{"id":15546,"date":"2015-12-22T11:35:14","date_gmt":"2015-12-22T16:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=15546"},"modified":"2015-12-22T11:35:14","modified_gmt":"2015-12-22T16:35:14","slug":"alternative-currencies-of-the-great-depression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=15546","title":{"rendered":"Alternative Currencies of the Great Depression"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Alternative Currencies of the Great Depression<\/a><\/h3>\n
\"Worgl-Freigeld1\"<\/a><\/div>\n<\/header>\n
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QUESTION:<\/strong>\u00a0Mr. Armstrong, have you ever heard of a short lived W\u00f6rgl Experiment in Austria? It was shut down by the Austrian Central Bank they say because it was successful. Have you looked into this experiment they claim defied deflation and inflation?<\/p>\n

\"LongBranchNJ-DepressionScrip\"<\/a><\/p>\n

ANSWER:<\/strong>\u00a0Yes. This was by no means an isolated instance. True, it was touted as the\u00a0\u201cMiracle of W\u00f6rgl\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0during the Great Depression. A\u00a0very similar\u00a0\u201cexperiment\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0took place in the United States when over 200 cities issued their own currency. You have to understand the dynamics of the period. This was the very age of\u00a0AUSTERITY<\/strong>\u00a0where the assumption was that the collapse was due to a lack of confidence in government so they increased tax collection and cut spending, which unleashed both deflation and a dwindling money supply. This led many cities to create their own money due to the lack of money in circulation that was impacted by hoarding.<\/p>\n

The W\u00f6rgl Experiment began on July 31, 1932, the very month that the Dow Jones bottomed. The experiment involved issuing\u00a0\u201cCertified Compensation Bills\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>that were\u00a0was a form of local currency known as Scrip or Freigeld. The monetary theories of the economist\u00a0Silvio Gesell<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0were applied by the town\u2019s then mayor, Michael Unterguggenberger. What differed with Gesell\u2019s idea was that the currency would expire. Believe it or not, there are some government\u2019s looking into currency that expires. Since World War II, Europe has issued currency that expired roughly every 10 years. This forced people to bring out the old currency to be swapped and thus prevented hoarding.<\/p>\n

The central part of Gesell\u2019s idea was how to stop the\u00a0HOARDING<\/strong>\u00a0of money. This is why FDR confiscated gold. He too saw the problem of people hoarding money and not spending it. This is part of every economic decline. If there is no\u00a0CONFIDENCE<\/strong>\u00a0in the future, people save more. This is simply human.<\/p>\n

\"Money-Assets\"<\/a><\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alternative Currencies of the Great Depression   QUESTION:\u00a0Mr. Armstrong, have you ever heard of a short lived W\u00f6rgl Experiment in Austria? It was shut down by the Austrian Central Bank they say because it was successful. Have you looked into this experiment they claim defied deflation and inflation? ANSWER:\u00a0Yes. This was by no means an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[11191,5496,951,383,2500,5479],"class_list":["post-15546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-alternate-currency","tag-armstrong-economics","tag-currency","tag-great-depression","tag-history","tag-martin-armstrong"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15546"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15547,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15546\/revisions\/15547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}