HOW TO (RE)MAKE MONEY: NOW WE CAN CREATE MONEY THAT WORKS FOR US

Newsweek ^ | 07/15/19 | GALIA BENARTZI

[walkingdead]

Or how about tally sticks.

[walkingdead]

What we really need to address is fractional reserve banking.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

More correctly FDR, who actually outlawed Americans from owning monetary gold, ($10,000 fine) repudiated gold clause contracts which were prior to that common in real estate lease agreements, reneged on government issued gold bonds, accused the American people of “Hoarding” and confiscated at least 10,000 tons of gold coinage, and stuffed it into a vault at Ft. Knox.

This. Unfortunately the Constitution says

The Congress shall have Power . . . To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures

We need an amendment saying, “The right of the people to buy, keep, and sell gold at their own discretion shall not be infringed.” Because it is a natural right of free people, and would have instantly been recognized as such in the founding era. Which actually means that SCOTUS should enforce that right under the Ninth Amendment. But, SCOTUS isn’t that strong on the Ninth. Justice Thomas, yes - but SCOTUS, not so much.

I argue, on the topic of the Ninth, that suing for libel is a right of the people, recognized almost explicitly in the First Amendment. Scalia pointed out that freedom of the press - with limits for libel and pornography - pre-existed the First Amendment, and that the expression “the freedom of . . . the press” did not mean absolute freedom but recognized the limits I mentioned.

Repealing the the laws of libel and pornography would have been controversial, and the purpose of the Bill of Rights was to tamp down controversy. But when SCOTUS preened itself over having “protected the First Amendment” in its 1964 New York Times v. Sullivan decision, it was actually extending the First Amendment at the expense of the right to sue for libel, an unenumerated right.

The upshot is that Republican officials’ right to sue for libel is now considered only theoretical (Democrats go along so assiduously - and consequently get along so famously - with journalists that they are never libeled). And that has entitled Democrats, not only to their own opinions, but to their own facts - which is the engine of political correctness.

[fruser1]

“programmed to pay its taxes, bit by bit, with every transaction”

I wonder how much the value of bitcoin drops tomorrow.

[ml/nj]

Money is gold and silver.

Paper is not money. Scrap metal is not money. And something almost no one understands is not money.

If you have a Krugerrand, or some similar gold coin, let someone else hold it and watch them smile.

ML/NJ

[ml/nj]

I should have added that anything that depends upon a third party to an exchange between two parties is not money. (E.g. How much do you think all those pictures of dead presidents would be worth if the United States ceased to exist? Compare to all those Double Eagles that FDR banned.)

ML/NJ

[Freedom4US]

No right thinking person believed what FDR did was even remotely legal or constitutional, but it’s a moot point now.

The problem is that “money” has been unmoored from any objective standard, gold or otherwise. Virtually none of the chaos and nonsense we’re currently experiencing would ultimately have been possible without funny money. Never in a million years.

What we’re really talking about ultimately is the unit of account. Gold was used historically, because it can’t really destroyed, is rare though not too rare, virtually impossible to counterfeit, etc.

Without some kind of objective standard for money, there are seemingly no limits. This of course is why the national government is currently 20+ Trillion dollars in the hole and rising, with another 100-200 Trillion in “Unfunded Mandates”. (If you’ve ever wondered what an unfunded mandate is, they mean YOU)

[thinden]

Bbb

[Freedom4US]

They’ve purposefully glossed that over. One of the many key attributes that Aristotle ascribed to good money (medium of exhange, homogenous, fungible, divisible, durable, portable, etc) was that it be a reliable store of value. If you talk to someone who’s been to modern University and taken economics courses they look at you like you’re from Mars. “Medium of exchange” is all they were taught. They’ll want to argue with you.

Gold, and silver to a lesser extent, has value apart from the entity that issues it. It doesn’t depend on any particular government to give it value. Just as important, a government can’t make it un-valuable or worthless either. They can outlaw it, but that isn’t quite the same thing. Nobody has ever launched a deep sea diving expedition to recover some long dead King’s checkbook, but a stack of gold bars will always have at least some value. At least until they pull in some asteroid from outer space or something like that.

[ml/nj]

Gold, and silver to a lesser extent

Silver works fine for smaller exchanges. When I was a kid the quarters were made from real silver and you could buy a gallon of gas with one. Now one of those quarters is worth about $3.50, so could you exchange it for a gallon of gas and get some change back.

ML/NJ

[ml/nj]

Money ended when Nixon took the United States off the gold standard in 1971.

Blaming Nixon is a bit specious.

FDR eliminated gold coinage in 1933 and even made it illegal for Americans to retain existing gold coinage.

LBJ eliminated silver coinage in 1965.

All Nixon did was to stop foreign governments from buying our gold at below market prices.

ML/NJ

[Freedom4US]

Yeah, I like Silver. I bought a lot when it was between $4 and $8 (a very long time) and didn’t sell any till it busted $25 and $30, sold my last 100 ounce bar right at $48, true story. A lot of people got burned on Silver. I was determined not to let that happen. I have a few hundred oz’s left that are basically house money. Once in a while I’ll drag a few of them out of the safe to hear the clink. I had bought a “face bag” of quarters, these are cool. Heavy as hell. The old school money had a distinctive “kashink” that slug money does not have. There were about a dozen slug quarters mixed in with them. When I sold it years later, I took it right back to the same guy that sold it to me. So he runs it through his machine to count them, and bitches about the slugs. “I don’t take those” he says. “Neither do I” says me.

The thing about Silver, in a true emergency, wealthy people don’t want it if they have to unass their country or whatever. Way too heavy. Gold has an amazing compactness to it.