The striking fall of the dollar against other world currencies (-27% against the Euro over the last 2 years) has prompted many to wonder if the long-predicted collapse of the US financial empire is at hand. Combined with the still-unfolding “sub-prime” mortgage crisis -- expected now to wipe as much $1 trillion off the world economic ledger, mostly from the accounts of the working class and poor -- the resulting global recession may ultimately run the economies of rising stars like China and the European Union off the rails.

Mainstream economists had largely been blind to the crisis until the symptoms became too obvious to ignore in the past 18 months or so. Those who study money systems -- including such notables as Bernard Leitaer, who designed the European monetary union -- have been warning about the dangers of a central-banking-induced monetary catastrophe for years.

We can learn a lot about the nature of capitalism by studying its money. Essential as a common facilitator of trade, money greatly impacts the behavior of us participants in the world market simply by how it is issued and defined. As socialists, we need to be especially clear about how we understand and analyze the “market system,” particularly at a time when modern capitalism may finally be weakening and alternative proposals more readily accepted. And as those advocating for fair-trade, we need to be able to envision an international market-system in which wealth does not concentrate, where the labor theory of value obtains, and where “property” takes on an entirely new definition.

Local currencies are important proving-grounds for such possibilities, as well as for re-establishment of democratic, citizen-control over our collective economic well-being.