Message:
Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2002 19:56:30 -0400 (EDT)
From:
turmel@freenet.carleton.ca
Subject: TURMEL: Argentina from 500 to 5000 LETS (francais)
JCT: I've found 4500 new LETS in Argentina which raises my list total at
http://www.cyberclass.net/turmel/urlsnat.htm from 2600 to 7100
systems. And I'll be coining a new English word "trock" to define bartering time
like Latin Trocquers do or French Trocquers do or Argentinian Truequers
do. I'll trock my time for yours. I'll trock my wares for your IOU credits. Troc
like swap, and time counts too. Leading into today's big story, I found another
article about Argentina's community currency revolution and here, call it a
preliminary treat, is: My translation will be preceded with jct: while
instant commentary will be italicized and preceded with the usual JCT:
TROCK - LIFE-SAVER AGAINST EXCLUSION FOR TWO MILLION ARGENTINES:
13/01/2002 - 19:02
BUENOS AIRES, 13 jan (AFP) -
http://www.courrierint.com/afp/actu/020113180213.ojur7wyd.asp
jct: Strangled by the financial crisis, Artentines are trying to survive,
including the use of archaic means like "barter-trock," which has become a
veritable parallel economic system, self-forganized and that keeps making
noises. "Two million Argentines are enrolled in the Troc system. It's a means of
escaping exclusion, explained to AFP Graciela Draguicevich, coordinator of the
most important troc market in Buenos Aires, installed in the popular quarter of
Chacarita.
jct: Inspired by French local exchange systems (SEL) and Canadian (LETS - Local
Employment-Trading System), the
"nodos del trueque" or trock clubs appeared on the Argentine scene in the 1990s.
They were founded from the start upon
principles of ecological self-sufficiency. But since the beginning of the 1998
recession, they have become indispensable to the survival of a number of
Argentines, in this nation of 37 million inhabitants, where 44.2% are poor.
jct: These clubs are today grouped principally into two networks. The "Red del
trueque solidario" (Network of Troc
Solidarity) and the "Red global del trueque" (Network of Global Troc) of which
the Chacarita node is member. "At the
start, it was direct trading, for example some food for some clothes. But that
was found to be unmanageable. It isn't
always easy to find two products of exactly the same value and it excluded
services, like caring or repair work,"
continued Mrs. Draguicevich.
jct: To facilitate exchanges, the trading networks put into place a veritable
parallel currency and emit "creditos," bits
of paper of different values resembling restaurant vouchers or Monopoly money.
JCT: "Funny money, funny money" was the jibe laughed at my Social
Credit grandfather Adelard Turmel with his "funny money" Socred team. Who's
laughing in Heaven now? Actually, guys who are not laughing are not with Adelard
anyway.
jct: A "creditos" is equivalent to the price of a litre of milk, actually
1.4 Pesos (less than a dollar) and about 30 million of these bonds are in
circulation in the country. To benefit of the system, you only have to register
in one of the clubs. Each new member receives 50 "creditos" that let him do his
errands, take lessons, see a doctor, a psychologist, a lawyer or to get his hair
cut. In return, he can propose to offer his own goods or services and this, in
any LETS branch across the country!
JCT: Wow!!! Largest and Biggest LETS in the world.
jct: In one of the stalls, Analia Gomez, 41, has displayed some baby clothes
made by a friend who is a seamstress.
"This bib is worth six credits, this overall 15. I exchange them for food for my
four children and keep the few pesos
that I have to pay for the rent," she explained.
JCT: That is the major benefit of doing barter. Saving your hard-to-keep cash
in the bank and paying with anything but that dangerous currency.
jct: The Chacarita club which numbers 2,300 members was only opened 7 months ago
in an office of the "Mutual Sentiment Association," an self-help organisation of
old political prisoners of the Argentine dictature (1976-83). "We started on one
floor, we now occupy four and are thinking of opening a fifth. Since the
restrictions on bank withdrawals started in December, exchanges have risen by
20%, added Graciela Draguicevich, 48, who spent six terms in the jails of the
repressive military.
jct: Along passes by a lady in a white blouse. "I'm a retired cardiologist and I
would like to help people," explained Muriel Leloir, niece of Nobel Prize
winning chemist Luis Federico Leloir, an Argentine doctor born in Paris.
Receiving but a modest pension of 400 Pesos a month, this dame of 67 years
trades her "credits" for household products and sometimes offers the luxury of
accommodations in her home with one of the taxi members of the club, more
comfortable than the interminable commute by bus, in a suffocating heat of the
austral summer.
jct: With the crisis not getting any better, barter is spreading. Crisanto
Ripolas, a unemployed 57-year-old professor, is from Salta, one of the poorest
provinces in the north of the country. "I wanted to find learn how to organize a
trockclub where I live, in Cafayate. It's an interesting palliative, on the edge
of the system, for all those who are dying of hunger in Argentina.
(C) AFP
============================================================================
JCT: And I'm sure that as soon as they're starving in the streets in
Canada and the States, they'll take their little
LETS systems more seriously too. But at least they're set up and ready to go
with trained administrators.
FEATURE PRESENTATION
Finally, the treat of the post, the latest news from (AP) and Argentina coming
from my money ally in Bordeaux France,
Serge Winston Smith sends:
Date: Fri, 31 May 2002 18:24:56 +0200
From: winston.smith@alternatif.net
(Winston Smith)
Subject: [informations-SEL] Le troc prospere dans l'Argentine en crise
To:
informations-SEL@yahoogroupes.fr
jct: TROCK PROSPERS PROSPERS IN ARGENTINIAN CRISIS
31 mai 2002
par Bill Cormier
http://www.edicom.ch/news/international/020531145628.fr.shtml
jct: MONTE GRANDE, Argentina (AP) - One day, Regina Vereya had had enough
of the economic crisis that had made her clients flee and provoked a wave of
robberies in her little tobacco shop. Scared, unable to cover her expenses, she
sold her boutique and joined thousands of other Argentines who live nevertheless
without money, or almost, thanks to Troc.
jct: I'm 50 years old and I have to take of my handicapped daughter. It is the
only way that I have found to subsist,"
she explained, seated behind her stall table in an improvised marker of Monte
Grande, in the south-west of Buenos Aires.
jct: In Argentina, the trockof goods and services is no longer a novelty. In
fact, since the beginning of the economic and political crisis shaking the
country, it's even become a necessity. One Argentine in five has no work.l And
half of the 36 million citizens of this large South American country are poor.
In this context, trueque, or barter, has become the business of everyone, from
mechanics to young unemployed professionals.
jct: In 1995, Argentina had only one barter club. Today, there are 5,000. And
they are very well attended. Everything
is exchanged, vegetables for ham, video cassettes for baby clothing. In the
markets, no one talks of Pesos anymore but
of "Creditos," these credit notes the size of a bank note that have replaced
money in people's wallets.
jct: Need fresh bread? Five Creditos. A woolen sweater? 12 Creditos. Even
mechanics, math professors and events
organizers have rethought their tariff rates in terms of "Credits per hour." Not
long ago, Ricardo Salva was the
proprietor of a butcher shop. But his business was wrecked by the financial
cataclysm. Still, he trades full time to feed his seven children. "I started
doing this about four months ago because I had no choice," he explained. "I have
no chance of finding work at the moment."
jct: Since the national money was devalued in January, 280,000 people have lost
their jobs each month in Argentina.
According to Eduardo Ovalle of the study group "Nueva Mayoria," the majority of
them turn to barter. "It's a reaction to the increased unemployment, to the
poverty, and to the devaluation of money," he said. Believing him, there are
around 2.5 million people who are members of the trock clubs. And the number
could reach 4 million by the end of the year." It is more common among the
worker class, but it has recently expanded to all echelons of society and even
to
neighbouring countries.
JCT: Hey, they might have a Latin American LETS network set up before
they have a EuroLETS set up.
jct: The total value of the goods and services swapped rather than sold is not
accounted for. But economists are
more and more worried faced with the mounting power of an economy without money.
JCT: Not "without money," "without their money."
jct: For, according to Marshall Goldman, of Wellesley College in Massachusetts,
barter could have as disastrous
consequences in Argentina as it did in Russia ten years ago. Before the
foundering of the Russian economy in 1998, barter
represented almost half of commercial transactions, recalls Goldman. Or, at this
level, the exchange of goods and
services encourages fiscal evasion, inefficiency and corruption.
JCT: All things that have not happened. Blaming people resorting to
barter when money runs out is much like blaming people for breaking out the
life-boats for causing the sinking of the ship. If the economy were functioning
well, and he's an economist who thinks it's functioning just find and dandy for
him, it does not need people rocking his ship by building their own life-boats.
jct: But this can also have a good side. "Trocking is a sign that something
isn't working right in the economy, but it's
also the proof that people will try to get out from under it and to re-launch
production," he explained.
jct: Alberto Bernal, of the New York group IDEAglobal, is less optimisitic.
"When that many people turn to barter,
it's that the financial system is not working," he concludes. But, Argentina has
to rebuild its credit rating so its citizens can get into debt, to launch
businesses and make the economy turn.
jct: Some believe that the trock is a good thing. Personally, I think it's a
stepping back 40 years compared to the evolution of the financial system.
JCT: So it works but it's 40 years behind the system that does not!
JCT: And that's why they invited John The Engineer Turmel to get the
UNILETS time-trading credits on the Millennium Declaration. For more leads to
Argentina's LETS time-trading networks: visit
http://www.cyberclass.net/turmel/urlsnat.htm
JCT: And to my medpot audience, you got this just because you should
know what's behind the multi-nationals being forced to fight hemp. It it's
legalized and they lose market, they fail and they'll fight. With a LETS
account, they can't fail and have no need to fight hemp legalization.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John C. "The Banking Systems Engineer" Turmel, Author of the UNILETS usury-free
time-based currency United Nations C6 recommendation to Governments in the
http://www.un.org/millennium/declaration.htm
http://www.cyberclass.net/turmel
/ http://www.medpot.net 613.632.2334
To book John C. "The Banking Systems Engineer" Turmel for a speaking engagement visit this URL: www.cyberclass.net/engineer1.htm