GREEKS EMBRACE ALTERNATIVE CURRENCIES

When Christos Papaioannou noticed his car needed new tires, the Greek computer engineer bought them with euros—but used an alternative currency, called TEM, to pay his mechanic for the labor.

His country has avoided a catastrophic exit from the common currency, at least for now. But a small but growing number of cash-strapped Greeks, who are still grappling with strict money-withdrawal limits, have found another route in TEM and other unconventional payment systems like it.

“Money is sparse right now, but people still have the same skills and knowledge they had before the crisis,” said Mr. Papaioannou, part of a cooperative that founded TEM in the port city of Volos and one of nearly 1,000 registered users of the alternate currency there.

TEM—a sophisticated form of barter whose name is the Greek acronym for Local Alternative Unit—was founded in 2010 in the early months of Greece’s debt crisis with less than a dozen members. Now it includes dozens of participating local businesses that use the system to sell goods and services, including prepared food, haircuts, doctor visits, or even for renting an apartment.

One of the larger and more established alternative payment systems in Greece, TEM has given Greeks living under the strain of wage cuts and tax increases a supplementary way to trade. Instead of dealing with a physical currency, members have an online account that starts at zero when they join. They can opt to take payment for goods and services in TEM, and then use those to buy products from others.

On the network website, users can post ads on what they can offer and what they want. Mr. Papaioannou, for instance, accepts TEM as payment for the computer repairs he does and says he uses the alternate currency in transactions several times a week.

It is a localized version of what Greece might have to turn to if a tentative bailout agreement reached this week is derailed, or ultimately fails. Before his resignation last month, former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis floated the idea of setting up a parallel-currency system based on IOUs in the event that Greece could no longer stay afloat using euros. Without a rescue, the idea of using IOUs is seen as the country’s most likely alternative.

The number of such alternate-currency projects began swelling in Greece in 2009, according to Irene Sotiropoulou, a Greek economist. That was the year the country’s budget deficit mushroomed to 15% of gross domestic product and investor appetite for Greek bonds collapsed.

Experts say TEM and other local currencies work best side-by-side with the euro, not as a replacement.

“They aren’t going to overhaul the financial system,” said Leander Bindewald, a researcher at the Institute for Leadership and Sustainability at the U.K.’s University of Cumbria. “But they represent a certain kind of value that normal money just cannot give you.” Users of the alternative currencies often cite the sense of community it provides as an additional benefit, saying they like the cooperation and social interaction it provides.

One notable example of alternative currencies used during a crisis was in the 1930s during the Great Depression, when the Austrian town of Wörgl decided to fight the economic downturn by printing its own money. Economists called the result a miracle: Employment boomed, while inflation remained subdued. During the economic depression that struck Argentina in 1998 and lasted till 2002, people formed barter networks and several provinces introduced their own currencies.

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, similar projects have been introduced to Spain, Italy, Portugal, Germany and France.

To read the complete article, see:
Alternative Currencies Flourish in Greece as Euros Are Harder to Come by (www.wsj.com/articles/alternative-currencies-flourish-in-greece-as-euros-are-harder-to-come-by-1439458241)

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web