Irenic. Adj: favoring, conducive to, or operating toward peace, moderation, or conciliation. Notes from a Politics and Economics undergraduate just back from somewhere in the MidWest. "You said you were going to Ohio? Where the Hell's that?"

Monday, September 8, 2008

"The Lewes Pound"

Residents of my home town of Lewes, East Sussex, have decided to issue their own currency.  Not content with the creaky wheels of Britain's lending machinery, local busybodies have decided to apply a small dollop of WD40 onto the finances of Lewes' small businesses.  While the idea might at first glance look like an economic lubricant - "Let's keep money in the town!" - the Lewes pound should soon serve only to illustrate why we abolished local currencies in the first place: retailers do not only sell products from their local area and nor do consumers buy them.  A shop in Lewes paid in "Lewes pounds" can't pay cash to suppliers who don't want the infant currency.  Small businesses will be forced to go to one bank for convertibility, increasing costs all round.