* Sarah Palin is not a populist. She is a Conservative who is popular.
* The word is spelled 'orthogonal'
* Money differs from currency in that money must be a store of value. Therefore only Gold and Silver are true money.
* Everything else that pretends to be money is in fact some form of IOU. This is why Gold and Silver are the only legal forms of money according to the Constitution. Letters of credit such as today's non-Gold-backed FRN (Federal Reserve Note, also known as the dollar) are explicitly unconstitutional.
* There was a Supreme Court case in 1884: Julliard vs. Greenman: where the decision gave the Federal government justification to create a fiat currency. Since this decision went unchallenged it is now considered settled law - despite the fact that it is in direct conflict with the Constitution which forbids States from using anything except Gold and Silver as legal tender. This decision effectively made new constitutional law out of nothing.
* Alexander Hamilton was an interventionist and a protectionist: yet he certainly did not believe in nor did he advocate perpetual debt as the foundation of a currency supply.
* Fiat is the money currency of slaves. After the great devaluation (sometime later this year) everyone in America will know this. Buy Gold and Silver. Your liberty depends upon it.
Where do you find that? Art 1, Sect 8 says (US) Congress can coin Money, but makes no mention of from what. Art 1, Sect 10 addresses bills of credit and non-gold/silver based payments, but begins with "No STATE shall".
The problem (particularly with gold): The value of the stuff is totally based on psychology and psychiatry and not on economics or physics.
There is no practical use for the stuff. Nobody makes tooth fillings out of it anymore and there are cheaper and better metals for electrical contacts and bracelets. Oh, yeah, wait a minute, there IS in fact one potential use for gold for which nothing else would do as well. Half again denser than lead, soft, and totally inert, it would be the perfect metal for waterfowl shot. You could kill ducks and geese all day long with 2.75" shells and #7 shot.
Trying to base money on gold or silver caused gigantic grief all during the 1700s and 1800s and into the 1900s before the idea was finally abandoned prior to WW-II.
Nonetheless that is precisely how our present system works and how it was in fact intended to work. What Ellen Brown is saying is, if you're going to change the system change it, but don't screw around and start another global depression.