What should California call it's currency?

Auerback:

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, Republicans and Democrats alike embraced legislation last Friday that would make California IOUs legal tender for all taxes, fees and other payments owed to the state - an action that effectively would mean that California is entering the currency business .

 ...Or maybe California’s IOU experiment points to a different way: a devolution of power to the city, state and regional level, with the more adventurous regions willing to take their own futures in the their hands, leading the way. Maybe out of all of this comes a cultural shift from money maximization to something more civic minded, or at least more aware of our interdependence. That is the hopeful outcome, but something far worse could easily occur as well. The escalation of desperation is tangible in California and many other parts of the country, and soon the police forces will be smaller, as a consequence of state budget cuts.

Comments

[Account Deleted]

Arnoldbucks:

http://www.couragecampaign.org/page/s/Arnoldbucks

[James Bowery]

Pesos

[Eminence Grise]

Heard this morning that major banks are refusing to accept California IOUs. So as I read it, when the banks are in trouble, the government has an obligation to help them out. But when the government is in trouble, the banks can't be bothered. Hmmm. Methinks government won't be the only thing localized...

And I vote for "Grizzlies" (as in the Bear Republic, more likely as in "grisly").

[Ken Hagler]

How about "Unconstitutionals," in memory of the long-dead U.S. Constitution which says:

"No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility."

As a side note, it would be really nice if police forces got smaller, but I think the chance of that happening is approximately nil.

[Flagg]

@Ken: "No State shall ...make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts...

You are spot-on, but since the federales have finagled their way around this one by "defining" the dollar as something that equates to gold, then not allowing exchange of dollars to gold, one might expect California to do the same scam.

Going to be very interesting to watch all the unintended consequences boil up over this.

[gmoke]

Local currencies are legal as Ithaca Dollars and Berkshire Bucks and a number of iterations of Time Dollars prove. Whether a state can do it is another question. That goes back to the Articles of Confederation and was a major reason for the Constitutional Convention or so I learned in history class long ago.

Local currencies also were popular during the Great Depression. Maybe we should revisit Upton Sinclair's End Poverty in California (EPIC) program that was the platform on which he ran for Governor of that state in 1934. He ran as a Democrat although received little or no support from the party. His Socialist past and "radical" ideas were too much for them.