clipped from: www.usatoday.com   
In Detroit, three downtown businesses have created a local currency, or scrip, to keep dollars earned locally in the community.
A small but growing number of cash-strapped communities are printing their own money.

Borrowing from a Depression-era idea, they are aiming to help consumers make ends meet and support struggling local businesses.

The systems generally work like this: Businesses and individuals form a network to print currency. Shoppers buy it at a discount — say, 95 cents for $1 value — and spend the full value at stores that accept the currency.

clipped from: www.courierpress.com   
Despite arrests, some local merchants still accepting Liberty Dollars

At one time, Terry Eickhoff had accepted Liberty Dollars at his gun store near Cynthiana, Ind.

But Eickhoff, whose store is called the Red Ghost Gun Shop, stopped using the "private voluntary bartering system" about five years ago.

Bernard von NotHaus, the monetary architect of the Liberty Dollar, said Liberty Merchants who use his coins are indeed harder to come by these days. For that he blames the government, which has succeeded in raising fears over what he considers a perfectly legal and wise means of conducting business, he said.