It may seem like Monopoly money to outsiders, but a growing number of communities across the U.S. are using homegrown local currencies to stimulate their economies and protect themselves from the nation's broader economic woes.

While there were only about 20 active community currencies in the United States in 2009, there has been a recent resurgence, with at least a dozen communities developing their own currencies in the past couple of years, estimates Loren Gatch, a professor of political science at the University of Central Oklahoma who researches these alternative currencies. In addition, currencies that have been around for years have seen a spike in interest, with membership doubling in some cases.

As a solution to the global and national financial crisis, people in Mexican city Espinal have organized alternative exchange system and created alternative local currency named Tumin.

The global monetary system is failing to fulfill its role in our modern society. Local currency is an alternative way of being sustainable, the official money system is not the only possibility. Let the experiments proceed!

"Not even me, who is regarded as the biggest catastrophist in the Croatian Parliament, could have predicted such a financial catastrophe", said Damir Kajin during the last year debate of the Government of the Republic of Croatia on amending the budget. If Kajin and others had paid a little more attention to what Yoko Ono and John Lennon had over their bed in sixties, instead of focusing on what they had underneath it, today we would probably not be indebted as Greece and we would not be dancing on the edge of an abyss. "Make love, not debt"! Marko Perkovic Thompson would conquer the Balkans with his hit song today: "All we are saying, is let the banks fail"...

Ever since the crash several years ago, Americans have felt precarious about the nation's economy and the value of its currency. Money seems to take inconceivable, abstract, and even magical forms, traveling around the world at lightning speed with little oversight and obvious mismanagement. We have little control over it -- the value of our currency is tied to conditions well beyond our control. It moves in directions that most of us are vehemently opposed to. We trusted that the banks, Congress, the Federal Reserve, corporations and Wall Street are managing money responsibly on our behalf, particularly retirement funds and mortgages, but lately that trust has been broken. In response, the concept of localcurrencies have drawn interest from Occupy and other economic resistance groups as an alternative to state-controlled money.

Everyone knows that the current banking system is at the root of many of the economic evils we face as a Nation. The banks enslave people with interest and stifle business investment.