Hay for cheese? Barter booms in cash-squeezed rural Greece

[PoliticAverse]

LAMIA, Greece, July 28 (Reuters) - Wild boar and power cuts were Greek cotton farmer Mimis Tsakanikas' biggest worries until a bank shutdown last month left him stranded without cash to pay suppliers, and his customers without money to pay him.

Squeezed on all sides, the 41-year-old farmer began informal bartering to get around the cash crunch. He now pays some of his workers in kind with his clover crop and exchanges equipment with other farmers instead of buying or renting machinery.

Tsakanikas is part of a growing barter economy that some Greeks deplore as a step backward from modernity, but others embrace as a practical means of short-term economic survival.

Read the rest at: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/29/eurozone-greece-barter-idUSL5N1083XJ20150729

[villager]

1. Any kind of direct economy that cuts out the banks is a good thing

Not saying that we should all go full-out barter. Simply suggesting that more and more, workarounds to what our bank-owned governments offer us will be needed.