The primary driving mechanism for the functioning of the conventional monetary system is fiat-money central banking. The booms and busts impelled by such systemic configuration drive economies toward full employment in booming periods, but then, during busts, they create significant unemployment. During contractive stages of the business cycle such as that one initiated with the credit crisis of 2008, the Commercial Credit Circuit – C3 – creates more liquidity in the national market of Small- and Medium-sized enterprises (hereafter SMEs) by grafting a second line of credit onto the conventional monetary system. Specifically, C3 as well as WIR is a countercyclical negotiable instrument .

The result of such stimulation of credit is the increase of local trade, especially for counteracting adverse market dynamics at upper economic scales (i.e. supranational), which tend to extract wealth from the territory without re-circulating value within it. The C3 network has been conceptualized by currency architect Bernard Lietaer and implemented for two years now by STRO (Social TRade Organization), a not-for-profit organization based in Utrecht (The Netherlands) through the deployment of FOSS.

According to the World Economic Outlook published by the International Monetary Fund in 2010, Uruguay will present a 5.6% increase of Real GDP in 2010 and a 0.4% decrease in the unemployment rate in the two-year period 2009-2011. In other words, C3 help sustainting the significant rate of growth while keeping fixed the national rate of unemployment in present recessive scenario ignited by the economic crisis. By contrast, the United States of America will see a zero growth rate for 2010 and unemployment is expected to further increase, i.e. from 9.3% in 2009 to and expected 9.6% in 2011.

C3 Uruguay