Creating a community currency in Baltimore

My goal is the see the of establishment a regional community currency here in Baltimore.

Bernard Lietaer ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Lietaer ) is an economist who believes the answer to surviving economic downturns lies in having complementary community currencies to help local regions maintain active trade as dollars become scarce. Baltimore is rich with business partners to create such a currency. With the federal stimulus funding sustaining the school system, and green job investment in the next couple of years this is an excellent opportunity to establish a regional currency that would better support our schools and neighborhoods in the future.

According to Bernard Lietaer, the structure of monetary systems has a direct influence on the culture of society. Our expansionary currency, along with the overwhelming volume of trade being speculative rather than for the exchange of real goods and services leaves us with an ever slowing velocity in our currency. To counter this, our central banking system increases the volume of the currency to increase the flow of real trade. The velocity of money can be achieved in a more sustainable way by putting a complementary community currency in place that has a 'negative interest rate'. When people are encouraged to spend money rather than hoard it trade increases unlocking the barriers to employment in our poorer neighborhoods.

The goal of a monetary system should be to have money functioning like blood in an animal; if it isn't flowing and nourishing the entire animal, then you get gangrenous tissue (a pretty good description of our inner cities, I feel) which will inevitably be lethal. In our current system the money pools in too few hands, leaving the rest of the community lacking a medium to exchange their services. The problem isn't solved by simply printing new money when these speculative bubbles burst. The inflationary costs hit the poorest the hardest. If your child wakes up with half of their blood volume missing it's not be enough to simply give them a transfusion. We need to address the underlying causes to ensure future economic health.

This article gives a great example of the type of currency I'd to see established here in Baltimore:
http://www.uea.ac.uk/env/ijccr/pdfs/IJCCRvol13(2009)pp61-75Gelleri.pdf