Free Republic

Ninety years ago, Franklin Roosevelt told Americans they had less than a month to hand over their gold or face up to ten years in prison. December 7, 1941 will forever be remembered as, in the words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “a date that will live in infamy.” Another infamous date is April 5, 1933—the day that FDR ordered the seizure of the private gold holdings of the American people. By attacking innocent citizens, he bombed the country’s gold standard just as surely as Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. On this 90th anniversary of the seizure, it behooves us to recall...

SeaWorld San Diego announced on Wednesday that the park would adopt a cashless policy. The theme park made the announcement on its website. Guests can use a physical credit or debit card, Google Pay or Apple Pay to complete transactions across the theme park. For guests that don’t have a physical card, SeaWorld will offer kiosks that will deposit cash onto a prepaid Visa card, a free service for guests. If park visitors have money left over on the card after their visit, they can still use the card anywhere Visa cards are accepted.

Published on 23 June 2022 News release The Bank of England will be withdrawing legal tender status of paper £20 and £50 banknotes after 30 September 2022. After this date, paper £20 and £50 banknotes will no longer be legal tender. So we are encouraging anyone who still has these to use them or deposit them at their bank or a Post Office during these last 100 days. It is also exactly one year since we issued the polymer £50 banknote featuring the scientist Alan Turing, on what would have been his 109th birthday. The Turing £50 completed our family...

Fan Yifei, the deputy governor of China’s central bank, said on Saturday that banks had been urged to provide new banknotes to customers whenever possible. The central bank made an “emergency issuance” of 4bn yuan in new notes to Hubei province, the centre of the outbreak, before the recent lunar new year holiday, Fan added. The measures are intended to “secure the public’s safety and health when using cash”, Fan said. But it is unclear how wide an impact the central bank’s disinfection work will have, with increasing numbers of Chinese people preferring mobile payments over cash in recent years....

Ben Domenech wonders how early America’s most famous self-made man, who fought by Washington’s side in the revolution, who co-wrote the Federalist Papers, who constructed the country’s financial system, and who was decades ahead of his time in opposing the slave trade ended up on the currency chopping block.Our terrible ruling class can’t even resist farking up our money. Back in 2009, during the height of the Tea Party, there were crotchety old Americans who warned in dark tones about the dangers of this president. He was a socialist, they said, and feckless to boot. He hated the American...

Paper currency is dirty and is a major transmitter of disease as it goes from unwashed hand to unwashed hand. It is easily lost and stolen, and can be easily destroyed by getting wet or burned. It physically wears out in a short time and is costly and troublesome to replace. So why do we still use the filthy stuff in the electronic age? When given a choice, people find credit cards, debit cards and bank account electronic payments more convenient than cash. In many parts of the world, payments can be made from cellphone to cellphone, with the phone...

Jack Lew, President Obama's reported pick to replace outgoing Treasury secretary Tim Geithner, is known as a no-nonsense backroom negotiator with wonkish tendencies, who is admired on the left and grumbled about on the right. A lesser-known but extremely pertinent fact about Lew is that he has the world's worst signature. And pretty soon, that signature could be on every single one of your dollar bills.

Fed study puts ideal interest rate at -5% By Krishna Guha in Washington Published: April 27 2009 03:00 | Last updated: April 27 2009 03:00 The ideal interest rate for the US economy in current conditions would be minus 5 per cent, according to internal analysis prepared for the Federal Reserve's last policy meeting. The analysis was based on a so-called Taylor-rule approach that estimates an appropriate interest rate based on unemployment and inflation. A central bank cannot cut interest rates below zero. However, the staff research suggests the Fed should maintain unconventional policies that provide stimulus roughly equivalent to...

Barack Obama's tax advisers recently posted a piece in the Wall Street Journal about their candidate's tax plans. Their article was designed to triangulate, painting their candidate as a tax cutter and the Republican opposition as a secret tax raiser. It was well written and well argued — not that you can really trust anything you read about what candidates will or will not do once in office. In any case, I was discussing the piece with a person whose politics are certainly left of center. She said to me something along the following lines: I'm really not sure I...

Robert Mugabe has kept his embattled regime in Zimbabwe afloat on a sea of paper money. Now, he'll have to try to do it without the paper. The Munich-based company that has supplied Zimbabwe with the special blank sheets to print its increasingly worthless dollar caved in to pressure on Tuesday from the German government for it to stop doing business with the African ruler. Mr. Mugabe's regime relies on a steady supply of the paper -- fortified with watermarks and other antiforgery features -- to print the bank notes that allow it to pay the soldiers and other loyalists...

"If you don't trust gold, do you trust the logic of taking a pine tree, worth $4,000-$5,000, cutting it up, turning it into pulp, putting some ink on it and then calling it one billion dollars?" - Kenneth J. Gerbino The price of gold tells us a lot about ourselves. It holds up a mirror to the way we are governed, our economy and its prospects. It reflects not only the physical dangers of floods, famine, terrorism and war, but also the financial perils of systemic addiction to debt and budgetary incontinence. "The modern mind dislikes gold," said Joseph Schumpeter,...

Press Releases New U.S. $5 Bill Will Get a Digital Debut on September 20 New Design to Be Unveiled Online During "Wi-5" Event Washington, D.C. (August 21, 2007) - For the first time, a redesigned denomination of U.S. currency will be digitally unveiled when a new $5 bill design is revealed on September 20, 2007.

Nickel prices took a severe beating in late trade at the London Metal Exchange on Monday, falling over $1,000 from Friday's kerb close. Three-months futures ended Monday's kerb at $27,600 per tonne, down $1,100, or 3.8 percent. Once selling began, the metal slipped into free-fall, traders said. "It was around $28,500, then on the next trade -- which was half an hour later -- it had gone down $300, then another $300." Volumes were tiny and support practically non-existent."It was trading one lot, then two lots, then one. There was a void underneath it," the trader said. Sellers may have...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. benchmark gold futures scaled a new 25-year high at $700 an ounce on Tuesday, boosted by relentless investor buying powered by geopolitical concerns and expectations of further price gains ahead, dealers said. By 11:30 a.m. EDT, June delivery gold on the New York Mercantile Exchange's COMEX division was up $20.10 or 2.9 percent at a session peak of $700, which marked the loftiest level for futures since September 1980.

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. WASHINGTON - Like 200 bad pennies, it keeps turning up. The $2 bill, shunned by the American public for decades, could be making a comeback. After seven years, the government is thinking of printing the forgotten greenback once again. "We do contemplate ordering more $2 notes," said Federal Reserve spokesman David Skidmore. The Fed has been talking to the makers U.S. paper money, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, about the matter. The Federal Reserve, the supplier of cash to the nation's banks, had a huge pile of the $2 bills...

Sorry for the vanity post, but I was just counting the money in my wallet when I started to sneeze. Then it hit me: The terrorists are going to use our money against us!We all know how badly infested our paper money is normally. We don't really want to know where that dollar bill has been, thank you. But how many of us remember the Secret Service busting several groups of Iraqis over the last ten years for printing many millions in fake US paper currency? What has been the premise all along of our Russian "partners"? Remember how they...