Healthy Money Healthy Planet - library.uniteddiversity.coop

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In addition, by focusing on local economies and community currencies goods
will be cheaper, people will be able to save more and the national economy will be
more effective. In her book Interest and Inflation Free Money, Margrit Kennedy
illustrates that every consumer item – whether a needle, a television or a fridge –
has included in its price built­in interest rates. Kennedy goes on to cite a German
economist, who has estimated that 30–50 per cent of all prices are composed of
interest. 17 Simply by lending money interest­free will therefore lead to a vast
improvement in our quality of life.
So at the heart of the local currency movement is a yearning for more control,
and for more sense of place and community. Local currencies are a powerful tool
for community cohesiveness and rejuvenation. Paul Glover of Ithaca, New York
state, sums this up well: ‘We printed our own money because we watched Federal
dollars come to town, shake a few hands, then leave to buy rainforest lumber and
fight wars.’ 18 Similarly, in 1999 t
The Christian Science Monitor reported: ‘If globalisation has got you down, take
heart … The motivation behind local currencies stem more from a view that
communities are losing their sense of interconnectedness among residents, who
don’t know each other and who buy goods that are imported with dollars that are
often earned from a distant corporation.’ 19 Wherever there is a desire to create a
sense of community, to build a local economy and to have greater interaction
between people living in the same area, there is a reason to create a local currency.
Creating local currencies that lend money interest­free also gives communities the
power to fund local projects themselves. This will avoid the situation we have now,
where the imposition of compound interest means ratepayers foot the bills for
bank­financed infrastructure projects and citizens end up paying for capital works
such as sewerage systems three or four times over.