U.S. Cities Printing Their Own Currency

"A small but growing number of cash-strapped communities are printing their own money."[1]

Cities like Detroit and Ithaca and states like North Carolina and Massachusetts have turned to printing their own money.

"We wanted to make new options available," says Jackie Smith of South Bend, Ind., who is working to launch a local currency.

"It reinforces the message that having more control of the economy in local hands can help you cushion yourself from the blows of the marketplace."

Under the Massachusetts system, 12 banks have printed some $2.3 million worth of BerkShares, which can be spent at over 370 businesses. Legally, money can not be printed that looks like federal bills or be represented as legal tender in the U.S.

That didn't stop federal agents from raiding the business of a man in 2008 who was printing Liberty dollars and minting Ron Paul coins for collectors. [2]

They're Baaaack! The Return of Neocons

With the fall of the Republican Party majority in Congress, it appeared the Neoconservative pro-war movement had finally lost its stranglehold on American foreign policy. But in the ashes of think tanks like the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) a more dangerous foe has arisen.

The Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) is a think tank created by the original founders of PNAC and the whose who of the Neoconservative movement. However, this time it's not Bush and congressional Republicans they've twisted with their pro-Israel agenda, it's Barack Obama and the so-called "progressives" on the left.

They are ecstatic that Obama is launching a major offensive on the Afghan-Pakistan front, and they are urging him to do more. Their latest campaign is undertaken in cooperation with the "progressives" over at the Center for American Progress and the Center for a New American Security, both conduits for recent and future administration appointees.

The brain-dead Obamaites are shamelessly eager to grant their Glorious Leader a pass, no matter what he does. So far, there is not a peep out of Obama’s liberal supporters... Not only that, but his supporters are rallying around their commander in chief, now that we’re fighting the "right" war in the "right" way.

Of one thing we can be sure: the infiltration of the Obama administration has already begun, with Dennis Ross – who signed on to more than one PNAC letter urging war with Iraq – now ensconced as a envoy dealing with Iran.

It doesn’t matter to these people that the nation is sick of war and near bankruptcy: they live inside the Washington bubble, where hubris permeates the air. It doesn’t matter how many times the neocons have been repelled, they just keep bouncing back. This is a crew of respected "analysts" and policy wonks that has never been right.

As the neocons hail Obama, their new conquering hero, the irony of all this underscores the difficulties of instituting real change in our foreign policy. The same old faces turn up no matter which party is in power, and the same old ideas – shopworn "internationalist" bromides – dominate a consensus that never questions whether an empire is good for the American people.