New age town in U.S. embraces dollar alternative - Yahoo! News

in Great Barrington, MA, a town of 7,400 in the Berkshire Mountains, which now has its own currency, called BerkShares. Why? According to BerkShares Inc’s website, “The purpose of local currency is to function on a local scale the same way that national currencies have functioned on a national scale, building the local economy by maximizing circulation of trade within a defined region.” One Berkshare dollar is worth 90 U.S. cents and the bills have local artists on them rather than U.S. presidents. According to the AP, at least eight other communities do this too. We might send our video producer Win up to Massachusetts to check out the scene. We’d also like to bring in NPR’s economics and business guru Adam Davidson to explain how currencies work, and to tell us, you know, how we can use this approach to get really rich.