Milwaukee Businesses Consider Printing Money

Milwaukee businesses in the Riverwest and east side neighborhoods want to make money, literally.

Is this the way to keep a very local economy bustling?

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Some residents of Milwaukee's Riverwest and east side neighborhoods are considering giving up the greenback.

Participants would exchange U.S. dollars for a more local currency.

The move would encourage residents to support locally owned businesses, under the assumption national brands won't take what to them would amount to Monopoly money.

"This promotes local economic strength and community self-reliance," wrote one of the organizers, Sura Faraj, in a recent entry on her blog. "Other benefits include more community involvement and pride, patronage of local businesses (those that participate), and ultimately the reduction of traffic emissions."

Organizers in the Milwaukee area met Wednesday at Martin Luther King Library, 310 W. Locust St., to discuss the currency.

Since they're just taking first steps in trying to organize printing their own dollars, they didn't want to talk about details to the news media. But if they pull it off, they would be following in the footsteps of other neighborhoods, including the Madison Hours Cooperative for neighborhoods in the state capital.

The Chicago Tribune picked up on the story and so did Drudge.

When Drudge links to a story, that means massive national attention. The news media are going to want to learn details even though the organizers want to keep details of the program under wraps while it's still in its planning stages.

The idea is that the local cash could be used at neighborhood stores and businesses, thus encouraging local spending. The result, supporters hope, would be a bustling local economy, even as the rest of the nation deals with a recession.

"You have all these people who have local currency, and they're going to spend it at local stores," said Sura Faraj, a community organizer who is helping spearhead the plan. "They can't spend it at the Wal-Mart or the Home Depot, but they can spend it at their local hardware store or their local grocery store."

Incentives could be used to entice consumers into using the new money. For example, perhaps they could trade $100 U.S. for $110 local, essentially netting them a 10 percent discount at participating stores.

It's not a new concept—experts estimate there are at least 2,000 local currencies all over the world—but it is a practice that tends to burgeon during economic downturns. During the Great Depression, scores of communities relied on their own currencies.

And it's completely legal.

As long as communities don't create coins, or print bills that resemble federal dollars, organizations are free to produce their own greenbacks—and they'd don't even have to be green.

In Wisconsin, could that mean dough that looks like cheese?

Good grief.

That cheese remark from the Chicago Tribune was unnecessary. Milwaukee isn't Wisconsin's cheesemaking hub. Must they always work cheese into Wisconsin-related stories?

I suppose we have no one to blame but ourselves. We are often seen on TV wearing foam wedges of cheese on our heads.

Anyway, it's an interesting plan.

Personally, I wouldn't want to participate in something like that unless the exchange rate really would benefit me and give me more bang for the buck.

For example, I don't know that trading $100 U.S. for $110 local is enough to compete with the likes of Wal-Mart.

The bottom line for me is the best deal, the best service, and the best product. I don't patronize a place just because I want to support local business.

Moreover, I would be concerned about tying up my cash in a local currency when I could possibly spend my money more wisely outside the participating business zone. I wouldn't want to be trapped.

I don't think such a program would prompt me to keep my money in the neighborhood.

Chances are I would just trade for local currency to use at businesses I would be buying from regardless of the plan.