solution to "slowing economy"

[tyrannosaurus vex]

do amateurs have to invent EVERYTHING for these people? ffs.

so, the problem is that the gov't pumpt billions and billions of dollars into the banking industry to get them to lend money, which they are not doing because they have their own problems so they're just stashing it. OMGWTFBBQ how can this be stopped?

Why does nobody think outside the box? The answer is simple.

Invent sunset currency. IE promissory notes with an expiration date. Give that to banks, and see how long they keep it stashed away.

</disconomics 101>

[Cain]

You been reading this?

http://www.anxietyculture.com/bluffecon.htm

In 1891 an Argentinian businessman and economist named Silvio Gesell went one step further than the Individualist Anarchists by proposing a system of negative interest currency. The most well-known form of this currency was "stamp scrip", which required a stamp to be affixed to the back of a money note each month, to revalidate it.

Gesell believed that money is fine as a medium of exchange, but that it tends to be used as an instrument of power, capable of dominating and distorting the market. For example, money can be hoarded – temporarily withheld from the market for speculative purposes – without exposing its holder to losses. Real material goods, on the other hand, can't be hoarded without significant costs – either in the natural deterioration of the goods, or in the cost of storage.

In order to encourage the natural circulation of wealth instead of speculative hoarding, Gesell proposed "rusting bank notes" (a metaphor for negative-interest money), to bring about an "organic reform" of the monetary system. With money behaving more like real material wealth, the distortions in the system caused by hoarding and other forms of usury would be removed. This, he argued, would result in people receiving the full proceeds of their own labour, and would enable large sections of the population to quit wage slavery and work in an autonomous manner in private and co-operative enterprises.

A successful experiment with Gesell's theories took place in the Austrian town of Wörgl in 1932, during the depression. Wörgl effectively ran out of money, so the mayor of the town printed his own. The resulting currency, Wörgl stamp scrip, was designed to automatically earn negative interest. Each month its holders had to pay a stamp fee of 1% of the value of the note, so people spent the money as fast as possible. This resulted in a huge increase in "real wealth" – new houses, a new water system, repaved streets, a new bridge, a ski jump, etc. But when hundreds of other Austrian towns came up with plans to copy the successful Wörgl scheme, the central bank panicked because of the threat to its monopoly, and it soon became illegal to issue alternative currency in Austria.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

No, but thanks for ruining what I thought was an original idea. :'(

Seriously, though. I think the assholes in power know about this kind of idea, but have their own very obvious reasons for not implementing such a thing. But it could easily spur growth in a sluggish economy without having to convert ALL the currency to sunset currency (or "rusting bank notes").

[Nast]

That's why we should convert our currency into highly perishable egg salad sandwiches.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

BTW, you know all those "alternative currencies" that were spreading like crazy just a few years ago? The ones printed/pressed by local governments or by individual groups to sidestep inflation and the Federal Reserve racket? They're dead, and the people who started them are in prison. Even though it was perfectly legal.

[Don Coyote]

That's why we should convert our currency into highly perishable egg salad sandwiches.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRHFcIEGYOA

[Bruno]

BTW, you know all those "alternative currencies" that were spreading like crazy just a few years ago? The ones printed/pressed by local governments or by individual groups to sidestep inflation and the Federal Reserve racket? They're dead, and the people who started them are in prison. Even though it was perfectly legal.

I must've missed that somehow.

[BabylonHoruv]

BTW, you know all those "alternative currencies" that were spreading like crazy just a few years ago? The ones printed/pressed by local governments or by individual groups to sidestep inflation and the Federal Reserve racket? They're dead, and the people who started them are in prison. Even though it was perfectly legal.

Do you have sources for that?  I was under the impression Ithaca hours were doing fine and that there were some new alternative currencies coming out as well.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

I probably overgeneralized.  The FBI raided and after 2 years or so finally shut down the Liberty Dollar and, apparently, the Hawaii Dala and others, and at least temporarily imprisoned their creators under misinterpreted anti-counterfeiting laws despite repeated specific statements by the Treasury Department that alternative currencies are legal.

http://www.kevinalfredstrom.com/2009/06/alternative-currency-now-a-crime/

Other research turns up a lot of 404 "PAGE REMOVED DUE TO COURT ORDER" errors.

[Rumckle]

Last I heard, there was one in Oregon doing fine, I was talking to some of the people who were behind the idea (it was a very brief conversation though)