Inflation and The Coming Keynesian Catastrophe

The Story of the Exeter Experiments With Constants

The collection of lectures and publications from the Schumacher Center for a New Economics represents some of the foremost voices on a new economics.

What would be necessary to bring about a wide-scale monetary reform? What would an entire money and banking system look like which would change, in fact revitalize, an entire economic and social system? These were the questions that Ralph Borsodi set out to answer in this series of essays on money and banking. In the early 1970s, Schumacher Center founder Robert Swann worked with Ralph Borsodi to issue Constants, a commodity-backed currency, in Exeter, New Hampshire. The Exeter experiment began in April 1973 and ran for over a year, circulating almost 100,000 Constants in Exeter, Borsodi's hometown. To his own surprise many people began buying Constants and using them at local stores. Even the Town of Exeter accepted them as payment for parking traffic fines. Very few people ever redeemed them for dollars at the bank. What was the result of the experiment? Borsodi had proved his assumption that people were interested in a currency that did not devalue.