Local and Alternative Currency - Local Cash for Local Commerce

Phillymag.com just published a great article about alternative and local currencies. Certain localities have come up with many unique ideas. The article states...

You’ve got to love American resourcefulness. If the economy fails, if the dollar bottoms out, what do we do? Hey! Let’s make our own money!

It gives a few examples of local cash being used in new, novel ways...

That’s what more than a few municipalities have been doing recently. And it makes sense: If you can’t trust in God — or the U.S. government, anyway — you can still trust in, say, Collingswood cash. (Incidentally, Standard & Poor’s recent rating of AA- is the highest in the borough’s history, wiping out the Moody’s trash talk of 2011.)
Many towns have enacted initiatives to do their own brand of economic stimulus via local currencies meant to keep money in their own towns. Some towns give incentives to use their own currency instead of dollars: For six years now, Collingswood has one Saturday morning a year on which it gives $20 for every $50 worth of Colls cash you buy — a ridiculous incentive at a 40 percent return on the dollar. Haddonfield sells its own cash all year and offers 20 percent off as a pre-holiday promotion.
Several other communities have developed systems that combine the idea of time-share with local currency, with Ithaca Hours (founded by now-Philadelphian Paul Glover) being the most well-known and successful, inspiring other areas, such as the Lehigh Valley, to do the same. People trade goods and services for Ithaca Hours or Ardmore’s Downtown Dollars.

The overall value of fiat currency is being weakened to the point that these new approaches to money were simply inevitable...eventually it will include futures, options, bonds and, of course, stock. Local citizens having the ability to globally or locally issue bonds, create and sell stock, futures and options is simply the next logical step in the chain. Local business people wielding the weapons of Wall Street without the need of any central authority (including banks), or in other words, truly peer-to-peer. It's possible using Confidence Chains. Futures contacts and options, once created, are viewed as assets and can thus be marketed and sold. Lots of possibilities on the horizon. Especially taking back the financial power from those who have squandered it.