. I also lived in other countries before they even had credit and things were MUCH cheaper paid for with cash, even for large items because they were much cheaper. CREDIT CAUSES ABNORMAL PRICE INFLATION. Just look at student debt in the US.
Exactly. With credit, the limiting factor is not the price of the house, but the price of the Monthly Payment. And the credit system deliberately distorts that. The person buying with debt can always outbid the person who has to actually save the resources to make a purchase, as a result debt causes asset value bubbles. Jeez, we wouldn't know ANYTHING about that, would we?
It also distorts the incomes of people working in that society.
Yes and no.
Your examples pull out only a couple cherry picked examples in an otherwise credit priced world. If you got rid of credit for everyone, then you won't be earning the same salary you are right now. Yes, everything would be less, INCLUDING INCOME.
"CREDIT CAUSES ABNORMAL PRICE INFLATION."
But it ALSO causes abnormal WAGE INFLATION.
No differnt than you saving your money then going and living in a developing country where average income is $3 a day. You would say everything is so cheap, but that's only from your prespective.
One man's "stagnation" is another man's "sustainability". Humans have to learn to live without infinite growth, because you can't HAVE infinite growth on a finite sphere. That's where capitalism has royally screwed the pooch.
Our entire system of lending at interest derives from the days when "money" was a measure of grain, and the opportunity costs of eating or lending that grain had to be weighed against its yield if used in its capacity as seed corn. NEWS FLASH: gold is not seed corn; it doesn't multiply spontaneously. Neither does printed paper. The only kinds of spontaneous growth we have outside of the natural world are the growths of lies, complexity, and misery.
Strip away the lies and illusions and yes, input has to balance with output; the total amount of work credits available in the system cannot be exceeded by waving a magic wand. Get used to it. It's called the Real World.
Im not going to sit on the dirt for the next 9 billion years digging for corn. Just saying. Screw your "stable" permaculture bullshit.
With corn there reailly isn't that much actual digging. It's rather simple to plant.
Still wont. Life is all about competition and expansion, not stability.
However it's exactly that system of magic money that has created the outstanding standard of living, and all the goods and services and technology we enjoy today and TAKE FOR GRANTED.
Without that lending, we'd still be living in a feudal, agrarian society, no different than a thousand years ago.
It was that lending that enabled the first explorers to discover the new world and begin trade. It enabled private enterprise to start and lead to the industrial revolution. Before that, all wealth was concentrated in the government, heads of state. And they had zero interest in sharing that wealth with the peasants.
To add another possibly even more successful example of currency creation without inflation just read about the Guernsey currency experiment from 1820 -1836
LINK for those interested in learning about this amazing success
http://tobybirch.com/the-guernsey-experiment/
yup, Greeks reads zh too though. :P But yeah, for some reason the nascent iodine of economics (detoxes the system) is a negative accelerating interest rate applied to all notes, currency and otherwise. The freedom gained from controlling how the money is used, and thus what is bought with it, is worth more than the potential liberation through a fiscal uprising.
We must show totally solidarity with them against the euro-fascists.
Absolutely so true.
The EUSSR in all its greed, dishonesty, corruption and lies
Britain must vote to get out.
Or go into ultimate and permanent slavery.
Of course Greece could go back to gold and silver coins as money.
Following the discovery in the 16th century of large deposits of silver at the Cerro Rico in Potosi, Bolivia, an international silver standard came into existence in conjunction with the Spanish pieces of eight. These silver dollar coins played the role of an international trading currency for nearly four hundred years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_standard
Imagine that. A stable monetary system for nearly 400 years.
However, in 1158, King Henry II introduced Tealby penny. English currency was almost exclusively silver until 1344, when the gold noble was put into circulation. However, silver remained the legal basis for sterling until 1816.
So that makes more than 600 years on a silver standard. Which fiat reserve currency even comes close?
As an American I feel bad for the Greeks. In America things are definitely not rosy but you folks are hurting bad. This is all about "easy credit ripoffs". We all must learn to not take that hook. Leadership will allow and encourage it but it all still is a choice to be prudent. I doubt we'll see much easy credit at the same level as citizens for decades. But when I see it again you can be damn sure I wont take the bait. And I only took a little for a house and credit card for one nice trip. Never again. I will save and invest instead and learn patience.
Ithaca Bucks
Complete countrywide work stoppage, starve the gov and it's creditors.
Who do you think really suffers if that happens?
If the bailout funds are cut off, where does Greece get money for little things, you know like OIL and GASOLINE? They are paid for in hard currecny, not some local barter currency or New Drachmas.
You've obvioulsy never been in a country where their currency has collapsed. There are dire shortags of ALL imported goods.
You've obviously never survived without amenities. People did survive without OIL and GASOLINE for thousands of years.
Hugo Chavez once lost a referendum. He accepted the loss and then ordered a new referendum. He won
Greeks should start to produce, export and shut up about their imaginary currencies. They are worthless, backed by nothing, not gold, not tobbaco, not real estate, not even the guns of the state.
Nothong new here.
The Berkshires in MA have been using a local currency for years:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BerkShares
the most important aspect of this innovation is power really does lie with the people. fuck the zionazis.
What Europe, the Greeks, and pretty much everybody else in the world is going through right now can be traced back to the US-Anglo dynamic duo of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Not understanding that the world was going through a temporary supply deficit thanks to the decoupling of the dollar to gold, both of them set out on a mission (directed or not) to pillage the middle class for capital to support a supply expansion. Nobody but a few people at the time understood that 'trickle down', or as the French called it 'lassez faire' was nothing more than a political concoction created by the French Louis Kings to try to hold on to their power and wealth by co-opting the nobility into a scheme designed to both enrich the crown through vastly increased Seigniorage (going to the King) and control of the means of production (and the wealth it created) going to the French nobility. The trickle down that occured was actually trickle up, and Louis XIV understood all too well what the outcome would be when he said 'Apres moise le deluge/After me, the deluge'. But for some reason he didn't care. I guess he was just too distracted organizing his lavish parties and running his wars.
And so began the relentless taxation of the population (to the benefit of the King (Congress/ECB), and the steady theft of the means of production by the cronies of the 'noblemen' through misdirecting capital and outright thievery. Within 2 generations (80 years), Louis's prediction came true and the deluge in France turned into a deluge of blood. Unfortunately for the noblemen, their cronies turned out to be completely inept at managing production, or wars, and of course bankrupted the treasury.
So today, 35 years after Reagan and Thatcher (both staunch 'conservatives') set out on their mission to rid the world of bothersome 'trade unions' and 'uncompetitive capital enterprises', we have arrived, once again, at the deluge. Productive capacity has been stripped out of the US, the UK, Canada, most of Western Europe (except of course for the clever Germans) and sold off to third world countries in the mistaken belief that the 1% could sit on their estates and continue to consume while the entire society and absent economy crumbled underneath them. Printing money is simply the last attempt at propping the failed enterprise up.
The only question going forward is whether or not they will voluntarily admit their mistake, or if they will be taken out by the force of events. Once the herd turns, having realized they have been duped, it becomes an unstoppable.
After the recent re-election of Cameron in the UK and what has been done to Greece, I am not optimistic.
The monopoly on money control began a long time before Thatcher and Reagan. It began with King Croesus in Lydia and has morphed now for 2500 years! Thatcher and Reagan were must symptoms of the power of the owners of banks over all of us and all of our politics. It is finally coming to an end. The system is being dismantled first in our minds when we realize we don't need money but have what it takes to exchange between each other without bank credit.
What happens first between our ears will cascade outward into our new actions until this nasty system is finally dismantled. There will be no going back.
The utilities bills will only be hard to pay until the utilities companies join the circles. They have employees to pay who can use the TEM and the others in each locale. Utilities companies have a lot to gain by getting off their Euro credit lines to banks like anybody else. The TEM and the others will help them, too. This is how it works when the circle completes with large employers become members, too. Next up, hospitals.
Although. utilities companies are often owned by the same family holding groups who own banks. So, this will be their conflict.
The monopoly over money started by King Croesus and his gold coins in Lydia is coming to an end. This is very symbolic that it is collapsing first in Greece and alternative currencies are being born in the minds of the Greek people first! Very fitting and a whole new chapter for democracy!