THE BORSODI CONSTANT AN INFLATION-FREE CURRENCY

And how does the constant work in actual practice? Rick Perry gives a brief account of the intertwined history of ...

GREEN EARTH, THE LOAF AND
LADLE, THE CONSTANT AND
THE GLOBE

The first thing I knew about the constant was when Dr. Borsodi came into my shop, the Green Earth natural foods store on Water Street in Exeter, New Hampshire. Jerry Rooney and I own it. Dr. Borsodi said, "Would you pass out these pamphlets about the constant to your customers?"

And I said, "Sure. What are they? What is it ?"

And he said, "Well, it's a new currency." He put it in such a simple way that I'll never forget. He said, "It's a currency based on real commodities such as rice and wheat and cotton and iron."

You know, that made sense.

Then he said, "This will enable the constant to be stable because as the prices of these commodities go up, the price of the constant will likewise go up."

And that made a lot of sense.

Dr. Borsodi really got me interested. In fact, my wife and I opened a checking account with Arbitrage International shortly after that. It was as easy as starting a checking account with the average bank . . . we filled out the same kinds of forms, we could make withdrawals in dollars instead of constants any time we wanted to and our deposit was fully insured.

Green Earth and our restaurant—the Loaf and Ladle—were two of the first businesses in Exeter where you could trade in constants.

In the Loaf and Ladle I've got a constant and a silver globe posted up over the cash register. That particular globe was the first one to ever be taken in barter, which is its ideal function. One person came into the restaurant and bought three meals with it. And we went back and forth. I said, "Let's see, I know silver's worth $3.25 an ounce today, but I know you paid $7.00 to get that globe, so I'll give you $5.00 worth of food for it."

So he bought $5.00 worth of meals. I did $5.00 because I knew that if I took it back to Arbitrage International and told them what I'd done, they'd give me $5.00 for it. And the constant up there over the cash register is the first one that anybody spent in the restaurant.

As a matter of fact, the Loaf and Ladle might never have gotten started in the first place if it hadn't been for the constant. My wife, Kerry, and I wanted to open a good food restaurant, a place where we could cook food that was good for people . . . not necessarily organic or natural but just the best you could get of what we wanted to serve. And what we wanted to serve was homemade soups and breads and desserts . . . and salads using a lot of natural things like sprouts and high-protein combinations.

Now I've done a lot of work in restaurants and know the ropes as far as managing one and getting the equipment and setting it up and stuff, but nobody thought that a "soup kitchen" could be successful in this area.

Well, in February of '73 we got a loan of $1,500 from Arbitrage International to get the Loaf and Ladle started. Now this was before the new currency was actually minted. It wasn't minted until June of last year. But the Institute put the money into our checking account in dollars and then, later on, we paid our loan installments back in constants. It worked out really great because Dr, Borsodi wanted somebody to go through that loan phase with his new currency, and we needed the money . . . so we were actually helping each other. And the restaurant has been a great success right from the beginning. It worked out really well.

As far as the alternative money system goes, the constant is so good that the only thing keeping it from working for everyone right now is that the government wouldn't go for it. It defeats the government's whole purpose. They wouldn't be able to print money any time they wanted to: they wouldn't be able to manufacture money out of thin air.

Rick Perry
Exeter, N.H.

"The silver globe on today's market is valued at over $6.00