What if you used a different currency to buy a sandwich from your main street deli than you did to make a purchase at the Wal-Mart 10 miles outside town? "BerkShares," the local paper currency of Berkshire County in Massachusetts, lets you do that. The popularity of BerkShares has ebbed and flowed, but with about $130,000 worth of notes currently in circulation, the number of businesses accepting the currency has jumped to about 400 from the 100 that initially participated in 2006. Shooting a Making Sen$e segment on the phenomenon in Western Massachusetts, which aired on PBS NewsHour Thursday, Paul Solman spoke with Alice Maggio, the local currency program director at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics in Great Barrington...
Read the rest at http://www.pbs.org/newshour/businessdesk/2013/09/how-to-print-dollars-in-your-own-backyard-and-keep-them-away-from-wal-mart.html
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