Struggling towns printing their own cash

In an echo of the Great Depression, local currencies with their own special flavors are popping up all over in attempts to give commerce and communities a lift.

[Related content: currencies, recession, Treasury, exchange rates, spending]

By SmartMoney

Last year, two Detroit tavern owners were sitting at the bar, sampling their beverages and bemoaning the local economy -- no one in the city had cash, and when they did, they spent it in the suburbs. Then the pair hit on a solution: Print their own money.

It is, after all, perfectly legal for anyone to issue currency, as long as it doesn't look too much like a U.S. dollar. Thus was born the Detroit cheer, a local scrip accepted by a handful of city businesses, including a pizzeria, an electrician and a doggy day care center.

• What world currencies are worth

Residents can also exchange it at a few area bars for greenbacks, but the cheer is vastly more colorful. It features a chiseled, naked Greco-Roman superhero (the Spirit of Detroit) towering Godzilla-like over the city skyline, cupping a tiny family in one hand and a sunburst representing God in the other. He's a lot more fun than George Washington.

And Detroit isn't the only city sporting its own currency. Since the market tanked nearly 18 months ago, there's been an interest in local scrips not seen since the Great Depression.

Residents in tiny North Fork, Calif., just launched the North Fork share, and folks in Piedmont, N.C., spend the newly issued the plenty, a currency depicting local flora and fauna like the ever-popular turkey vulture. Brooklyn, N.Y., is preparing to launch the torch, while South Bend, Ind., is set to print what it calls MACs.

Susan Witt, the executive director of the E.F. Schumacher Society, a think tank devoted to decentralized economies, says she gets calls daily from towns across the nation looking to join the movement.

In most cases, these communities are simply looking to boost local commerce. The currency has to be spent in town, obviously, because it's worthless anywhere else. But a growing distrust of the U.S. dollar is also at work.

When the Treasury prints billions to bail out banks and automakers, people look for alternatives. These folks may look nutty now, goes the quip, but wait till the dollar goes the way of the Argentine peso. Then you'll be exchanging a wheelbarrow of cash for a bay buck, local currency boosters say.

Minting money isn't easy, of course. The Detroit bar owners spent $2,000 to print $4,500 in cheers, thanks in part to an initial run on flimsy paper. ("It costs money to make money," co-founder Timothy Tharp says.)

In North Fork, Josh Freeman and his crew spent days cranking out bills on the ancient letterpress in his garage. And once a local currency is printed, it's a struggle to keep the stuff in circulation.

Towns often find the scrip flowing to the local food co-op, which soon complains that suppliers won't take it. Until Piedmont's plenty was reissued with the backing of U.S. dollars, it was kept alive mainly by the local biodiesel seller, who used it to pay his interns.

It's A Go:The Front Organizations for U.S. Oligarchs Have Been Established in Abu Dhabi

The latest news from our traveling Deputy Treasury Secretary appears to be that the skids have been greased in Abu Dhabi and front organizations have been identified. The code words for raping taxpayers, "cooperation between the public and private sector," have been spoken. In other words, it's time for Carlyle Group founder David Rubenstein to call his office.

Treasury reports:

Within the framework of developing the small and medium enterprise (SME) sector as a strategy to drive economic prosperity, Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin met today with representatives from leading Abu Dhabi organizations spearheading initiatives that encourage and support United Arab Emirates (UAE) citizens to pursue meaningful private sector employment opportunities.

The open dialogue gave Deputy Secretary Wolin the opportunity to learn how the government is working to create greater understanding, cooperation and engagement between the public and private sectors of the emirate of Abu Dhabi to deliver a long-term and valuable contribution to the economic growth and enterprise base of the country.

Among the representatives at today’s dialogue were HE Waleed Al Mokarrab, Director General, Abu Dhabi Council for Economic Development; HE Abdullah Al Darmaki, General Manager, Abu Dhabi Tawteen Council; HE Khuloud Al Nuwais, Director of Projects, the Emirates Foundation; and Mr Ibrahim Ahmed Al Mansoori, Deputy CEO, the Khalifa Fund for Enterprise Development.

“Abu Dhabi is showing impressive leadership in preparing its society to compete in the international workforce,” said Deputy Secretary Wolin. “Abu Dhabi’s private sector development goals are ambitious, but achievable through initiatives driven by organizations such as Tawteen, the Council for Economic Development and the Khalifa Fund.”

The Treasury even provides us deatils on these organizations that will distort free markets to such a degree that Karl Marx may have to be revived to write a sequel, The Capitalism I Knew:

The Abu Dhabi Council for Economic Development (ADCED) was established in May 2006 to act as an economic policy advisory council and facilitate economic diversification and growth through creating greater understanding, cooperation and engagement between the public and private sectors of the emirate of Abu Dhabi. http://www.adced.ae/

The Abu Dhabi Tawteen Council is a government entity established in December 2005 to offer quality Emirati job seekers to Abu Dhabi companies to suit the demands of their businesses as well as form the foundations for sustainable growth in the long run. http://www.tawteencouncil.ae/

The Khalifa Fund was established to support and assist UAE citizens to enter into private businesses, thus fulfilling socio-economic goals for a more competitive and sustainable economy. http://www.khalifafund.gov.ae/

The Emirates Foundation Tawteen Initiative is a major strategic initiative that helps equip Emiratis with the mindset and relevant skills for future private sector employment in the UAE and in the global economic market. http://www.uaetawteen.com/

Folks, government partnership with the private sector is simply a contradiction in terms. It's kind of like Jesse James announcing that he has reached an agreement with banks and they have worked out a solution as to what to do with the hard earned money they want you to continue to deposit.

Mainstream MarketWatch: Prepare for the End of America

Mainstream financial news source MarketWatch is telling Americans to prepare for the worst, the end of America. In their article, "How to invest for a global-debt-bomb explosion," not only do they talk about the coming total economic collapse but they admit that there is a cabal of elite who are orchestrating it. Author of the article, Paul Farrell, extends the view as if it is widely accepted, that there is a "Happy Conspiracy" of global elitists who are operating behind the scenes to create a coming major economic disaster. The article encourages people to prepare by stockpiling necessities because a 2nd American Revolution is imminent.

A mainstream news source owned by Rupert Murdock is parading the view that the U.S. will soon enter into a 2nd Revolution. What in the world is going on here? Be very aware people. When this information is front loaded into mainstream consciousness, it is a strong indication that the powers are getting ready for another false flag attack. It is a good idea to be prepared but also understand this is what the elites want. In order to instigate a violent fight with the freedom movement some government agent acting as a 9-11 truther may be used as a patsy. Every draconian law is now in place for the next emergency. We're only one false flag attack away from total martial law in the U.S. It will appear that the tyrants have not fired the first shot. Help expose the truth!

We cannot make events. Our business is wisely to improve them...

If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.

- Samuel Adams

The MarketWatch article is archived below in case titles or content are changed.

How to invest for a global-debt-bomb explosion

Prepare for an apocalyptic anarchy ending Wall Street's toxic capitalism

By, Paul Farrell

MarketWatch - Wake up investors. Are you prepared for the economic anarchy coming after a global-debt time bomb explodes? Are you thinking outside the box? Investing differently? Act now -- tomorrow will be too late.

Start by looking past the endless cable skirmishes between Rush, Glenn, Bill and Shawn versus Harry, Nancy, Ben and Barack. Look way past the insurgency bonding Sarah and her diehard Tea Party revolutionaries with Ron Paul's Neo-Reaganite ideologues, Fat-Cat Bankers and the Party of No, all planning a massive frontal assault on the 2010 elections, hell-bent on destroying the presidency. All that's the sideshow.

The Big One is coming soon, bigger than the 2000 dot-com crash and the 2008 subprime credit meltdown combined. A huge market blowout. And as Bloomberg-BusinessWeek predicts: "The results won't be pretty for investors or elected officials."

After the global-debt bomb explodes don't expect a typical bear correction followed by a new bull. Wall Street's toxic pseudo-capitalism is imploding. Be prepared for a massive meltdown. Yes, already the third major bubble-bust of the 21st century, triggered once again by Wall Street's out-of-control Fat Cat Bankers. And it's dead ahead.

Can your family survive in the anarchy after the debt bomb explodes?

America's already descending into economic anarchy. We're all trapped in a historic economic supercycle, a turning point that must bleed through a no-man's land of lawless self-destructive anarchy before a neo-capitalistic world can re-emerge. Investors tell me they "feel" it at a deep level, "know" it's happening. They keep asking: "What's the best investment strategy to prepare now?"

This is no joke, folks. Are you prepared? Or preparing? Will your family survive in a post-apocalyptic world, when anarchy is rampant in America? Look at Washington, Wall Street and Corporate America today. You know it's already begun.

You are witnessing a fundamental breakdown of the American dream, a systemic breakdown of our democracy and our capitalism, a breakdown driven by the blind insatiable greed of Wall Street: Dysfunctional government, insane markets, economy on the brink. Multiply that many times over and see a world in total disarray. Ignore it now, tomorrow will be too late.

Not a war about ideology, but an economic game-changer

This is a war to control 299 million American taxpayers. A war waged by the "Happy Conspiracy" Jack Bogle profiled in his 2004 "Battle for the Soul of Capitalism," a war machine of Fat Cat Bankers, CEOs, 42,000 mercenary lobbyists and a Congress held hostage to unlimited campaign donations. Their conspiracy has been waging this war against Americans for decades, long before the Supreme Court exposed their dirty secret.

Yes, your enemy is that "Happy Conspiracy:" It has degraded into a pseudo-capitalism with no conscience, no sense of the public good, hell-bent on controlling America's mind, your money and the global markets for its own selfish ends. And eventually it will trigger the game-changing global-debt bomb, the third global meltdown of the century that finally ignites the Great Depression II, plunging us into an era of anarchy.

Investors keep asking: "If it is coming, how do I invest? Buy gold? Commodities? Hedge? Short trading? TIPS? Hoard cash? Buy and hold? Lazy Portfolios?" What if the Dow sinks below 5,000? Maybe the worst-case scenario recently predicted by Bob Prechter: A deeper plunge to the 1,000 range? Imagine a global depression, a bear market dragging on for decades: "How do I protect my family? Can I ever retire? What do I invest in? How can anyone prepare?"

How America's two classes are preparing for a descent into anarchy

As America descends into anarchy your family's survival and your ability to retire will depend on which of America's two economic classes you belong to out of our total of roughly 300 million citizens:

1. "Average Joe & Jane" Americans: You're one of 299 million Main Street Americans. Average income is $50,000, only 10% of the average bonuses paid to Wall Street's Fat-Cat Bankers. Or you're already one of America's 20% underemployed ... maybe on food stamps ... maybe among the 47 million with no medical insurance ... your retirement assets are about $50,000, a year's survival. And you are "mad-as-hell" you're not working "inside" the "Happy Conspiracy."

2. "Happy Conspiracy" Insiders: You're one of the lucky million or so elite Insiders in the "Happy Conspiracy." You may work for a Fat-Cat Bank that American taxpayers bailed out last year so you pocketed a 2009 bonus gift of somewhere between $600,000 and $10 million. Maybe you're a Corporate American CEO. Maybe you're on the Forbes 400 list. Or you're a U.S. Senator.

Here's how these savvy Insiders are preparing: In his 2008 best-seller, "Wealth, War and Wisdom," hedge fund manager Barton Biggs, a highly respected Insider in the "Happy Conspiracy," advised rich insiders to expect the "possibility of a breakdown of the civilized infrastructure."

His advice: Make tons of money. Buy an isolated farm in the mountains. Protect family against the barbarians: "Your safe haven must be self-sufficient and capable of growing some kind of food ... It should be well-stocked with seed, fertilizer, canned food, wine, medicine, clothes, etc. Think Swiss Family Robinson."

How Wall Street insiders will treat Main Street in 'The Anarchy'

And when the barbarians do come, firing "a few rounds over the approaching brigands' heads would probably be a compelling persuader that there are easier farms to pillage." Imagine a scene like Port-au-Prince after the quake. Biggs is no radical anarchist, he's an establishment Insider, a great guy. We both arrived at Morgan Stanley about the same time. Biggs remained 30 years, was Morgan's chief global strategist. Ten times Institutional Investor magazine put him on Wall Street's "All-America Research Team."

True, he did hedge his prediction of the coming anarchy. His odds: 1 in 10. But in an early 2009 Newsweek article, "A Generation of Destruction: Throwing money at the problem and propping up greedy banks is like trying to put out a fire by pouring gasoline on it," Biggs teased us with a bleak scenario: "Great cycles of wealth creation have usually lasted about two generations, or 60 years. Inevitably, unequal riches corrupt and create envy, and they are always followed by a generation of enormous wealth destruction."

Warning: By vastly understating the risks while his Insiders prepare for the coming anarchy, Biggs is quietly misleading and disarming the rest of America.

The truth is Insiders in the "Happy Conspiracy" elite will follow Biggs' ultra-simple investment strategy: Make massive amounts of money fast using short-term strategies, spout lip service about the "public good." But always act in your own self-interests first, preparing for when anarchy spreads worldwide in an economic pandemic.

How can America's 299 million 'second-class citizens' invest for anarchy?

So what can the average Joe and Jane, the other 299 million Americans do? Warning: In anarchy, nobody knows. Period. The only possible strategy: "Think Swiss Family Robinson." Stockpile like a "Happy Conspiracy Insider."

Many still challenge us about proven strategies like buy and hold, Modern Portfolio Theory, Lazy Portfolios. Unfortunately, they all need a real democracy driven by honest, transparent capitalism to function effectively. They can't function in anarchy.

And Wall Street's already lapsed into a toxic pseudo-capitalism, using it to manipulate Main Street America. Eventually that mindset will force Main Street Americans to misuse the same dark "Swiss Family Robinson" tactics as the Insiders in order to survive the coming anarchy.

What's our alternative? A new American Revolution

But wait, wait, I hear you asking loudly: There must be an alternative to this dark descent into anarchy, to the loss of everything that made America the greatest nation in history?

Yes there is an alternative. Out of the ashes of anarchy must come a Second American Revolution. But unfortunately nothing will happen until a great crisis awakens America ... shocks the conscience of the masses ... we are "asleep" ... only a seismic, systemic shock will trigger the necessary revolution.

The future of our economy and indeed our nation demands another political revolution. We must take back our democracy and capitalism from a government run by Wall Street and its "Happy Conspiracy" ... their toxic self-serving power hold must be broken and, if not, a rising new conspiracy of China, India, oil-sovereignties and asset-rich nations will replace our homegrown "Happy Conspiracy" as it eventually goes down in the flames of anarchy.

Sadly, that's the future many of us realists see ahead for America.

6.2 Quake hits Indonesia

Airport body scanners 'may be unlawful'

The use of body scanners at UK airports may be unlawful, the Equality and Human Rights Commission warned today.

Scanners already in place at Heathrow and Manchester Airports may be breaking discrimination law as well as breaching passengers' rights to privacy, the commission said.

It has now expressed its concerns in a letter to Transport Secretary Lord Adonis.

In the letter, the commission said it recognised the threat posed by terrorist activities but that it had concerns "about the apparent absence of safeguards to ensure the body scanners are operated in a lawful, fair and non-discriminatory manner".

It added that it also had "serious doubts that the decision to roll this (body scanning) out in all UK airports complies with the law".

The commission's chairman, Trevor Phillips, said today: "The right to life is the ultimate human right and we support the Government's review of security policies.

"State action like border checks, stop-and-search and full body scanning are undertaken for good reasons. But, without proper care, such policies can end up being applied in ways which do discriminate against vulnerable groups or harm good community relations.

"National security policies are intended to protect our lives and our freedoms, but it would be the ultimate defeat if that protection destroyed our other liberties."

Climate change sceptics are today's flat-earth brigade

On climate change, we have to make decisions about nuclear power, about the growth of wind farms and about how we can take the carbon out of our homes.

But as the world approaches the Copenhagen summit on climate change, we are hearing siren voices telling us there is an easy way to avoid these questions: voices that deny the problem, voices that say we cannot defeat it and voices that would downgrade expectations. We should ignore them all.

The people who want to deny or cast doubt on whether climate change is happening are the most dangerous. They want to tell people that we can stick our heads in the sand and the problem will go away.

Scientifically, they are the flat-earth brigade of the modern era. The scientific evidence from across the world shows we need to act.

Here in the UK, the Met Office, the Natural Environment Research Council and the Royal Society are just some of the world-renowned scientific bodies who are united in their view.

And yet people who are not scientists want to say they know better.

Who should we believe — Nigel Lawson, or the thousands of scientists who contributed to the IPCC study of 2007? One set of emails from the University of East Anglia does not undermine decades of climate science.

We must not let the sceptics pass off political opinion as scientific fact.

Those facts are clear. The 10 warmest years on record have all occurred since 1997, ice sheets are retreating so fast that in summer we can now sail the North West passage through the Arctic, and sea level rises are already threatening low-lying countries, from the Netherlands to Bangladesh.

Events in Cumbria give a foretaste of the kind of weather runaway climate change could bring.

Abroad, the melting of the Himalayan glaciers that feed the great rivers of South Asia could put hundreds of millions of people at risk of drought. Our security is at stake.

While Lord Lawson says we shouldn't take significant action because he questions whether the problem exists, there are others who say it's too late to act. They are defeatists.

But if we act with boldness, we can protect our way of life and prevent warming of more than two degrees, the point at which the most extreme effects of climate change kick in. That is one the key tasks for the Copenhagen conference.

Yes, there will be significant warming to which we — and developing countries in particular — will need to adapt.

Flood defences, action to secure water supplies and the like will all be vitally important.

But at Copenhagen we have the chance to turn around global emissions for the first time in our industrial history, tackling the cause of the problem, not just its symptoms.

Despite that, there are those who would downgrade Copenhagen. Let's keep negotiating and wait for a better moment to get a deal, they say. This, too, is dangerous stuff.

The world has set a deadline. That deadline is working. China, the United States, Brazil and Indonesia have all said in the last month what they will do to tackle the problem. They have
done so now because the pressure is working.

And we need action from all countries at Copenhagen if we are to turn around the growth in global emissions by 2020, which the science tells us we need to do.

That will require developed countries to reduce their emissions. The UK already has legislation to reduce our emissions by 34 per cent by 2020 and 80 per cent by 2050.

We will be looking for similar steps from other developed countries. But it won't be enough if it is developed countries alone that act.

We would still end up facing dangerous climate change, since around 90 per cent of future emissions growth is likely to come from developing countries.

So we need actions from developing countries too and that will require progress on finance to support them to make those changes.

In attempting to get action from developed and developing countries to ensure that global emissions peak and decline, we are attempting at Copenhagen something never done before.

The previous treaty at Kyoto in 1997 was not ratified by the United States and did not require significant action on emissions from developing countries. So it is no wonder that global emissions have carried on rising.

The unprecedented nature of the challenge across the world may seem daunting. It will require difficult choices, including here at home as we transform our energy systems, our housing stock and our transport system.

Difficult it may be but just as we should be candid about the challenges, so we must not forget the potential benefits.

If the world sends a decisive signal at Copenhagen that it is shifting to low carbon, we can unleash a green revolution.

In electric cars, the manufacture of wind turbines and clean coal, this can mean jobs and export opportunities for Britain.

What's more, the low-carbon revolution can be good for energy security as well.

It is cultivating home-grown renewable energy that can limit our reliance on imported gas. We know that diverse energy supplies are the best guarantee of security in the modern world.

I'll be doing my best at Copenhagen, alongside the Prime Minister, to get an ambitious climate deal.

The degree of difficulty just isn't a good reason to deny the problem, concede defeat
or limit our expectations and hope something turns up. The science demands we act.

It can be done in a way that benefits our economy and it is imperative to fulfil our moral duty to future generations.

How To Destroy a 9/11 Truther

Click this link ..... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kG4yGICFsi8&feature=player_embedded

Marc Faber - Total Financial Collapse will Come

Click this link ...... http://eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=10106

Tax me if you can Pt1

Click this link ...... http://eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=10126

Chris Hedges: Fighting corporate rape of US

Click this link ...... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gv_quWatFkY&feature=player_embedded

Marc Faber on the Alex Jones show 14 Feb 2010

Click this link ...... http://snardfarker.ning.com/video/marc-faber-on-the-alex-jones