Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the All Thoughts Podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy Alloway and I'm Joe. Wisn't all so Joe? Uh?
Speaker 1: We like to talk about money on this podcast, don't we?
Speaker 1: We love to talk about money. Of course, talking about
Speaker 1: market talking about economics is always inherently or to some
Speaker 1: extented discussion about money. But we also like to discuss
Speaker 1: money itself, as in the stuff, what it is, where
Speaker 1: it comes from, what gives it its value, how it
Speaker 1: evolves over time. Those are, of course some of my favorite,
Speaker 1: favorite favorite episodes that we do. Yeah, I know they are.
Speaker 1: And that's why I think you're going to enjoy this one,
Speaker 1: because we are going to dive into a sort of
Speaker 1: I want to say, brand new currency, but it actually
Speaker 1: kind of has its roots in some thing very very old,
Speaker 1: which is during the Great Depression, we saw a bunch
Speaker 1: of different towns and areas in the United States issue
Speaker 1: their own local currencies. We also saw sort of unions work,
Speaker 1: unions issue their own script. This is something HARKing back
Speaker 1: to that era. Yeah, absolutely right. Like you know, we
Speaker 1: have this crisis in this country and it affects every
Speaker 1: layer of government and every kind of business. But we
Speaker 1: have this sort of weird issue where a lot of
Speaker 1: the entities that are on the on the front lines
Speaker 1: of fighting the crisis, so to speak, of the cities, towns,
Speaker 1: and states that deliver services to the people, but they
Speaker 1: can't create their own money for the most part, unlike
Speaker 1: the federal government. And this is all coming at a
Speaker 1: time when because of the collapse in the economy and
Speaker 1: the collapse of service activity like restaurants and stores, tax
Speaker 1: revenue is really dried up. So a lot of public
Speaker 1: entities at the state and local level, while they sort
Speaker 1: of wait, hopefully perhaps for more relief from the federal government,
Speaker 1: are in a severe crunch. Right. You have this tension
Speaker 1: between the federal level and the local level. But like
Speaker 1: I said, you know, there have been instances in time
Speaker 1: where the local level, the local entities, towns, villages, you
Speaker 1: name it, take matters into their own hands and decide
Speaker 1: that they're not going to wait necessarily for federal money.
Speaker 1: So this is going to be one of those instances.
Speaker 1: And I'm happy to say that today we're going to
Speaker 1: speak with Wayne Fournier. He's the mayor of Tonino, Washington,
Speaker 1: population just shy of two thousand people. And over there
Speaker 1: and to Nino they've invented their own currency as part
Speaker 1: of their response to the COVID nineteen crisis. I can't wait.
Speaker 1: I love this all right. Well, without further ado, let's
Speaker 1: bring on our guest, Mayor Fournier. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for being with us, Thank you for having me tray.
Speaker 1: Maybe just to begin with, you could sort of lay
Speaker 1: the scene for us. I mentioned to I know, is
Speaker 1: a relatively small town. What's it like and what's been
Speaker 1: the impact of the coronavirus crisis. Like you said, we're
Speaker 1: a smaller city of just under two thousand people. We
Speaker 1: we lie just about smack dab in between Portland and
Speaker 1: Seattle in the Pacific northwest. Uh and we're relatively isolated.
Speaker 1: Uh So when the lockdown occurs and the shutdown happens,
Speaker 1: most of our businesses are service industry and there's not
Speaker 1: you know, there's no like manufacturing anything like that. So
Speaker 1: when the lockdown happens, all the restaurants, the stores, the
Speaker 1: retail they just roll up there, you know, they roll
Speaker 1: up the carpets and they locked the doors. For about
Speaker 1: three months, there was no traffic, There was no cars
Speaker 1: parked downtown on you know, the traditional main street as
Speaker 1: you would kind of picture it in a kind of
Speaker 1: the kind of an old way of thinking of a city,
Speaker 1: and no people walking around. There was little to no
Speaker 1: economic activity outside of our supermarket where you couldn't buy
Speaker 1: toilet paper anything like that. And so, you know, seeing this, uh,
Speaker 1: this lack of activity and knowing that there would be
Speaker 1: some you know, financial fallout from it, we decided to
Speaker 1: dust off an old idea that popped up into nino
Speaker 1: In where we were the first city, I believe, in
Speaker 1: the US to develop our own wooden dollar, our own currency,
Speaker 1: and so we fired up the same printing press built
Speaker 1: me seventies. Yeah, yeah, this, you know, we we've we've
Speaker 1: celebrated our history and and the fact that we were,
Speaker 1: you know, on the cutting edge in the in the
Speaker 1: thirties during the Great Depression, and we've we've kept this
Speaker 1: printing press in our museum since then. And so when
Speaker 1: it came time to fire it up again and use
Speaker 1: it to print money, it it worked. We've got a
Speaker 1: guy that knows how to operate it without losing an arm.
Speaker 1: Because when you fire this thing up, all these gears
Speaker 1: start turning and steams popping up out of places and
Speaker 1: it looks like something out of you know, the Wizard
Speaker 1: of Oz or Willy Wonka or something. And you know
Speaker 1: this this person who's in there for two days straight
Speaker 1: printing off these these two sided bills and he'd have
Speaker 1: to print every single one individually, flip it and uh
Speaker 1: and it was it was quite a process. But we
Speaker 1: fired it up again and we're going for it. So
Speaker 1: when I love that, I didn't even realize that. I
Speaker 1: love that you have the old printing press for the currency.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about that in a little bit
Speaker 1: very but before we do go further down the road,
Speaker 1: I just want to back up for a second and
Speaker 1: just talk about the sort of Tonino's municipal finance. What
Speaker 1: is uh? What is your operating budget? Where does the
Speaker 1: money typically come from, what do you spend it on
Speaker 1: like in normal times like your what do the finances
Speaker 1: of uh? Tonight? Know? Look like we have about a
Speaker 1: five million dollar budget. Most of that is wrapped up,
Speaker 1: which is I mean, that's that's tiny, and most of
Speaker 1: that is wrapped up in a wastewater treatment plan operation.
Speaker 1: So our our our water and sewer utilities we've got
Speaker 1: you know, we built a state of the art wastewater
Speaker 1: treatment plant like two thousand nine, and so most of
Speaker 1: our budgets budget is wrapped up in the debt service
Speaker 1: of that, so then about half of that is it
Speaker 1: goes towards operations. We have a police department, we have
Speaker 1: public works, UM, we have city Hall where we do
Speaker 1: all the administrative tasks. You know, there's not a lot
Speaker 1: of money to go around. We've been working really hard
Speaker 1: for the last couple of years because we things have
Speaker 1: been going well, to save up some money. So we've
Speaker 1: got a little bit of money sitting in reserves, kind
Speaker 1: of an emergency fund, and that's what we've been able
Speaker 1: to tap into for for this. Not that you know,
Speaker 1: we're we only printed ten thousand dollars, so we've print
Speaker 1: and printed ten dollar bills. But for a city of
Speaker 1: two thousand people, you know, it's if you were to
Speaker 1: multiply that by you know, a large city, it gets
Speaker 1: it gets uh, you know, it gets noteworthy quick, I feel,
Speaker 1: and it's a scalable thing. You know. We're we as
Speaker 1: a city for a lot of things, we're just like
Speaker 1: a little laboratory and we're you know, we have the
Speaker 1: ability to try interesting, crazy things. See if they work.
Speaker 1: It would be wild for the City of New York
Speaker 1: to start printing its own money. But tonight, let's give
Speaker 1: it a shot, you know, so real quickly. Uh, you
Speaker 1: mentioned the five million dollar budget, but we're on the
Speaker 1: revenue side. What is the standard source of that property taxes? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we don't have a lot of you know, we
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of commercial or manufacturing bringing in
Speaker 1: you know, tax revenue. Primarily it's property taxes. And we're
Speaker 1: a bedroom community. What have you seen in terms of
Speaker 1: a response from either the sort of state government or
Speaker 1: the federal government. Did you get any emergency help for
Speaker 1: the coronavirus crisis from those two layers of government. There
Speaker 1: there's a little bit of money that came in from
Speaker 1: the Cares Act, sixty dollars here, a little bit there,
Speaker 1: and then we have to find ways to use it.
Speaker 1: We have you know, literally I think twelve to thirteen employees,
Speaker 1: and so our city Hall has three people in it
Speaker 1: and they are tasked with, you know, doing the routine things.
Speaker 1: When something like some federal funds become available, typically we
Speaker 1: don't have the staffing and the ability to apply, compete,
Speaker 1: go through the bureaucracy of you know, getting a little
Speaker 1: bit of table scraps that are available to us. So
Speaker 1: most of the time federal funds we just we don't
Speaker 1: even we don't even apply for because all the rules
Speaker 1: make it not even worth us putting in the effort.
Speaker 1: That's interesting, I say, I don't know anything about that,
Speaker 1: but like, what is the the sort of process? Like
Speaker 1: I guess if you were bigger and had more staff
Speaker 1: at the city hall, Uh, you could theoretically aim to
Speaker 1: get some of that money. But Okay, something like the
Speaker 1: Carrsack passes and they make some money available for towns
Speaker 1: and cities and states, how does that work? Or you
Speaker 1: said you've got sixty dollars, Like, how do you go
Speaker 1: about getting that? Or how do the bigger towns go
Speaker 1: about getting it? It depends on where it comes from,
Speaker 1: you know. Like there there are systems like Community Development
Speaker 1: Block Grants. Right, So we we are an entitlement county.
Speaker 1: So our county has done the work for us to
Speaker 1: make us eligible for CDBG funds. If we were not,
Speaker 1: we would have to go and compete with everybody else,
Speaker 1: and we'd have to have staff that we're dedicated to
Speaker 1: administering those funds. We have staff that are dedicated already
Speaker 1: to absolutely everything. We we can't. We don't. We don't
Speaker 1: have the ability to have. We don't have planning staff.
Speaker 1: We don't have grant writers. We don't have a finance department.
Speaker 1: Our finance department is like six of one person's job,
Speaker 1: and they're already ta ask And I'm not much help
Speaker 1: I you know, I'm just I'm just a normal citizen
Speaker 1: that decided for some reason to be mayor. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm a I'm a knuckle dragging firefighter in my in
Speaker 1: my day job, and then I put on a mayor
Speaker 1: haut every once in a while and try to figure
Speaker 1: things out on my own. I had to start by
Speaker 1: googling what money was before I started printing it. That's
Speaker 1: the best. Oh, it's fun. What did you find when
Speaker 1: you googled what money was? What were some of the
Speaker 1: things that you found useful? You know, some of the
Speaker 1: original money it was originally an ancient sunario was traded
Speaker 1: playing beads, and you know it was backed by sheep
Speaker 1: in the communal pen and you know, like stuff like
Speaker 1: that is fascinating, and you know, just what what is money?
Speaker 1: It's it's just whatever the hell we want to put
Speaker 1: our trust in that is going to satisfy a debt
Speaker 1: between two people or two you know things, and you
Speaker 1: know some so some people are debating what you know,
Speaker 1: Internationally right this, this whole this story that we're talking
Speaker 1: about right now, it's it's in Israeli media, it's in India.
Speaker 1: It's an uh you know I I've seen it in
Speaker 1: the Persian Gulf Times, the Fiji Times. So all over
Speaker 1: the world people are talking about this thing that we're
Speaker 1: doing in this town of two thousand people. I'm seeing
Speaker 1: in newspapers where they have like somebody from the Institute
Speaker 1: on Economics is debating what Mayor Wayne Fournier is calling money. Well,
Speaker 1: it's not money. It is money. And I'm getting a
Speaker 1: kick out of this whole thing. It's it's insane. I
Speaker 1: don't know what money really is. I don't know, if
Speaker 1: you know, Steve man Nuchin is going to call me
Speaker 1: someday and you know, say I'm gonna go to federal prison.
Speaker 1: I hope for something like that. I mean, that would
Speaker 1: just make the story more interesting. I'm trying to think
Speaker 1: how to respond to that. Well, actually, you mentioned that
Speaker 1: you just decided to become mayor sort of one day, Um,
Speaker 1: you have an interesting backstory, right you were, well, you
Speaker 1: are a firefighter, and I think I read somewhere that
Speaker 1: you were doing like bank cesque type art. How did
Speaker 1: you get into local politics? So, my grandpa was the
Speaker 1: police chief in the seventies here and my my dad
Speaker 1: was an assistant ire chief. So I kind of grew
Speaker 1: up in the city caring about things and being involved
Speaker 1: in things. And I went to school and got a
Speaker 1: degree in philosophy. So i'm you know, I kind of
Speaker 1: you know, I probably think differently than some people. And uh,
Speaker 1: when I was about thirty one, there were things that
Speaker 1: I just found irritating and also I want, you know,
Speaker 1: I I have a drive to you know, being a
Speaker 1: leadership role. And I went and spoke with the mayor
Speaker 1: at the time about some things that I had concerns
Speaker 1: with and he kind of like I felt like I
Speaker 1: was kind of shrugged off, and I didn't like that.
Speaker 1: So I came up with the scheme for like rousing
Speaker 1: interest in public property. And a friend and I a
Speaker 1: friend and I the guy that designed this, uh this artwork.
Speaker 1: He's an excellent artist. He and I came up with
Speaker 1: the concept of you know, like guerrilla public service. It
Speaker 1: wasn't our concept, so it was at the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Shepherd Ferry was was really popular and banks he was
Speaker 1: really popular, and so we came up with our own
Speaker 1: gorilla art and guerrilla public service campaign where we would, uh,
Speaker 1: I bought like thirty used bicycles and spray painted of
Speaker 1: yellow and then I wrote share all over them, and
Speaker 1: I was promoting just sharing resources and meeting your neighbor
Speaker 1: and started talking calling these public property on the social
Speaker 1: media and the regime. You know, the political folks at
Speaker 1: the time, they didn't even know what social media was.
Speaker 1: So they would wake up and they would find these
Speaker 1: bright yellow bicycles under street lamps and what the heck
Speaker 1: are these? You know, we need to get them off
Speaker 1: the streets. Their garbage, And we'd get on social media.
Speaker 1: How dare they call our bicycles garbage? They belonged to
Speaker 1: the people, And then kids started thinking they were cool,
Speaker 1: and parents would take their kids out and get pictures
Speaker 1: of them riding around. It was really like a moment
Speaker 1: that the community kind of bonded on something that wasn't
Speaker 1: from the establishment, and so it became an anti establish
Speaker 1: Schmith movement and we were constantly kind of thumbing our
Speaker 1: nose and we would do we and we're a city
Speaker 1: at two thousand people where everybody knows each other, and
Speaker 1: we would do uh, we would do press press conferences,
Speaker 1: and my buddy Adam would wear like a band and
Speaker 1: over his face and hide his voice, but everybody in
Speaker 1: town knew who he was. So it was kind of
Speaker 1: fun and tongue in cheek, and you know, it was
Speaker 1: I was kind of like studying like what it was
Speaker 1: to do, like you know, guerrilla warfare and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and where you would you know, you take the resources
Speaker 1: of the establishment, you turn it on its head. And
Speaker 1: to make a bicycle, to weaponize a bicycle was kind
Speaker 1: of the concept because you know, who hates a bicycle.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, the the established order like
Speaker 1: side is just a poke in the eye every time
Speaker 1: they saw one. But it was fun. We had the
Speaker 1: same thing I went to college and where I am now,
Speaker 1: but I went to college in Austin, Texas. We had
Speaker 1: the same thing. The Yellow Bike Project was called, and
Speaker 1: I remember those but I don't know if it's still
Speaker 1: around here, but that was a pretty cool thing. And
Speaker 1: and then and sadly, like all things. Is it as
Speaker 1: as I became the institution, the yellow bicycles became less rebellious,
Speaker 1: and we get grants and it became a nonprofit, and
Speaker 1: then it becomes stale. And now they're just like instead
Speaker 1: of like these wild horses roaming around town, they're like
Speaker 1: corralled on a on a bike corral and you check
Speaker 1: them out and you have to sign so you don't
Speaker 1: sue people. And I don't know, it's funny. So so
Speaker 1: let's talk about the money itself. What is it good for?
Speaker 1: How did you distribute it? And what can you actually
Speaker 1: do with it? How do people use it to pay
Speaker 1: their bills? Just talk about the mechanics it gets into
Speaker 1: someone's hand, what can they do with it? Why do
Speaker 1: stores accept it? Walk us through that book. So the
Speaker 1: the people that live in the city, if you're a resident,
Speaker 1: you're eligible to apply. You come in and you apply
Speaker 1: and you have to show the city that you have
Speaker 1: been harmed financially through the pandemic. And then based on
Speaker 1: your income level, you're eligible for up to three dollars
Speaker 1: and we would distribute once a month. You're eligible for
Speaker 1: your allotment, and then you just get it. You get
Speaker 1: these wooden dollars, you can take them to any participating business,
Speaker 1: which is nearly all of them, and you can use
Speaker 1: them just like the US dollar. And then the business
Speaker 1: that accepts them there that are participating, they should have
Speaker 1: come into the city hall and read the program requirements
Speaker 1: that you cannot uh, you cannot give more than cents
Speaker 1: in US dollars change, you cannot you cannot use it
Speaker 1: to pay for alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, lottery tickets, and that
Speaker 1: that's basically about it. And then if you are a
Speaker 1: business that has certified that you understand that, you can
Speaker 1: then take these dollars in and trade them, exchange them
Speaker 1: one one to one with the City of Tonino. However,
Speaker 1: most of the businesses are and we haven't haven't done that.
Speaker 1: I think we had our first ones exchanged just recently
Speaker 1: because the Tonino dollars were more than the US dollar.
Speaker 1: So there there's a lot of outside interest, and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of you know kind of you know, what
Speaker 1: where does value come from. It comes from demand. So
Speaker 1: there's a high demand for these things, and there are
Speaker 1: people offering five dollars a piece per note. So the
Speaker 1: to nine O dollar has a higher exchange rate than
Speaker 1: the US dollars, so we're not getting them back there
Speaker 1: being circulated, or they're being sold on the gray market
Speaker 1: or so then businesses are responding and now they're offering
Speaker 1: twice as much in goods for the so you can
Speaker 1: get fifty dollars and goods for the twenty five dollar
Speaker 1: US UH to nine O dollar in some businesses here,
Speaker 1: that opens up so many questions. So first of all,
Speaker 1: how do you like, what is the current exchange rate
Speaker 1: of a to nine O dollar versus a US dollar?
Speaker 1: And how do you know that's the correct exchange rate?
Speaker 1: And then secondly, does that affect how much of your
Speaker 1: budget you're using to fund this program? Or are you
Speaker 1: mentioned you know, ten thousand U S dollars set aside
Speaker 1: for this um so as the exchange rate sort of changes,
Speaker 1: does that impact the budget? How? How am I saying
Speaker 1: that there's an there is an exchange right because we
Speaker 1: get phone calls every day, our our businesses are getting
Speaker 1: phone calls from all over the world, Portugal, China, and
Speaker 1: people are offering seven times the value of the face value.
Speaker 1: So I say, well seven to one. You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's that simple, If you know, I'm kind of keeping
Speaker 1: my finger on the pulse. I get several several emails
Speaker 1: every day. And if people are offering seven times the
Speaker 1: face value, then I I guess that means it's the
Speaker 1: seven to one exchange rate. How does that affect the
Speaker 1: city budget? It doesn't because the city is not going
Speaker 1: to respond to that. The city is only going to
Speaker 1: back at one to one. I see, okay, got it.
Speaker 1: We have a tent, we have a potential ten tho
Speaker 1: dollar liability, but we know that won't be realized. So
Speaker 1: now we could you know, we could have printed off
Speaker 1: twenty you know, having having ten thousand in the budget,
Speaker 1: we could have potentially printed off twenty thousand bills and
Speaker 1: put them out to be to be used. Which is
Speaker 1: that that's like getting into like the more theoretical side
Speaker 1: of it. I'm really getting excited about. You know, then
Speaker 1: we're generating wealth, right, instead of just one to one,
Speaker 1: we're creating something from nothing. You know, the FED has
Speaker 1: all these swap lines with foreign central banks and their
Speaker 1: currencies so they can swap their own you know, they
Speaker 1: need dollars like everyone else, like say the Bank of
Speaker 1: Japan or you know, the I don't know other banks,
Speaker 1: and then they swapped their currencies with the Federal Reserve
Speaker 1: to get dollars. I take it. Has the Federal Reserve
Speaker 1: ever reached out to you and offered to uh, swap
Speaker 1: US dollars for tonight? No dollars, not yet. But this
Speaker 1: is this is crazy to mean. I'm gonna pull it
Speaker 1: up real quick. Fox Business News ran an article earlier
Speaker 1: today and the headline was, is in Fox Business News
Speaker 1: today to I know wooden money valued higher than the
Speaker 1: US green back. That's a great function. Visit is headline.
Speaker 1: I know. M So, we've been talking a lot about
Speaker 1: the international response, and you've seen a lot of interest
Speaker 1: abroad in this. Talk to us about the local response.
Speaker 1: How have your constituents reacted to this? And I guess
Speaker 1: you have sort of two sides to this, right, you
Speaker 1: have the people who are getting the ton I know,
Speaker 1: wooden dollars, and you also have the shops who are
Speaker 1: exchanging those for them. There's a lot of excitement. There
Speaker 1: seems to be a lot of pride. Uh. This is
Speaker 1: this is a city that really enjoys its history and
Speaker 1: we you know, we treated as a you know, one
Speaker 1: of our our greatest commodities. Being able to relive it
Speaker 1: and being able to participate in a historic moment. People are,
Speaker 1: they're really enjoying it. When a business gets the wooden
Speaker 1: money in, you'll see a post on you know, Facebook
Speaker 1: or Instagram where they're celebrating it, and everybody starts kind
Speaker 1: of talking about it. Outside of tonight, know, there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of cities and smaller cities
Speaker 1: that have contacted us asking us for our our guidelines
Speaker 1: and our ordinances and they're they're wanting to create their
Speaker 1: own local currency programs a lot like ours. And that
Speaker 1: is another really fascinating aspect to this is you know,
Speaker 1: we we set aside ten thousand dollars, that's nothing. But
Speaker 1: if five thousand cities set aside ten thousand dollars and
Speaker 1: inject it right into their main street, that's a lot
Speaker 1: of money. And it's like it's kind of like a
Speaker 1: like a ground up approach instead of waiting for the
Speaker 1: Feds to you know, rain money down on you from above,
Speaker 1: which never never gets there. It always ends up and
Speaker 1: you know in some blue chip company or you know,
Speaker 1: somebody's friends ends up getting it all or what you know,
Speaker 1: you read about that every day, and this this is
Speaker 1: a chance where cities taken upon themselves and packed the
Speaker 1: system and inject it right into their businesses, and it
Speaker 1: wouldn't take very many cities to have kind of a
Speaker 1: watershed moment where you know, you kind of bolster things up,
Speaker 1: And that to me is kind of the the America
Speaker 1: that we're supposed to be. So you mentioned those blue
Speaker 1: chip companies, and in some of the examples of local
Speaker 1: currency that we've seen before the coronavirus crisis, I mean,
Speaker 1: the whole point of it is to sort of keep
Speaker 1: money flowing locally, right and to make sure that whatever
Speaker 1: aid people are getting isn't necessarily going to a place
Speaker 1: like Amazon or a big Walmart. Do you see a
Speaker 1: use for these sort of local currencies beyond the coronavirus
Speaker 1: in the sense that they could help, I guess, revive
Speaker 1: or stimulate local economies. I hope. So. Uh, the biggest
Speaker 1: city to contact me some folks with the biggest city
Speaker 1: of contact so far as the city of Portland. And
Speaker 1: there's some folks in Portland that are toying around with
Speaker 1: the idea of creating their own currency that would be
Speaker 1: used in there. And then they have a lot of
Speaker 1: farmers markets that would be used solely in their farmers markets.
Speaker 1: So then you would be taking this local currency, helping
Speaker 1: out people that are, you know, strapped for cash, and
Speaker 1: and then giving not giving it, but using it for
Speaker 1: local agricultural producers, and then having it circulate around the
Speaker 1: farmers market community. That's that's pretty exciting to me, and
Speaker 1: I could see that being something that happened that occurred
Speaker 1: outside of COVID. That seems like a very Portland thing.
Speaker 1: Super Portland. I swear though, before I forget, you really
Speaker 1: should get the FED to set up a swap line
Speaker 1: with you, because they do it for other countries. I
Speaker 1: don't see why they shouldn't do it for I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have to google what that means. Yeah, I'll say, I'll
Speaker 1: send you a link that talks about it exactly, because
Speaker 1: I think it's the next level. Anyway. Uh, here's another question.
Speaker 1: How many annoying crypto people have reached out to trying
Speaker 1: to sell you their their crypto solution to local carrents.
Speaker 1: Somebody even designed a wooden chip crypto thing and they're
Speaker 1: trying to like the new age to nine oh wooden dollar.
Speaker 1: A PhD student from m I t got ahold of
Speaker 1: me trying to create and I haven't really been on
Speaker 1: any of it, and I like, I like to throw
Speaker 1: it back at them. There are our wooden money is
Speaker 1: less hackable than their's. Oh well that was actually I
Speaker 1: was gonna ask this question. So what do you do? Like,
Speaker 1: how do you prevent counterfeit? Have you? You got to
Speaker 1: see our machine? Nobody who do? Who has an eighteen
Speaker 1: seventies printing press sitting in there in their garage? You know? God,
Speaker 1: I love that it's still works. It's cool. It's very cool.
Speaker 1: If you know. If you watch the travel channels Mysteries
Speaker 1: at the museum, they did a special on our museum
Speaker 1: and our printing press and they show some of the operations.
Speaker 1: Have to check it out. I guess I'm wondering how
Speaker 1: big do you see this going? So you have ten
Speaker 1: thousand set aside right now? But would you sort of
Speaker 1: grow the money supply and look to make it a
Speaker 1: bigger part of your respective economy or do you see
Speaker 1: it extending beyond the current crisis? What's the end goal here?
Speaker 1: So we started with ten thousand, we've had we've almost
Speaker 1: doubled that in donations. So people from all over the
Speaker 1: all over the world have donate. We got like somebody
Speaker 1: from England that sent us five thousand dollars to help
Speaker 1: grow the fund, so so it's got a little bigger
Speaker 1: and I you know, we want to make sure that
Speaker 1: we have enough you know, in that fund to help
Speaker 1: people that are struggling through COVID. So that's our primary
Speaker 1: intent is to help people through this. Beyond that, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of talk and there's a lot of interest.
Speaker 1: Our Chamber of Commerce is kicking around the idea of
Speaker 1: maybe they would take over the you know, kind of
Speaker 1: the operation of it. But like right now, it's work.
Speaker 1: It works because it's fairly simple, and you know, the
Speaker 1: city's acting as the treasury, and it's it's a very
Speaker 1: you know, basic how we're doing it. If we get
Speaker 1: it to you know, go be on this. I would
Speaker 1: love to see that, and I'd love to see this
Speaker 1: kind of thing happen in other small communities, you know,
Speaker 1: throughout the country. But exactly how to make it work,
Speaker 1: still trying to figure that out. Currency aside, obviously, the
Speaker 1: federal government about to begin to bait and theory about
Speaker 1: this next round of aid. What should people in d
Speaker 1: C no right now about the economic and fiscal situation.
Speaker 1: That's small towns in the US are facing this small
Speaker 1: so small towns and it's not just through COVID, but
Speaker 1: we we have a hard time getting to the table
Speaker 1: and getting resources. You know, our roads and bridges are crumbling,
Speaker 1: and it's hard to unlock exactly how to get road
Speaker 1: money to have the infrastructure we need to be to
Speaker 1: thrive and be competitive and be sustainable. It's it's really
Speaker 1: hard to figure that all out. You know, so much
Speaker 1: of our resources and really everything in this country is
Speaker 1: just centralized, whether it's it's like mega culture, mega business.
Speaker 1: And I feel and I think that this COVID thing
Speaker 1: is exposed that there is a lot of danger in that.
Speaker 1: If all your meat is being produced it's some massive
Speaker 1: warehouse outside Stockton, California, and you know, everybody gets sick
Speaker 1: there all of a sudden, there's no there's no beef.
Speaker 1: With a lot of things, we need to decentralize for
Speaker 1: safety reasons and for you know, just and also for
Speaker 1: like cultural reasons. When everything is mass produced and you
Speaker 1: don't have like local flavor being developed like it's like
Speaker 1: it used to be, you just you lose something in
Speaker 1: the human experience. I think the micro culture, local culture,
Speaker 1: those kinds of things have been lost and little, you know,
Speaker 1: little efforts like this. If other communities can be inspired
Speaker 1: to take it upon themselves to take initiative, even do
Speaker 1: crazy things like our country was designed, you know, to
Speaker 1: have little laboratories of democracy, then we're going to have
Speaker 1: a much more robust country. You know, if you're just
Speaker 1: constantly waiting for the federal government to write you a
Speaker 1: check or you know, some authority to tell you you
Speaker 1: can do something or what to do, that's that's just
Speaker 1: that's boring. All right, Well, Mayor Forna, It's been a
Speaker 1: fascinating discussion. We're definitely going to ask you to come
Speaker 1: back on like in a year's time or so to
Speaker 1: talk about how the monetary experiment went and whether or
Speaker 1: not the Fed did ever ask you to swap currencies.
Speaker 1: I'll be alive from federal prison. Hopefully not, but that
Speaker 1: would make it more interesting. Oh, it would be legendary
Speaker 1: if I would. If either you're going to be in
Speaker 1: prison or the tonight o'dellar will be quoted on the
Speaker 1: Bloomberg current, So it'll be one of those two outcomes,
Speaker 1: but either way it will be legendary. And so Joe.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed that conversation. I mean, it's fascinating to
Speaker 1: get an insight into how a small town is doing
Speaker 1: in a really unusual time period. But I also Mayor
Speaker 1: fourn sounds like a really interesting guy, Like I love
Speaker 1: the Guerrilla Art program. I love that he was googling
Speaker 1: what is money before he started this entire program. It
Speaker 1: sounds like he makes it sound like a fun job. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, you gotta like Mayri Wayne Mayrifornia. I don't
Speaker 1: know what he goes back. The local is probably called
Speaker 1: mari Wanne. Yeah, googling like launch year old currency by
Speaker 1: starting um, by starting by googling what is money is
Speaker 1: like a pretty uh, that's pretty awesome way to get
Speaker 1: going UM. And I mean if we've had the the
Speaker 1: designer of the birk shares program on before, which is
Speaker 1: the local currency in UM in Massachusetts, and there does
Speaker 1: seem to be an argument about creating sort of parallel
Speaker 1: local currencies in order to capture some money and sort
Speaker 1: of force it to stay local rather than let it
Speaker 1: leak out of the system to big corporations or other
Speaker 1: places that don't really need it. Yeah, it definitely in
Speaker 1: theory solves the leaks problem. But beyond that, like, like
Speaker 1: I said, why why why should the FED be providing
Speaker 1: liquidity to all these other money printing edit entities but
Speaker 1: not US ones? Like it's more and more it's been
Speaker 1: done before. I think in the past. I think there's
Speaker 1: like I think Atlantic city ones during the depression had
Speaker 1: some sort of agreement with the government, So they should
Speaker 1: go for it. They should get J. Paul on the phone.
Speaker 1: I mean, it is interesting because you do see people
Speaker 1: arguing that the FED is taking on more of a
Speaker 1: sort of fiscal role than traditionally, like it is actually
Speaker 1: deciding where money can and can't be spent. So I
Speaker 1: guess in one sense that would be a sort of
Speaker 1: new evolution of that role, absolutely helping UH local communities
Speaker 1: exchange their local currencies into federal dollars. It'd be a
Speaker 1: huge stimulus program. Could you imagine? It would blow up?
Speaker 1: That would really blow up. Okay, all right, well, let's
Speaker 1: get J. Powell on as our next podscast and we
Speaker 1: can ask him and ask him what asked him, why
Speaker 1: he hasn't done that, why he hasn't helped out to Nina. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so we leave it there. Let's leave it there. Okay,
Speaker 1: this has been another episode of the All Thoughts podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: Tracy Alloway. I'm Joe Wisn'tal. You can follow me on
Speaker 1: Twitter at the Stalwart, and you should follow our producer
Speaker 1: on Twitter, Laura Carlson. She's at Laura M. Carlston. Follow
Speaker 1: the Bloomberg head of podcast, Francesco Leavi at Francesca Today,
Speaker 1: and check out all of our podcasts unto the handle
Speaker 1: at podcast. Thanks for listening to Tear