In 1933, in the early part of The Depression, the recommendation of Yale economist Irving Fisher, Harvard economics professor Russell Sprague, and the Undersecretary of the Treasury, Dean Acheson, was put before the President. Their collective recommendation was that President Roosevelt should set up local currencies with a demurrage mechanism across the nation. Pointing to the Worgl currency of the town of the same name in Austria (that had saved the businesses and jobs of that community), Fisher stated for the record: “The correct application of stamp scrip [a demurrage mechanism] would solve the Depression crisis in the United States in three weeks!”]

Roosevelt liked the idea but allowed subordinates to make the decision. They saw scarce political benefit deriving from the local currency solution – despite the evidence of effectiveness or the prominence of the recommenders. The subordinates saw more political leverage in a central government created, resourced, and controlled action. Thus, we got the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and other Federal-Government-mediated projects.

Blacks benefited greatly from the reduced racism that resulted from federally distributed jobs and largess. This less discriminatory result is the lens through which the CBC looks at job production today. However, it was the massive government spending for World War II, not “The New Deal,” that, eventually, pulled the U.S. out of The Depression. The current bottom-bumping stagnation will not be overcome by the anemic government jobs programs that are possible. Neither is more massive war spending possible, today; and even if it were, the nature of present day “defense” spending lacks the same direct, immediate economic stimulative affects that it did in the 40’s. None of Obama’s advisers, supporters, or friends will recommend the empirically best available jobs solution.

Local currencies are innovations emanating from the grassroots. They have consistently demonstrated their significant positive impacts on job production, support for small businesses, ecologically beneficial import replacement, and for building community cohesion. They have flourished, over the entire world, during times of economic instability. They decline more often because of a central bank’s legislative suppression – (surprise, surprise) to protect an almost perfect monopoly – rather than because of the loss of interest of users. These inherently bottom-up approaches affect only the future opportunities of the current extractive, central-bank-controlled economic structure. The fossilized financial industry looks to the past through which they acquired their current positions-of-wealth and moves to lock-in those destructive, limited, commercial and financial options without competition.  This perspective has almost total dominance over everyone in direct eyeball distance of President Obama. He will not hear of alternative recommendations that are not still reliant on these financial structures that date back to the Middle Ages.

The CBC and other progressive caucuses are gearing-up to push Obama in Roosevelt’s subordinates’ direction with what seems like – let me say - uncreative denseness. Obama won’t need much pushing since (whether conscious or not) he has many state and local government bureaucracies to “grease” to gain political leverage for the 2012 election. And preference for statism on the left blinds some of us and obscures our perceptions.

The CBC ought to be looking – empirically – at what has worked to save and sustain communities. Whether legislatively or not – in the great prophetic tradition of black leadership - CBC Representatives should promote and champion what works best. Collecting testimony around the country that folks are desperate and need jobs is data that Obama and the CBC can use in an election or in speeches but that will not work to get us where we need to be.

BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator Wilson Riles is a former Oakland, CA City Council Member.  Click here to contact Mr. Riles.