I knew someone who worked in DC during Sept. 2008 financial crisis. It was a very real world wide shake up. A group of legistrators, of which Pence was one, tasked this person to follow the money and come back and explain our current (2008) monetary system, under all the layers of laws and banks and markets and federal reserve, so these guys could have some idea of what they might do to save the dollar in a world wide free fall especially if China called in our debt.
This person, who is way smarter than me, explained with much shock and disbelief there is no there there.
It’s all about faith. As long as the world believes in the dollar we are good, but don’t go looking at laws or financial records or try to trace something back to the bank because there is nothing behind the US currency to back it.
Go ahead follow the trail, if you can get to the truth you will find that the dollar is only worth what they think it is. And now along comes President Trump.
God bless President Trump! A stable genius who has a degree in Economics to boot.
WWG1WGA
That’s part of the fun. There aren’t going to be any Fed chairmen coming in and reading Mr. Trump the riot act about monetary policy like they did with W. He won’t up with it put.
Your friend overlooked the federal government’s taxing power. You have to have dollars to pay your taxes.
The ability of taxing power to give value to the dollar was an insight of our first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton.
He converted the crushing Revolutionary War debt into an asset and restored the value of the nearly dead Continental Dollar by using the taxing power in the Constitution to create a funded public debt that investors were willing to buy into. He also used a gold standard, but it involved a very small amount of gold.
The taxing power newly granted by the Constitution gave people faith that they would get paid and that the American dollar therefore had value. That still exists today, despite many people not realizing it.
Of course that is true of all currencies, unless they are based on an established value like gold... e.g. Bitcoin - although I would avoid it. In fact, everything your eye can see is only worth what someone thinks it is worth.