Healthy Money Healthy Planet - library.uniteddiversity.coop

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Huber and James Robertson, 6 it would be hard to build in sufficient checks and
balances.
Legality
For historical reasons, most countries have a law in place stating that the currency
issued by their central bank is to be the only legal tender in that country. In New
Zealand, for example, Section 25 of the Reserve Bank Act 1989 says that the
Reserve Bank shall have the ‘sole right to issue bank notes and coins in New
Zealand’, while Section 29 mandates stiff penalties to those people who print
notes. However, the Act doesn’t prohibit electronic currencies, tokens based on the
value of an hour’s work or clay tokens.
If the issuers of a newly introduced community currency believe that is likely
to succeed, then they should prepare a legal case to defend it in the event they are
challenged in court. In Italy, the creator of the simec, Professor Auriti, was ready
with his court case (see page 000), as was Paul Glover in Ithaca, creator of the
HOURs system (see page 000), and so their currencies were able to continue. The
inventors of Thailand’s bia Kud Chum, however, were not legally prepared (see
page 000), and nor apparently was the mayor of Wörgl in Austria (see page 000), so
these currencies did not survive.
Acceptability and Trust
At every stage, the society that will use the money being issued must believe in it
and continually endow it with value by accepting it as payment. Just a few