Local Action for a Sustainable Tomorrow

Community barter group kickoff 4/24

A local community barter/exchange group is being formed here, under the auspices of Fourth Corner Exchange:

http://www.fourthcornerexchange.com/

A meeting will be held at the PA Library/Carver Room, 2210 S. Peabody St., on April 24 at 7 p.m. For more information, contact Barbara Lott at 417-1613.

As the proponents of this system point out, local exchange systems are a means to keep money from draining out of the local economy. If you buy eggs from the supermarket, a large portion of your money goes to large corporations in distant places. If, on the other hand, you buy eggs from a local farmer with local currency that you got from fixing another person’s toilet, who might have fixed the farmer’s irrigation system, that money stays in and strengthens the local economy. As the website points out:
Fourth Corner Exchange is a Sustainable Community Currency based in the Pacific Northwest USA, which operates throughout the USA and the world. Currently we have over six-hundred participating members, with branches in Washington, Oregon, Colorado, New Mexico, Ohio, California in the USA, Nova Scotia and British Columbia in Canada. Founded by Francis Ayley and a small group of friends in 2002, Fourth Corner Exchange formally started trading in January 2004. From those small beginnings we have grown to over six-hundred members, exchanging a large selection of goods & services throughout the Pacific Northwest, centered around Bellingham and Port Townsend.

Our unit of currency is the 'Terra Dollar' (Time Dollar), which we use in a somewhat different manner to Ithaca Hours and Time Banks. Our Terra Dollars (Time Dollars) have many advantages over other local, complimentary and alternative currencies, and significant advantages over bank issued money.
Local, alternative and community currencies replace the money drained away, allowing the people to continue trading the essentials of life. Fourth Corner Exchange Terra Dollars cannot be removed from the communities in which they circulate, because the members issue Terra Dollars as and when they need them by trading their goods and services within their communities. When the next recession or depression hits the mainstream economy, our members will continue to trade as if nothing has happened. Fourth Corner Exchange Terra Dollars are immune to the unstable perturbations of the mainstream economy.