A liberty credit union

[Porcupine Realtor]

The 20th works for me, any time, any place (I live in Manchester, but can drive elsewhere).  I am out of town Sept. 21-23.

[ArcRiley]

Ok the 20th then, I'm guessing it'll be easier to find a quiet meeting spot on a Thursday anyway.

Does anyone interested in founding this have time constraints on the 20th?

[EthanAllen]

Ithaca Hours, Berkshares, Calgary Dollars, Liberty Dollars, every successful system is accepted by at least one credit union or bank.

As a member of the e.f. schumacher society and a person who knows Chris Lindstrom (who set it up) personally I have to tell you that the Berkshares are just glorified discount coupons backed by FRNs.

Ithaca Hours and Calgary Dollars are people 2 people LETS barter systems.

Mutualist credit clearing system (as proposed by Thomas Greco) is a business 2 business barter system acting as a paperless currency where credit is extended to those participating...see WIR bank in Switzerland.

[Dreepa]

I can't be at that meeting.  Nor do I have time to help right now but I have worked at two credit unions, have 5 different CU accounts and would love to be one of the first customers.

[EthanAllen]

I can make it.

[ArcRiley]

I have to tell you that the Berkshares are just glorified discount coupons backed by FRNs.

I actually find them quite interesting.  Businesses can either use them as Berkshares or take a 10% hit for exchanging them back to USD.  I'm not saying I'd prefer such a system, but it's interesting.

Ithaca Hours and Calgary Dollars are people 2 people LETS barter systems.

Um, not quite.  Ithaca Hours has become a novelty used by maybe only a dozen people regularly.  It has never been a LETS though, if you unravel what LETS is you'd see that it's very different.

Calgary Dollars I can't comment on, but it seems very much like Ithaca Hours a decade ago with a bit more government support.

Mutualist credit clearing system (as proposed by Thomas Greco) is a business 2 business barter system acting as a paperless currency where credit is extended to those participating...see WIR bank in Switzerland.

That's greate, create it!  Get businesses to accept it.  There's no reason why the credit union won't be able to exchange it just as readily as it does Liberty Dollars or any other, it's certainly not the role of a credit union to oversee such systems.

I have my own idea for an alternative currency based partly on my experience with Ithaca Hours, including being a board member for a time.  I'm not advocating for the credit union to accept only my system, heck it may never get off the ground.  Alternative currencies are far too young and experimental to say one is better than another, only by trying different things and seeing which experiments excel will we move from the realm of endless theories to mainstream usage.

Diversity is the Fuel of Evolution

[picaro]

I can be at Murphy's (or elsewhere) on the evening of the 20th.

Alternative currencies are far too young and experimental to say one is better than another, only by trying different things and seeing which experiments excel will we move from the realm of endless theories to mainstream usage.

True.  However, at some point there should be some effort to pull in the same direction.   Ask any open-source software developer the frustration of endless forking. 

[ArcRiley]

I can be at Murphy's (or elsewhere) on the evening of the 20th.

Sounds like Thursday evening works for enough people then :-)

Next question - if not the Taproom, where?  I'm largely unfamiliar with Manchester still.  I'm guessing the "where" will constrain the "when" within the parameters of Thursday night.

True.  However, at some point there should be some effort to pull in the same direction.   Ask any open-source software developer the frustration of endless forking. 

That will naturally happen, too, to a certain extent 

From the free market will emerge clear dominant currencies, there'll surely be a few niches filled by smaller ones, and of course systematically any new currency idea could be implemented within the existing framework.  This is a clear issue of regulation vs freedom, planned monopoly vs letting the market decide..

This is becoming a bike shed though.  A vast majority of the work to start this credit union deals with the acceptance, investment of, draft clearing, transference, and otherwise handling USD.  We can't get hung up on such small details as alternative currencies before we've even started drafting our bylaws.

Heck, we haven't even sent our letter of intent to the state banking commissioner yet.

[PowerPenguin]

What kind of sick and twisted person would do that? It would defeat the entire purpose.

[ArcRiley]

What kind of sick and twisted person would do that? It would defeat the entire purpose.

I assume you're referring to sending a letter of intent to the state banking commissioner?  If so, for you and anyone who missed the other postings and threads:

In order to process checks, do the check-card thing, handle savings, real estate and auto loans, and a whole slew of other services which most porcupines need, we need to be either a state or federal credit union.  If all you want is to do alternative currencies, not interacting with USD or "banking in a shoebox", then you do not need a credit union.

To call ourselves a credit union without one of these is fraud and is blatantly illegal under RSA 394-B:2.  Under other provisions of state and federal law it is illegal to operate in the manner of a bank or credit union without the authorization given from the state banking commissioner or the federal government even if we were to not handle checks or check cards.

Federal credit union status is basically out of the question, the regulations are far too severe and we'd have little political weight to change them.  Under NH State it's quite acceptable, though it'd be good to get some of the more intrusive sections of Chapter 394-B neutered, and again this gives us what we need (acknowledgment as a credit union) to acquire a routing number from the ABA and all the other things we need.

What's more?  RSA 394-B:52-a gives state credit unions the same powers and rights as federal credit unions without having to deal with the federal bullshit.

RSA 394-B:4 makes it fairly clear on how to proceed; 7 or more residents of New Hampshire must send a letter of intent to the state banking commissioner.  The letter must state that we intend to form a corporation for savings and loans for the mutual benefit of our members bla bla.

That starts the process.

My guess is that the state banking commissioner will be quite helpful, even if we didn't have political leverage, perhaps going so far as to guide us through the process while not treading too deeply into our pro-liberty/privacy goals.  Surprise, some government employees are actually quite helpful.  Take town/county clerks for example.

[jaqeboy]

Ok the 20th then, I'm guessing it'll be easier to find a quiet meeting spot on a Thursday anyway.

Does anyone interested in founding this have time constraints on the 20th?

I'll be unable to attend on this date as I'll be assisting a company in Maine prepare their products and exhibits for the Common Ground Fair (which is where I learned about time banking). I am definitely more interested in all the alternative currencies/monies/credit systems than another FRN store within existing legal definitions and restrictions. I think it might be very hard to compete with existing institutions. Might want to start something that is not a credit union (another statutory legal term), since there are CU's people could already join.

[ArcRiley]

I am definitely more interested in all the alternative currencies/monies/credit systems

You don't need a credit union to deal in alternative currencies.  However, most people primarily deal in USD.

The benefit to having the credit union accept them is easier exchanges for mixed currency transactions, accepting businesses will be able to integrate it right into their PoS system and have it "just work".  Otherwise many storefronts will find the cost of working with other currencies to outweigh the benefits.

I think it might be very hard to compete with existing institutions.

Credit unions are cooperatives, cooperative principle #6 is "cooperation among cooperatives".  We'll work with other credit unions to get our collective needs met regardless if we have 100 members or 100,000.  Competition between CUs would make them banks.

Since the thread is for creating a credit union, let's have it for people interested in a credit union and move the alt currency talk to other threads.

[ArcRiley]

Ok so it's Murphy's later today (Thursday) at 7pm.

Let's see if we can't make some headway on this.

[ArcRiley]

Here's the URL for the relevant state laws over credit unions

http://gencourt.state.nh.us/rsa/html/XXXV/394-B/394-B-mrg.htm

[Porcupine_in_MA]

I was reading this thread and the idea of a Porcupine credit union is very exciting to me and I notice the last couple of posts were from last month. How did the meeting go? Any updates on this?