The Hudson Valley Current

The Hudson Valley Current started out as a proposal to launch a local currency for the Hudson Valley, but our thinking at this time is to start out with a Mutual Credit Network and bring out a linked printed local currency once the credit network is functioning. Local currencies help build awareness of the impact that shopping locally has on our economy, ecology, and community, and they encourage actually shopping locally. However, a currency that you have to buy with U.S. Dollars, and can be converted at any time back to dollars, will have a rather limited economic impact. A Mutual Credit Network extends expanded economic opportunity to participants immediately, because they can both deliver goods and services, earning credit in the network, and also receive goods and services using their credit line or positive balance. For each user, such a system it is essentially an interest-free line of credit, one created by the community, not a bank. The type of credit network we plan to create is "2nd generation" which has more sophisticated controls on accounts than the earlier LETS systems which were the pioneers in this field.

The Mutual Credit Network will have all the same goals that a local currency does: Its use will help strengthen our sense of economic community, building the regional economy by enhancing locally owned businesses, local manufacturing, and local jobs. In using it, we reduce the region's dependence on an unpredictable global or national economy. We can increase economic security and lower transportation costs by sourcing locally. And we increase the prosperity and well-being of the whole region.

This project is under active development, and if you'd like to participate in any way, contact David McCarthy at tongdrol[at symbol]gmail.com