PITTSBORO, N.C. — The stimulus for this mill town turned artist's colony arrived in the form of green bills bearing sketches of herons, turtles and trees.
A few dozen local businesses banded together this spring to distribute the Plenty -- a local currency intended to replace the dollar. Now 15,000 Plenties are in circulation here, used everywhere from the organic food co-op to the feed store to, starting this month, the Piggly Wiggly supermarket.
Last popularized during the Great Depression, scrip, or locally created stand-ins for U.S. currency, is making a comeback. Pittsboro, population 2,500, is one of a handful of communities that launched its own money in recent months. It reports an avalanche of calls from other communities that have lost faith in the global financial system.
"The Plenty is not going to get siphoned off to Wall Street, or Washington, or make a stop in Bentonville on its way to China," said B.J. Lawson, a software entrepreneur who is president of the board of the Plenty cooperative. "It gives us self-reliance."
Over the last two decades, a few communities have created their own cash in an effort to preserve local ties or businesses.
These whimsically named bills -- such as the "BerkShare" or the "Cheer" -- can be spent at neighborhood merchants, who then can use them at other local shops or, should they choose to, trade them in for dollars or other goods.
So far, none of them face the extreme pressures that popularized scrip during the Depression -- bank failures that dried up the supply of cash in circulation, requiring governments to come up with novel ways to keep commerce alive.
"Right now there's a lot of interest because of the economy, but a lot of these efforts come about to rebuild social capital," said Ed Collom, a sociology professor at the University of Southern Maine who studies local currencies. "There's been concern about lack of trust, neighbors not knowing each other. They see this as a way of neighbors helping each other."
In Detroit, for example, the Cheer was created not due to the city's chronic financial woes but because bar owner Jerry Belanger wanted to encourage patrons to support new local businesses. He issued notes good at neighborhood merchants, backed by a cash reserve at his bar.
The idea caught on fast, and other taverns agreed to help back the currency. There are now $3,000 worth of Detroit Cheers in circulation after about four months.
