Source - The Guardian: "It's been a busy day at the market in downtown Volos. Angeliki Ioanitou has sold a decent quantity of olive oil and soap, while her friend Maria has done good business with her fresh pies.
But not a single euro has changed hands – none of the customers on this drizzly Saturday morning has bothered carrying money at all. For many, browsing through the racks of second-hand clothes, electrical appliances and homemade jams, the need to survive means money has been usurped.
"It's all about exchange and solidarity, helping one another out in these very hard times," enthused Ioanitou, her hair tucked under a floppy felt cap. "You could say a lot of us have dreams of a utopia without the euro."
In this bustling port city at the foot of Mount Pelion, in the heart of Greece's most fertile plain, locals have come up with a novel way of dealing with austerity – adopting their own alternative currency, known as the Tem. As the country struggles with its worst crisis in modern times, with Greeks losing up to 40% of their disposable income as a result of policies imposed in exchange for international aid, the system has been a huge success. Organisers say some 1,300 people have signed up to the informal bartering network.
For users such as Ioanitou, the currency – a form of community banking monitored exclusively online – is not only an effective antidote to wage cuts and soaring taxes but the "best kind of shopping therapy". "One Tem is the equivalent of one euro. My oil and soap came to 70 Tem and with that I bought oranges, pies, napkins, cleaning products and Christmas decorations," said the mother-of-five. "I've got 30 Tem left over. For women, who are worst affected by unemployment, and don't have kafeneia [coffeehouses] to go to like men, it's like belonging to a hugely supportive association."
Greece's deepening economic crisis has brought new users. With ever more families plunging into poverty and despair, shops, cafes, factories and businesses have also resorted to the system under which goods and services – everything from yoga sessions to healthcare, babysitting to computer support – are traded in lieu of credits.
"For many it plays a double role of supplementing lost income and creating a protective web at this particularly difficult moment in their lives," says Yiannis Grigoriou, a UK-educated sociologist among the network's founders. "The older generation in this country can still remember when bartering was commonplace. In villages you'd exchange milk and goat's cheese for meat and flour."
Other grassroots initiatives have appeared across Greece. Increasingly bereft of social support, or a welfare state able to meet the needs of a growing number of destitute and hungry, locals have set up similar trading networks in the suburbs of Athens, the island of Corfu, the town of Patras and northern Katerini.
But Volos, the first to be established, is by far the biggest. Until recently the city, 200 miles north of Athens, was a thriving industrial hub with a port whose ferries not only connected the mainland to nearby islands but before Syria's descent into civil war was a trading route between Greece and the Middle East. Once famous for its tobacco, Volos was home to flour mills and cement factories, steel and metal works.
But, today, it is joblessness that it has come to be known for in a country whose unemployment rate recently hit a European record of 26%, surpassing even that of Spain.
"Frankly the Tem has been a life-saver," said Christina Koutsieri, clutching DVDs and a bag of food as she emerged from the marketplace. "In March I had to close the grocery store I had kept going for 27 years because I just couldn't afford all the new taxes and bills. Everyone I know has lost their jobs. It's tragic."
Last year, the Greek government stepped in with a law that supported finding creative ways to cope with the crisis. For the first time, alternative forms of entrepreneurship and local development were actively encouraged.
Although locals insist the Tem, which is also available in voucher form, will never replace banknotes – and has not been dreamed up to dodge taxes – they say it is a viable alternative.
For local officials such as Panos Skotiniotis, the mayor of Volos, the alternative currency has proved to be an excellent way of supplementing the euro. "We are all for supporting alternatives that help alleviate the crisis's economic and social consequences," he said. "It won't ever replace the euro but it is really helping weaker members of our society. In all the social and cultural activities of the municipality, we are encouraging the Tem to be used."... Fiat currency pre-dates Law by a couple of thousand years. Roman coins (e.g.)started off at 100% gold or silver and finished up at 1%. It's a terrible indictment of the central banks and globalist tamperers that people have to abandon the official currency for their own. Barter systems are always poverty-stricken because the exchange isn't flexible or efficient enough but as someone pointed out this isn't barter -- it's just an unofficial currency.
How I'd love to deal in an unofficial currency and bypass our dictators but it won't happen. Any threat to their control and they'd make such a currency illegal. Half the wars you can name since 1700 were fought over the right to print money.
How I'd love to deal in an unofficial currency and bypass our dictators but it won't happen. Any threat to their control and they'd make such a currency illegal. Half the wars you can name since 1700 were fought over the right to print money.
5 comments:
the world has no realistic alternative to fiat currencies (at least, as long as we keep our current technology-based economy) because there is simply not enough gold (or bitcoins, for that matter; the total amount of these is mathematically limited) to provide a large enough amount of money to fill the world's economy. That's why we no longer use gold for currency. It's not that there was a deliberate conspiracy to replace gold, it's just that the amount of money we needed had outstripped the amount of gold available by the middle of the last century.
ATHENS—A multimillion-dollar embezzlement case involving Greece's national tourism agency has dealt a new blow to the crisis-hit country's political establishment, which already is reeling from a scandal over its failure to go after wealthy suspected tax evaders.
Auditors in December were asked to examine what government officials say is a hole in the agency's books, after an incident involving an allegedly fraudulent check raised questions about possible corruption at the agency. The auditors have discovered a series of improper transactions totaling about €12 million ($15.8 million) and extending back as far as 2003, two senior government officials said.
ATHENS—A multimillion-dollar embezzlement case involving Greece's national tourism agency has dealt a new blow to the crisis-hit country's political establishment, which already is reeling from a scandal over its failure to go after wealthy suspected tax evaders.
Auditors in December were asked to examine what government officials say is a hole in the agency's books, after an incident involving an allegedly fraudulent check raised questions about possible corruption at the agency. The auditors have discovered a series of improper transactions totaling about €12 million ($15.8 million) and extending back as far as 2003, two senior government officials said.
Across the board, every leading economic indicator points to increasing unemployment and debt in 2013 under the French Socialists. While Hollande has repeatedly stated that the EU crisis is over. Now he states that unemployment will decline and France will emerge from the financial crisis sooner and stronger. It is hard to find much credibility in what he says.
The ratings agencies joined the International Monetary Fund Wednesday in sounding a note of caution about the fiscal deal.
Steven Hess of Moody's sovereign risk group said in a statement that the package passed in Washington:
does not...provide a basis for a meaningful improvement in the government's debt ratios over the medium term.
The rating agency expects that further fiscal measures are likely to be taken in coming months that would result in lower future budget deficits, which are necessary if the negative outlook on the government's bond rating is to be returned to stable.
Notably, yesterday's package does not address the federal government's statutory debt limit, which was reached on December 31. The need to raise the debt limit may affect the outcome of future budget negotiations.
Standard & Poor's, which in 2011 lowered its long-term rating on US federal debt from AAA to AA+, released its verdict Wednesday night, saying the eleventh hour deal was not enough.
While Congressional compromise designed to avoid the "fiscal cliff" may support the still-fragile U.S. economic rebound, the compromise doesn't affect our view of the country's credit outlook, given that we believe yesterday's agreement does little to place the U.S.'s medium-term public finances on a more sustainable footing.
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