Are Love Notes Money Legal?
Local money, as it spreads across the U.S., is curing the present recession and is helping people get out of financial struggle into freedom, even abundance.
Local currencies have a long history in our country, regaining prominence during the Great Depression, when over 400 communities issued their own money. At that time, banks closed and dollars had vanished. There were plenty of factories, farms, stores and people willing to work. All sitting idle because there was no money. Today we have small towns becoming ghost towns all across the United States because the Federal Reserve Notes leave town and small town residents don’t know how to get money to come back. During these local financial crises, currencies were and are issued by Chambers of Commerce, by manufacturers, barter centers, churches, banks, schools, local governments, stores, veterans’ organizations, mutual aid associations, and individuals. Some, like Detroit and Philadelphia, printed millions of dollars of local currency during the depression while others, like Midland, Michigan issued just a few dollars.
Cities printed hometown money, like Ithaca, Syracuse, Seneca Falls, Norwich and Binghamton, NY. Their local economies could resume even though the national economy was stunned and Federal Reserve Bank Notes were scarce as they are now for most Americans. Today, the gap between the rich and poor is getting bigger. More and more people and companies don’t pay their bills, lose their homes, and go bankrupt.
There are 100 local money systems in the United States today. They operate with various degrees of success. U.S. citizens have been beaten down financially by the bankers’ debt based interest bearing money system for so long that we can’t even imagine that we have the natural, legal, and divine right to print our own money and distribute it equally in an intelligent and orderly way that supports the production, distribution, and consumption of our ideas, goods, and services. People are so apathetic, fearful, and live in such scarcity mentality, that they are afraid of any change until they realize that nothing can make things worse than they already are. Local money systems can only improve the situation. And since we own them and run them locally, we can stop any kind of abuses or mistakes easily and instantly. We have the power to change our local money system in 30 days and improve until it works for us.
When we join and participate, we realize and experience that local money is real money and we are the Source of it. This is the only real source of financial security. We can be in control of the value and worth of our money.
It is OK to have an abundance of local money and save it. Local money has a tendency to increase its value every month as our social membership expands. But Federal Reserve Notes decrease in value every year automatically because of its interest and the inflation it causes.
Love Notes Money is printed and distributed regularly in Augusta County and throughout the country and the world by a non profit Money Society for the purpose of building Love, intelligence, fairness, and abundance into our community economy and personal cash flow. When we join the Love Notes Money Society, we get a regular cash flow to spend and we learn to master money. We become the Source and rightful owner of the money system! The flow of local money stimulates the flow of national money. The goal of local money is not to replace the bankers’ money but to supplement it so that local farmers, businesses, and consumers can survive. Complimentary community currencies work great when everyone in town accepts the currency. But local currencies always have to start with a voluntary membership organization of people who know what they are doing and why. Local money systems help the debt based bankers’ money to survive. Local money and the ideas, goods, and services that back the money and make it valuable actually subsidize the bankers money and make it work better.
By Ellen Graham, staff reporter of the Wall Street Journal
At the Fine Line Printing shop in Ithaca, NY, crisp new 1996 bills are coming off presses. Valued at about $6,000 and bearing an engraving of a steamboat, they will be stashed under lock and key at the local credit union until someone stamps them with serial numbers. Then they will begin circulating through the local economy as perfectly legal – and taxable – wages, rent payments, mortgage fees and pocket change.
Residents of Ithaca, a city of 30,000, have had their own paper money – in addition to US dollars – since 1991. “We printed our own money to level the playing field, says Paul Glover, a writer who dreamed up the currency and helps oversee the system as a self-styled “community economist”. The money is denominated in Ithaca Hours. One Hour valued at the equivalent of $10, the area’s average hourly wage.
So far, Hours over $57,000 have been put into circulation. Instead of winding up in the coffers of distant corporations, Mr. Glover explains, Hours must be spent locally. “They stay in our region to help us hire each other.”
At a time when giant banks and credit cards companies are working to perfect electronic cash that leaps national boundaries instantly and invisibly, a New England barter network known as the Valley Trade Connection has issued about 55,000 Valley Dollars – the equivalent of $1 each – in the past year or so; users include everyone from Rotarians and grocers to belly dancers and clowns-for-hire.
“One thing you notice about printing money is that everyone is interested” says Tim Mitchell, a project manager at the Franklin County Community Development Corp., a non profit agency that sponsors the Valley Trading Network and currency. But he concedes that curiosity is often tempered by fears of being stuck with worthless scrip. When a restaurant in Amherst, Mass., began accepting Valley Dollars for 50% of patrons’ bill it was quickly swamped; it now requires customers to pay a larger portion of their bills in federal dollars. (Local money is optional. When used intelligently and orderly, it also increases the flow of national money in our community. All Love Notes Money Society members control the percentage of the sale they accept in local money to an amount that they can easily put back into circulation. Local currencies are not redeemed with Federal Reserve Bankers’ Notes by the local Societies because it is owned and operated by the members. However, Federal Reserve Bank Notes and local notes can be exchanged back and forth by individual members in any way that works for each other).
Nowhere is a local currency so entrenched as in Ithaca, NY. Its notes, in five denominations ranging from one-eighth of an Hour to two Hours, have been earned and spent by some 1,500 people including 300 businesses, says Mr. Glover. He estimates that they have changed hands in local transactions valued over $1.5 million.
LOCAL CURRENCY LAW IS THIS: that local money may not look like Federal Reserve Notes, and that people must report the dollar value of professional trades, as taxable income. News media have repeatedly contacted the IRS and Federal Reserve Board for their opinion of local paper money, and have always been told that it is not illegal. The book by Lewis Solomon (Rethinking Our Centralized Monetary System: the case of Local Currency, Praeger, 1996) includes an extensive case law description of the legality of local currency. Solomon is professor of legal research at George Washington University.
“As long as local currency is pegged to the dollar, they do not affect the fact that the monetary policy for the United States is set by the Federal Reserve System. Instead, it is acting very much like a bank, enabling borrowing and lending to occur that might not otherwise. It is quite likely that local currency is making people better off.” Warren Weber, Senior Research Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, letter 7/2/91.
Stan Mangel of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City says that as long as local currency does not look like dollars, “it’s highly unlikely we’d ever become remotely interested in this issue.”
Privately owned Federal Reserve Bankers print their money out of nothing. It is backed by nothing, except our willingness as citizens to be abused by it and stay stuck in ignorance and apathy and money scarcity. Federal Reserve Bank Notes are loaned into circulation through the banking system: we the people – their willing victims – pay interest to them every year on all their money in circulation. It is called the prime rate. This interest is the biggest cause of inflation which makes their money more worthless every year. This is part of their design because it forces us to borrow more and more and keeps us in debt to them forever. We don’t own their dollars. We borrow Federal Reserve Notes and pay interest on them forever.
The Federal Reserve bankers also print money out of nothing and loan it to the U.S. Government at interest. These loans are called the National Debt. Most of our Federal income taxes goes to the bankers to pay the interest on the national debt. Our ignorance and apathy is worth billions of dollars to the bankers every year in interest income.
Fed bank interest on currency and the taxes we pay on the national debt are the two biggest causes of inflation!
The IRS was originally a privately owned collection agency that the bankers created to collect taxes from Federal government employees only. It collected taxes from U.S. government employees to pay the interest on the national debt.
The goal of the bankers was never to get the debt repaid, because then their income would stop. The goal was and still is to make the debt bigger and bigger, which is what they did. They use their billions in interest to control U.S. senators and U.S. representatives to keep themselves in business at our expense.
American citizens and workers now voluntarily pay income taxes to the bankers, not just Government employees. We are such victims and so apathetic that we allow these bankers to take 20% to 30% of the money we earn out of our paycheck before we even get to touch the money.
Some patriotic Americans call it the biggest robbery in history. It costs us 20% to 30% of our income every week.
What can we do about it? Get informed and get ourselves out of apathy!
The U.S. Government also has the right and ability to print money and to put it into circulation by paying its expenses with its own printed money. U.S. Government Notes money has only been printed by two Presidents that I know about since 1913: Eisenhower in 1953 and Kennedy in 63.
The U.S. Government can also put the money it prints into circulation by mailing to all citizens equally a monthly or annual supply. We can require Congress or the President through the U.S. Treasury to do this. This is an essential principle and practice of any rational money system. All citizens and residents deserve a dividend or percentage of GNP – Gross national Product. And we all deserve a royalty on the budget of all government budgets. Governments are a franchise and we own them.
There are over 100 communities in the United States today who are printing and distributing local money in various ways. Basically, they are non-profit voluntary citizen groups that print their own money and give to all members an equal supply regularly. The Love Notes Money Society distributes money to all members on a regular basis.
Love Notes Money is a tax-exempt voluntary membership organization that is owned and operated by our members. It is owned and operated by us – the citizens, the consumers and the workers. Love Notes Money is backed by our work and the ideas, goods, and services which we produce and exchange with each other.
We print the money as a means of exchange for our production and consumption. We distribute to ourselves an equal supply of our money on a regular basis. As owners of our money system, we can distribute as much as we can spend in an orderly and intelligent way. We can print and distribute more or less each time, depending upon how it is working. We own the money system equally. Money is not wealth, but the means or tool for exchanging wealth. As the producers and consumers of this wealth, the right to print and distribute money is ours by nature. These are also our legal rights in our country and in most countries of the world. I’ve only seen one or two countries in the world in which the bankers have manipulated the national governments in such a corrupt way as to make laws against the people printing their own money. We have the political and legal freedom in America to create any kind of money that we like. Our bankers’ money system is as corrupt as it is only because of the ignorance and apathy of “We the People” to use our rights and responsibilities intelligently. We only have to educate our U.S. Senators and Congress-people to use our power to print and distribute money as we like, according to rational principles. Both Presidents, Eisenhower in 53 and Kennedy in 63 understood this and printed United States Notes to compete with Federal Reserve Notes. But other Presidents have been puppets of the bankers.
We reclaim our rights and powers as workers and consumers with accurate knowledge. Knowledge is power. In this case, knowledge is money – financial power. We have the power to print and distribute equally as much money as we can use to support our production of ideas, goods, and services, and to support the exchange of our production as consumers.
With local money, we control the money supply and can make it work the way money is supposed to work. Everyone requires enough money to support our production of ideas, goods, and services and our consumption of what we produce. We all deserve a guaranteed minimum amount of income monthly to make our local economy function.
Many towns in America have too many vacant stores and too many poor and middle class people who are struggling and suffering in scarcity. Our small merchants and farmers are failing. They are becoming an endangered species.
Local money societies are voluntary. We have to have the intelligence to join a local money society so that we can own and manage our own money supply. We have to learn and teach each other to use our power to print and distribute money intelligently. This is the basic function of our local Love Notes Money Society. The people who have the intelligence and courage to join first receive the most benefit from personal cash flow, business profits, and customer loyalty.
Every new member makes the system work better because each new member gives us more places to spend our money and circulate it. The more local money we have and spend, the more Federal Reserve Notes we have to spend on other things. Local money frees up our national money. Local money supports national money. It actually subsidizes the bankers money and keeps them in business (unless Congress takes action), but this is a necessary evil side effect of local money to the greedy bankers. The basic good about local money is that it enables us to survive. When bankers’ money leaves town, our money won’t.
In the beginning of our local money system, we have to support it with our national money by joining the Love Notes Money Society and paying dues or donating money for its expenses. The dues are used to print our money and to support our sales people and educators to teach everyone in our community about money. We have to learn what money is, how to use it, how to find jobs that we love, and how to serve each other in ways that prosper everyone in our community. We have to care about each other until we all learn how to prosper and win the money game. Our society offers regular classes and consultations in the science of prosperity.
The full membership dues in the Love Notes Money system was set by the Board of Directors at $44 because it pays for the book The Truth About Money (basic education), a listing in our members business directory (what we are selling or what kind of work we like), an annual subscription to the newsletter, and a generous supply of local money – cash. The board currently gives all new members $44 in the membership kit.
It is necessary to understand that new members are not buying this money. It is a gift or equal free distribution to us all as new members to enable us to start spending and circulating our own local money. As members, we receive another distribution of Love Notes Money regularly. We determine the amount of cash we receive each month through the democratic process of discussion of all us members and vote of our elected Society Board members, who are controlled by us. As our membership in the Society grows, we can spend more Love Notes Money and therefore distribute more to each member.
We ourselves determine what our guaranteed monthly income is, based upon what we can actually use and put into circulation in an orderly way. The monthly distributions are gift income and not earned income and are not taxable. But as long as the IRS exists, earned income by exchange of local money for ideas, goods, and services is the same as national money and therefore is taxable.
This, we think you’ll agree, is the way money should work and it is the way money did work according to Ben Franklin when the founding fathers started our money system in 1764. Since 1764, the national money printing power has changed hands back and forth between the bankers and the people (government) 8 times. The bankers have owned and ruled our present Federal Reserve Bank money system since 1913. The bankers get rich and we the citizens get debts and money scarcity and poverty.
The best way to learn about our power to print money and operate our money system is to join and participate in the Love Notes Money Society. We all have to inform ourselves, join this citizen owned and operated money system, and participate so that we all can become the intelligent masters of money instead of slaves who are victimized and depressed or oppressed by an unfair money system that supports the greed of a few – like the Federal Reserve Bankers debt based interest bearing system.
When there was no money system, the king had to collect food from farmers to feed his army. This is the origin of taxes. When money was invented, the king could print money and buy food from the farmers. An intelligent king would print enough money to give every citizen an equal supply to make money work better for everyone.
Our Governments don’t have to collect taxes from us. They are our servants created by us and should pay taxes or royalties to us for their right to exist. We can instruct them to use the power to print our money any way we like.
Now we all have an opportunity to do something practical about our financial problems, but we have to act and participate. No one can force us to prosper without our consent. We all have to join the Love Notes Money Society to make it work to its full potential.
We have to trade in our habits of poverty and money scarcity for habits of prosperity, productivity, and financial abundance.
By working together, we can cure this recession. We can cure hard core poverty in our community.
We can help our farmers, our retailers, and our service providers to prosper.
We can finance new ideas, products, and services into success in our community with our new Love Notes local money system.
We can learn prosperity consciousness and prosper.
We can replace poverty consciousness and poverty with abundance.
We can replace greed and inequality with Love.
Everyone can now join the Love Notes Money Society and care for our local economy and each other. The power is now in your hands!
Each merchant may limit the amount of local money on each sale to 10% of the sale so that they also receive enough Federal Reserve Notes to function in our national money system and can restock their inventory and pay bills to people, suppliers, and other institutions that don’t yet accept Love Notes Money.
Each consumer can also limit the amount of local money which we receive as change in our transactions with merchants to 10% of whatever change we receive so that we can easily put it all back into circulation. It is necessary for all members and participants in our local money system to thoroughly understand this point.
In other words, circulating local money has to be voluntary. We can accept only as much as we can spend. We can spend only as much as we can easily keep in circulation in a fair and orderly way that makes money work as a means of exchange which supports our production and consumption of real wealth. Real wealth is ideas, goods, and services.