Australian Stimulus Package: The Baroon Dollar
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Maleny, Queensland, Australia, 22 June . An Australian community has introduced a new currency, in an effort to stimulate the local economy. The Blackall Range and Sunshine Coast Hinterland region of Queensland, Australia has invented the Baroon Dollar. [br]
Maleny, Queensland, Australia, 22 June . An Australian community has introduced a new currency, in an effort to stimulate the local economy. The Blackall Range and Sunshine Coast Hinterland region of Queensland, Australia has invented the Baroon Dollar. [br]
Aside from the direct economic impact of the B$, as it is abbreviated, local pride and global attention are further benefits the Queensland community hopes to draw.
The Baroon dollar doesn’t actually amount to a larger amount of funds in the community since they are acquired by trading in Australian dollars. But because they are not expected to be convertible back to Australian dollars, they will remain within the community. [br]
This is a good approach to keeping commerce local and to stimulating local spending. After all, look at China – their RMB is non-convertible, meaning that they have to be spent domestically.
The Baroon dollar is a community or complementary currency, meaning it is used just for its community or it complements the national currency, the Australian dollar.
“The Baroon dollar is a great way to keep commerce local and to stimulate the circulation rate,” commented EconomyWatch correspondent Dwayne Ramakrishnan.
“It certainly encourages its holders to form stronger business relations within the community. But the initial challenge will be to get enough people to adopt it, and have them really recognize it as fiat currency,” he added.
The www.baroondollar.org website is encouraging people to join the “Barron Dollar 1000 Club” which includes the first thousand supporters of the novel new currency.
The members pledge to do the following:
- Buy a minimum of 10 Baroon Dollars when they are launched in June.
- Spend them as often as possible (and ask for them in change).
- Report any useful information or ideas back to the Baroon Dollar Project
Darren Mitchell, who is running the Baroon Dollar project, said he is asking for businesses to adopt the new tender.
“We’re creating our own stimulus package. Rather than just relying on Kevin Rudd’s stimulus we’ve decided to create our own,” he said.
“We’ve combined a sort of think-local-first program that often chambers of commerce hold around the country.”
“But we’ve combined it with a new initiative which is printing a community currency which works as a paper voucher and that binds shoppers to local, independent businesses.”
Interestingly, it’s only local businesses that can participate.
“We’re not going to actively ask the chain stores,” he added.
The community recently fought (and lost) a battle to prevent a Woolworths from being built on the area’s platypus habitat.”People don’t often realise that when they spend their money in chain stores across the country, up to 80 cents in their dollar leaks straight out into the global financial casino as I like to call it.”
“It’s a great symbol for the Sunshine Coast hinterland.”
- Bjorn Borgisky, EconomyWatch.com
