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.
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