Constitutional Amendment.
Perhaps something like:
| Section 1. The power of Congress to regulate the value of the currency of the united states is hereby reascended. To guard against the indirect tampering of currency via the power to define Weights and Measures, the value of the Dollar shall be that of Gold -- of a purity not less than nine-hundred ninety-eight per thousand parts -- of a weight equal to one fifteenth of one hundredth of an avoirdupois ounce. Section 2. Congress shall incur no debt which shall cause the total obligations of the Federal government to exceed one-hundred-ten percent of the value of the gold physically in possession of the Treasury. Section 3. The Secretary of the Treasury shall, not less than once a year, make available a true accounting of the physical gold in the possession of the Treasury; this report shall be available to the public. Section 4. Any government agent seizing, attempting to seize, or causing seizure of gold or silver shall be charged with theft and, if found guilty, the punishment shall be: (1) twice the value of the theft shall be restored to the bereaved, (2) termination of employment, and (3) forfeiture of all retirement or pension benefits. |
Fractional reserve banking is what brought us out of poverty. Can you image going back to the gold standard. Not enough gold and silver in the world to match the dollars outstanding.
The above value-setting can fix the dollar to any amount of gold; we can use this to keep the dollar's current value relatively the same.
PRICE_OF_GOLD * TROY_CONVERSION_FACTOR * FRACTION_OF_OUNCE = NEW_DOLLAR_VALUE [The same as PRICE_OF_GOLD * TROY_CONVERSION_FACTOR / OUNCE_FRACTION_DENOMINATOR] (1675 * 0.911458333) / 1000 = 1.52669270777 (1675 * 0.911458333) / 1500 = 1.01779513852 (1675 * 0.911458333) / 80 = 19.0836588472
Interesting angle.