Posted on 04/06/2023 6:40:14 AM PDT by Red Badger
As America faces the twin threats of inflation and bank failures, three U.S. congressmen introduced a pivotal sound money bill that would enable the Federal Reserve note “dollar” to regain stable footing for the first time in more than half a century.
Rep. Alex Mooney (R-WV) - joined by Reps. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) and Paul Gosar (R-AZ) - introduced H.R. 2435, the “Gold Standard Restoration Act,” to facilitate the repegging of the volatile Federal Reserve note to a fixed weight of gold bullion.
Upon passage of H.R. 2435, the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve are given 24 months to publicly disclose all gold holdings and gold transactions, after which time the Federal Reserve note “dollar” would be formally repegged to a fixed weight of gold at its then-market price.
Federal Reserve notes would become fully redeemable for and exchangeable with gold at the new price, with the U.S. Treasury and its gold reserves backstopping Federal Reserve Banks as guarantor.
Monetary experts have noted a return to a gold standard would substantially curtail the economic damage caused by inflation, runaway federal debt, and monetary system instability.
“A gold standard would protect against Washington's irresponsible spending habits and the creation of money out of thin air," said Rep. Mooney in a statement.
"Prices would be shaped by economics rather than the instincts of bureaucrats. No longer would American families, businesses, and the economy as a whole be at the mercy of the Federal Reserve and reckless Washington spenders.”
The Gold Standard Restoration Act also makes several findings as to the harm the Federal Reserve System has inflicted on everyday Americans - particularly since President Richard Nixon “temporarily suspended” gold backing of America's monetary system in 1971.
H.R. 2435 points out: “The Federal Reserve note has lost more than 40 percent of its purchasing power since 2000, and 97 percent of its purchasing power since the passage of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913.”
Historians have observed that the elimination of gold redeemability from the monetary system freed central bankers and federal government officials from accountability when they expand the money supply, fund government deficits though trillion-dollar bond purchases, or otherwise manipulate the economy.
“At times, including 2021 and 2022, Federal Reserve actions helped create inflation rates of 8 percent or higher, increasing the cost of living for many Americans to untenable levels…enrich[ing] the owners of financial assets while… endanger[ing] the jobs, wages, and savings of blue-collar workers,” H.R. 2435 states.
Notably, Rep. Mooney's bill would also require full disclosure of all central bank and U.S. government gold holdings and gold-related financial transactions over the last 6 decades - a seemingly taboo subject surrounded by mystery and deception.
“To enable the market and market participants to arrive at the fixed Federal Reserve note dollar-gold parity in an orderly fashion... the Secretary and the Federal Reserve shall each make publicly available… all holdings of gold, with a report of any purchases, sales, swaps, leases, and any other financial transactions involving gold, since the temporary suspension in August 15th, 1971, of gold redeemability obligations under the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944.”
In the years leading up to Nixon's panicked “temporary suspension” of gold redeemability, abusive U.S. deficit spending and currency debasement had prompted many foreign central banks to turn in their Federal Reserve notes for gold.
However, this disgorgement of America's gold holdings was largely conducted in secret.
That's why H.R. 2435 also requires the Fed and the Treasury to disclose “all records pertaining to redemptions and transfers of United States gold in the 10 years preceding the temporary suspension in August 15, 1971, of gold redeemability obligations.”
U.S. sound money groups and industry leaders are cheering Mooney's actions.
"Government cannot continue to spend and print on a massive scale without producing existential threats to the currency and our economy," said Lawrence W. Reed, president emeritus of the Foundation for Economic Education.
"The gold standard never failed America, bad ideas and bad politicians did. If we do nothing, disaster awaits us just as it drowned earlier civilizations that spent and inflated their way to ruin," Reed continued.
“Today's debt-based fiat-money system serves primarily to support big government and wealthy financial insiders - while the Federal Reserve's serial policy of currency debasement punishes savers and wage earners,” explained Stefan Gleason, President of the Sound Money Defense League and Money Metals Exchange.
“A return to gold redeemability would arrest the problem of inflation, restrain the growth of wasteful and inefficient government, and kick off an exciting new era of American prosperity,” Gleason concluded.
The full text of Rep. Mooney's gold standard bill can be found here. It was introduced on March 30, 2023, and referred to the House Committee on Financial Services.
Loses 3-432.
Very unpopular with the donor community.
Thinking of adding gold to the portfolio making it about 7%, any thoughts.
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Good idea but good luck with it...
Recently TD decided to roll out “TD Precious Metals Secure Storage”. This is a scheme where supposedly you can buy precious metals and store it at TD (with the concept being you can withdraw your purchase at any time). That’s all wonderful... the problem is that if you want to to buy a 1 kg bar of silver right now, you are likely to find that it’s listed as “sold out” on the website. You can, however, buy the TD secure storage version of the same bar for the same price and this obviously is an attempt to turn physical precious metals into paper precious metals... and no doubt, at some point they will discontinue shipping precious metals and ONLY offer TD secure storage. At that point, it’s all entirely a paper game.
Get ‘em while you can.....if you don’t hold it, you don’t own it.
It’s a great idea. I support it 100%.
Of course, all debts will have be written down or written off (which I also support) - think of it as a “great reset”.
The donor community will not like this - at all.
Hopefully, those responsible have their bags packed.
WRONG. This happened because the USA was running big deficits at home, running the vietnam war, while trying to be the world's reserve currency. Thus we were flooding the world with US Dollars - and foreigners rightly suspected the USA would be forced to default/devalue - which is exactly what Nixon did. Its our own fiscal lack of discipline which drained the USA of gold
This is EXACTLY what a gold standard prevents - excessive progressive spending at home, and empire abroad.
If if you think by NOT having a gold standard, we are going to avoid a reckoning with our massive debt, all these lovers of Soviet-style monetary central planning will be wrong about that too
I’m in favor of some kind of gold standard (although I’d prefer a balanced budget amendment more).
But a gold standard has to be in place before Congress starts to wildly overspend (and throw dollars everywhere), not after. So that horse has left the barn. That’s the way I see it. And since I studied chemistry and not economics, I well could be wrong.
This is going nowhere.”
Ridiculous argument.
It is precisely the irresponsible “printing” of all the dollars in history not tethered to a gold standard that is the problem that has funded the military industrial complex for their corrupt stupid wars.
Of which Ukraine is the latest iteration of a stupid war to protect their money laundering corruption racket.
The dollar will simple have to reset its value in Gold terms which will be much higher than it is now.
If Gold and Silver is good enough for Abraham, it is good enough for me!
Mooney, my Rep, is the consummate carpetbagger politician.
Even if it passes in the House and the Senate by some improbable series of miracles, Biden will veto it, as a gold-dollar standard would:
1. make the US a competitor for gold with China, and
2. would halt the carefully made plans to disassemble US piece by piece.
Since 2000? How about since 2020?
I studied economics, and its a fake social science. It should be an objective study of how people and society react to monetary incentives, but its mostly used by politicians to lie to people.
A scientist's / engineer's mind without any pre-conceived notions or ideological baggage does much better understanding how the economy works.
The reason the dollar and not the Yuan is the world currency is because the US has never been concerned with running a current account deficit. (Not balancing its trade.) There has often been a lot of complaints about the deficit, but it has always been so much smoke. Dollars are freely traded around the world and their value is set by the global marketplace, not the US government. This can never happen with the yuan or any other currency. That’s because every time the Chinese have tried to float the yuan there has been a flood of yuan into dollars as people in China try to protect the value of their money by changing it into a non-managed currency. If we suddenly became concerned with balancing trade then countries would not have either a trade medium, the dollar, or a reliable (compared to their own currency) store of value.
Having billions of dollars overseas that never come home to the US is the equivalent of having an interest free loan of that amount. Thus, the lack of any real concern about the trade imbalance. Anyone in office who is hot on the topic either doesn’t understand how things work or they are just stomping for votes from people who don’t understand how the economy works. (Yes, even our favorite politicians do that. For them it’s as necessary as breathing is to the rest of us.)
Perhaps the nation should have a balanced fiscal year amendment wherein elected federal constitutional officers would become ineligible for government-based employment after their existing terms end if a fiscal year during their current term of office ends in the red.
The only solution would be to guarantee that the U.S. would exchange Dollars for gold at a ridiculously high rate, say $10,000/oz, instead of the roughly $35/oz exchange rate the U.S. previously tried to maintain.
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The bill says the exchange rate would be set by markets, not the old $35 price. Price now $2,019.97 per oz and $64.94 per gram.
Indeed.
“you can buy precious metals and store it at TD”
I have a 1957 $1 Silver Certificate issued by the US government
It says it is redeemable for silver. I wonder how much.
China is buying gold like no tomorrow. So the RMB is safe because there is a lot of gold to back it. The two are not tied togther but the could be at the stoke of Xi’s pen.
Meanwhile, the US is emptying its SPR into China’s SPR. But nowhere is anyone talking about the US government buying any amount of gold - or silver for that matter.
Then peg a “new” dollar (e.g. silver certificates) to X% of an ounce of gold?
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Right now it would exchange as ~ <2000:1
If the US did as the bill would have it, that rate would climb steeply.
Inflation is the result of trying to play catch up.
Better money won’t stop the efforts of the economically critical such as nurses from trying to overcome inflation by getting their employers to pay more.
The people in the oil and gas industry are getting more for their fuel and other economic players need to accept that.
If you think it's not too late to put that genie back into the bottle no matter what, then you're going to be in for a rude awakening.
As for why Nixon ended the Gold Standard internationally, here's a light read for you:
https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/gold-convertibility-ends
International efforts were also made to stem a run on gold. A run in the London gold market sent the price to $40 an ounce on October 20, 1960, exacerbating the threat to the system. In response, the London Gold Pool was formed on November 1, 1961. The pool consisted of a group of eight central banks (Great Britain, West Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, France, and the United States). In order to keep the price of gold at $35 an ounce, the group agreed to pool gold reserves to intervene in the London gold market in order to maintain the Bretton Woods system. The pool was successful for six years until another gold crisis ensued. The British pound sterling devalued and another run on gold occurred, and France withdrew from the pool. The pool collapsed in March 1968
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