When the recession began to take hold, Green America asked noted economist, Bernard Lietaer, his thoughts for how businesses could best navigate the financial crises and create long-term economic system change, he said: Implement complementary business-to-business (B2B) currencies to help local, independent companies build resiliency.
Lietaer has been studying monetary systems to 26 years and predicted the current economic down-turn years ago.
"Complementary currencies work in addition to existing money, rather than replacing existing, official currency," he said.
B2B currencies share some characteristics with local currencies like Time Dollars, but are scaled up for businesses.
Companies turn goods and services they provide into B2B currency. They log in to an online database and use the currency to "purchase" materials and services they need and "sell" their goods and services to other businesses in the network.
One of the longest running B2B systems is Switzerland’s WIR ("wirtschaftsring" or "exchange circle"). Created during the Great Depression, the WIR system helped small companies survive. It’s still going strong today, serving 25% of all Swiss companies. Experts like Lietaer credit the WIR with helping Switzerland develop an international reputation as a safe, strong economy.
A B2B system keeps businesses trading with each other without borrowing from banks, which is the real bottleneck, he says.
This summer, Green America launched the Green America Exchange (GAEx) to help green businesses. By turning un-sold goods and un-booked appointments into transferable, digital "Trade Dollars", it combines the benefits of barter with the flexibility of money.
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