Posted on 02/06/2002 4:39:25 PM PST by agitator
If you are hypothesizing a situation where American money is worthless, AND your property is worthless, then I think you're in one of those situations where you bend over and kiss yourself goodbye.-g-
To make a more simple example. Say I offer to buy your car for $1,000 today. You owner finance it and I am going to pay you $100 a month. Tomorrow, after the deal is done, let's say the dollar value plummets. That $1000 is now worth what $10 bucks was yesterday.
Now don't go confusing people. If money isn't a hunk of yellow metal, it's worthless. If you call it some funky mixture of letters and numbers, then it's a total conspiracy courtesy of the Bilderbergers, the Trilateral Commission, and The Illuminati.Money doesn't have to be backed by gold to be backed.
I got flamed for saying essentially the same (painfully obvious) thing many posts earlier. Maybe you and I can enroll in economics classes somewhere and get us some real learnin'.
Very true. However, consider what happens if a new 10-mile vein of gold is discovered in South Africa. Instead of the car being worth, say, 4 ounces of gold, it's now worth 48 ounces of gold because gold is so plentiful. Bingo, you have inflation and the gold coins and bricks that you've carefully horded over the years are now little more than pretty, rust-proof fishing weights.It can happen -- the discovery of a large gold deposit in South Africa toward the end of the 19th century shifted the rate of inflation from about -2% worldwide to +2% worldwide.
My guess, and it's only a guess, is that this was due more to inexperience and lack of information than anything that has to do with the backing. I also think that government has a hard time keeping its hands off the money supply, and government isn't responsive to market forces. We can argue about to what extent the Fed and the Bank of England were controlled by government - most of the people on this thread would argue that the Fed was *not* responsive to government and that was a bad thing.
I never have understood how the conspiracy thing worked. If they hate government, why do they want the Fed to be controlled by the government, e.g., Clinton and Rubin?
If Federal Reserve notes become useless, we could shift to gold, as you suggest, or barter, or silver, or platinum, or palladium, or e-money, or e-dinar, or PayPal, or Marlboro cigarettes, and we'd just keep on keeping on, because that's what we do.
Gladly. One good book for general reading is Golden Fetters : The Gold Standard and the Great Depression, 1919-1939. The praise for it lends support to my claim that this is mainstream thinking. You can also find plenty of scholarly works written over the last 50 years concluding that the gold standard worsened the Great Depression.Keep laughing, savedbygrace.
Your writing shows your grasp of the subject. Where are you studying? I have a good friend who's a well-known economist (well, at least among other economists) and would be happy to put you in touch with him if you e-mail me privately.Thanks for your good work!
The Constitution for the United States, Its Sources and Its Application
It Is Our Choice Who We Will Serve!
Thomas Jefferson once said:
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies . . . If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] . . . will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered . . . The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." -- Thomas Jefferson -- The Debate Over The Recharter Of The Bank Bill, (1809)
THEN:
The Makers of the Constitution foresaw the need of a national capital. The city of Washington, the District of Columbia, became the capital in 1800. There the work of the government is centered. Congress is given complete charge and control over it. Its residents have no vote. They, alone, of all the people in the United States, must obey laws, with the making of which, they have had nothing to do. They elect no representative to Congress; neither do they elect any city or district officer.
The money, which you use in all your business affairs, is made according to laws passed by Congress. Congress controls the printing of paper money, as well as, the coining of gold and silver money and the smaller coins of nickel and copper.
United States money, in the form of bills, is usually accepted, as equal to gold, in any civilized country. That is because the government keeps enough gold in the United States treasury, and in the banks, to meet all demands on it, for redeeming the paper money.
Congress alone may have money coined. No state may do so.
It is interesting to read the printing on several different kinds of bills . . . a "green-back" or United States note, a federal reserve note, a gold certificate, and a national bank note, perhaps, given by a bank in your own city.
One of these guarantees that the holder will be given the amount of the bill, in gold coin, upon demand; andin fact, gold can be obtained for any of them.
With the power of Congress, to have money made, goes its power to punish those who make false money. To make any coins or bills or stamps, in imitation of those, of the United States, is counterfeiting. Even if it cost a gang of counterfeiters twenty-five cents to make a coin, to pass for a dime, this would be counterfeiting and severely punishable in the United States courts.
References:
"THE CONSTITUTION OF OUR COUNTRY" By Frank A. Rexford
SUPERVISING CIVICS IN THE SCHOOLS OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK by Clara L. Carson, Chairman Of The Civics Department Of Wadleigh High School, City Of New York Copyright 1924, by AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY
NOW:
On December 23, 1913, the U.S. Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act, placing control of this nation's money into the hands of a private corporation. In 1920, the 66th Congress passed the Independent Treasury Act.
In 1921, the United States abolished the U.S. Treasury.
This allowed all United States money in the private Federal Reserve Banks to be kept separate from Federal Reserve Notes. To wit:
"That, if any moneys or bullion, constituting part of the trust funds or other special funds heretofore required by law to be kept in Treasury offices, shall be deposited with any Federal reserve bank, then such moneys or bullion shall by such bank be kept separate and distinct from the assets, funds, and securities of the Federal Reserve Bank and be held in the joint custody of the Federal Reserve Agent and the Federal Reserve Bank;"
From 1913, until 1933, under the authority of the U.S. Congress, a private corporation held control of this nation's GOLD. The U.S. paid interest on the use of their own gold, with more and more of its gold, ultimately ending in bankruptcy.
Inevitably, the bankers foreclosed.
On March 9, 1933, the U.S. declared bankruptcy, as expressed in President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Executive Orders 6073, 6102, 6111, and 6260.
President Roosevelt declared a National Emergency that made it unlawful for any citizen of the United States to own gold. Our bankrupt nation went into receivership and reorganized in favor of it's creditor and new owners, a private corporation of international bankers. (Since 1933, what is called the "United States Government" is a privately owned corporation of the Federal Reserve/IMF.)
Without a word of truth to the American people, all our good faith and credit was pledged as the surety for the debt by the same Congress who created the mechanism that allowed it to occur.
Those exercising the offices of the several States, in equal measure, knew such "De Facto Transitions" were unlawful and unauthorized, but sanctioned, implemented, and enforced the complete debauchment and the resulting "governmental, social, industrial economic change" in the "De Jure" States, and in United States of America.
References:
Public Law 94-564 Legislative History, pg. 5936, 594531 U.S.C.A. , 31431 U.S.C.A., 5112C.R.S. , 11-61-101C.R.S. 39-22-103.5
They were and are now under the delusion that they can do, both, directly and indirectly, what they were absolutely prohibited from doing. - Federalist Papers No. 44, Craig vs. Missouri, 4 Peters 903
On June 5, 1933, Congress passed HJR-192. House Joint Resolution 192 was passed to suspend the gold standard and abrogate the gold clause in the national constitution. Since then no one in America has been able to lawfully pay a debt. This resolution declared:
". . . Whereas the holding or dealing in gold affect the PUBLIC INTEREST, [STATE-Corporate Interest] and are therefore subject to proper regulation and restriction: and whereas the existing emergency has disclosed that provisions of obligations which purport to give the obligee a RIGHT TO REQUIRE PAYMENT in gold or a particular kind of coin or currency . . . ARE INCONSISTENT WITH THE DECLARED POLICY OF CONGRESS IN THE PAYMENT OF DEBTS . . . PAYMENT in gold or a particular kind of coin or currency, or in an amount in money of the united States measured thereby, IS DECLARED TO BE AGAINST PUBLIC POLICY: . . . AND . . . EVERY OBLIGATION, HERETOFORE OR HEREAFTER INCURRED, SHALL BE DISCHARGED upon payment, dollar for dollar, in any coin or currency which, at the time of payment, is legal tender for public and private debts . . ."
"All coins and currencies of the United States (including Federal Reserve Notes and circulating notes of Federal Reserve banks and national banking associations) heretofore, or hereafter, coined or issued, SHALL BE LEGAL TENDER for all debts, public and private, public charges, taxes, duties, and dues, . . . " - House Joint Resolution 192, 73d Congress, Sess. I, Ch. 48, June 5, 1933 (Public Law No. 10 ).
Note: "payment of debt" is now against Congressional and "public policy" and henceforth, "Every obligation . . . Shall be discharged."
As a result of HJR-192, and from that day forward (June 5, 1933), no one in this nation has been able to lawfully pay a debt or lawfully own anything. The only thing one can do, is tender in transfer of debts, with the debt being perpetual. The suspension of the gold standard, and prohibition against paying debts, removed the substance for our common law to operate on, and created a void as far as the law is concerned. This substance was replaced with a "PUBLIC NATIONAL CREDIT SYSTEM" where debt is "LEGAL TENDER" money.
The Federal Reserve calls it "monetized debt."
HJR-192 was implemented immediately. The day after President Roosevelt signed the resolution, the treasury offered the public new government securities, minus the traditional "payable in gold" clause.
The Judiciary branch of government has the power to correct this fraud upon the people.
Yet, On May 23, 1933, Congressman, Louis T. McFadden, brought formal charges against the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Bank system, the Comptroller of the Currency and the Secretary of the United States Treasury for criminal acts.
The petition for Articles of Impeachment was, thereafter, referred to the Judiciary Committee, and has yet to be acted upon.
In 1965 Congress passed the "Coinage Act of 1965" completely debasing the Constitutional Coin; (gold & silver, i.e. Dollar), U.S. vs. Marigold, 50 U.S. 560, 13 L. Ed. 257.
At the signing of the Coinage Act on July 23, 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson stated, in his Press Release that:
"When I have signed this bill before me, we will have made the first fundamental change in our coinage in 173 years. The Coinage Act of 1965 supercedes the Act of 1792. And that Act had the title: An Act Establishing a Mint and Regulating the Coinage of the United States."
"Now I will sign this bill to make the first change in our coinage system, since the 18th Century. To those members of Congress, who are here on this historic occasion, I want to assure you that in making this change from the 18th Century we have no idea of returning to it."
In 1967, in a brazenly unconstitutional act, Congress repudiated its obligation to redeem silver certificates in silver coin or bullion.
In the book, "Pieces of Eight," Dr. Edwin Vieira writes:
"On June 24, 1968 the United States, finally, abandoned the silver standard applicable since Queen Anne's proclamation of 1704, and embraced a system of fiat bills of credit (e.g. alleged currency) based on irredeemable, legal tender, Federal Reserve Notes and debased, legal tender, clad coinage, never to be declared as lawful money of the United States." Through misguided trust, our duly elected sworn public officials took our lawful currency and changed it to unconstitutional bills of credit (irredeemable Federal Reserve Notes), which continues to circulate only because of the public's continuing, misplaced confidence in these notes. The word "legal tender" on today's notes are not a magic incantation; they impart NO intrinsic value to money, nor do they entitle the bearer to exchange these notes for lawful specie. They are a throwback to feudal days when the sovereign could, and did, issue a proclamation declaring what was to be used as "money" whenever he wanted to debase the circulating medium.
INSCRIPTIONS ON FEDERAL RESERVE NOTES
1913 . . . TO . . . 1934
"Redeemable in Gold on demand at the United States Treasury or in Lawful money, at any Federal Reserve Bank." "Will pay to the bearer on demand one dollar."
1934 . . . TO . . . 1968
"This note is legal tender for all debts public and private and is redeemable in lawful money at the United States Treasury, or any Federal Reserve bank." "Will pay to the bearer on demand one dollar."
1968 . . . TO . . . 1998
"This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private"
THERE IS NO PROMISE TO PAY, NOR IS A NOTE A DOLLAR!!
And the New $100 "off center" Franklin bill issued in 1998 and the other "off center" bills issued since are no longer even against a Federal Reserve Bank, the Seal is that of the Federal Reserve System . . .
US currency (notes, bills of credit) was always to be redeemable in United States specie currency; first issued 76 years after the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, which only mandates gold and silver coin as currency in substance, not form.
Early Federal Reserve Notes were redeemable, but over the years, the wording on these notes regarding the promise and obligation has been gradually changed untill 1968. Since that time our "monetized debt" money offers NO OBLIGATION AND THEY PROMISE NOTHING!!!!
Since 1913, there has been more than just a gradual and accelerating erosion of the alleged dollar's purchasing power in our society. For the privilege of using these notes of private corporate debt as our "money", we were absolved from the responsibility of paying our debts at law.
We were placed in the position of having the "benefit" of limited liability for payment of debt under the jurisdiction of Admiralty/Maritime law (the law merchant/commercial jurisdiction, UCC) in all controversies.
For the privilege of using monetized debt, we also lost the rights secured to us by our Organic Constitutions, both National and State.
Under the law, merchant, you have no rights. We are now using as "lawful money", worthless notes of private corporate debt, backed by our own credit that we can't own, and for this "privilege" we are held to compelled performance under the statutes . . .
To make it simple, as long as this nation's lawful currency is notes of private corporate debt, (bills of credit . . . money backed by no substance) it will remain impossible to ever repay a debt, thereby keeping us and our posterity in debt into perpetuity.
Has Thomas Jefferson's prophecy come to pass? Under the contrived bankruptcy we have lost the right to challenge the constitutionally of the statutes.
We have lost our law . . .
We can own nothing . . .
We have become slaves of the corporation on the land we once owned . . .
And . . . our children are waking up homeless on the continent their forefathers conquered.
MURDER IN THE GOLD MARKET -- Dec. 6, 1999
by Sherman H Skolnick
The founder and major owner of an international financial empire, active in clandestine gold trading, was murdered. This occurred at a key point in the gold market.
Highly secretive, Edmond J. Safra died in a pre-dawn incident when two alleged masked intruders reportedly got into the heavily-secure building in Monaco, and started a fire in or near his two-story penthouse apartment. His copper-domed dwelling is atop a six-story pink stucco building containing the branch of the bank he founded and of which he was the major owner, the Republic National Bank of New York and its subsidiaries such as Safra Republic Holdings of Luxembourg. He lived a short distance from the Grimaldi family royal palace and the Monte Carlo Casino.
Safra was officially a resident of the tax-haven principality notorious for its gold smuggling and its shoreline docks and warehouses used to transfer contraband worldwide. [1] Ships, some reportedly without names or identification, load and unload there.
Monaco police are puzzled as to the apparent absence of his bodyguard. Was it an inside job? Safra died, suffocated from the blaze. Was the latest arson ingredient used, namely, rocket propellant, which burns furiously and rapidly leaving little trace?
Formed in 1966, Safra's banking and precious metals empire was founded and built primarily after the creation of the State of Israel, by Safra acting as the savvy money laundry expert for wealthy Sephardic Jews desiring to extract their fortunes as they were fleeing Arab countries where they resided. Safra was reportedly an expert on gold smuggling and the use of the precious metal in secret financing of covert operations, such as political assassinations, by intelligence agencies, such as the American CIA.[2]
During 1999, gold bullion had declined to about 252 dollars per ounce, a record low in recent years, more than 30 dollars per oounce below the COST OF PRODUCTION of the most efficient gold mines, those in Canada. South African mines, going so deep in the earth and costly producers, complained they were being ruined. One such mine went into bankruptcy .
Gold bullion prices had a momentous upswing after September, 1999, when most of the European Central Banks made a surprise announcement that they are deferring for five years dumping of gold which previously they had done, supposedly because they did not like to have gold in their reserves anymore. Just prior to that, the Bank of England held a gold auction supposedly of some of its reserves. Actually, the Bank of England was offering gold owned only on paper, not actual gold in their possession. Upon the downfall of the Soviets, corrupt former Commissars stole thousands of tons of the Soviet gold treasury and made a crooked deal with the Dutch beholden to the Vatican.
A Dutch bank octopus, Algemene Bank Nederland, ABN, has reportedly been using that stolen gold to buy numerous banks in 15 U.S. cities. ABN's American flagship is La Salle National Bank of Chicago, a long notorious haven for secret accounts to bribe state and federal judges through offshore fund parking. The Dutch parked this former Soviet gold at or near an airport in Switzerland, for swift, clandestine shipments anywhere on the globe.
Basically, the Bank of England was thus offering by auction Soviet gold they did not own. When currency and gold pirate, George Soros, found out, he began an attack on the Bank of England, whereby gold shot up to almost 330 dollars per ounce. This was caused, in part, by Soros pressing for actual DELIVERY of the gold offered by the Bank of England, on paper, sold to Soros and others. The possibility of demand for DELIVERY is a key part of commodity trading, although actual delivery is seldom demanded. Caught in the middle of the squeezing of the Bank of England and other "short sellers", those selling borrowed or stolen gold not yet in their possession, was reportedly Republic National Bank and Safra's gang of gold smugglers and worldwide criminals.
One well-informed commentator on the rigging of the gold market, calling his essay "I Accuse", said the Republic National Bank was part of an anti-trust monopoly fraudulently forcing down the price of gold, damaging gold mine shareholders and various smaller nations.[3]
NO HONOR AMONG THESE THIEVES!
Thus using his inside knowledge, George Soros launched his attack, thereby fingering and blackmailing the criminal operations of the Bank of England and an accomplice, Goldman Sachs brokerage. Realizing gold is the "killer metal", and his opponents were relying on stolen gold not in their possession, Soros apparently was using the two-faced Safra and Safra's reported precious metals assassins.
Entering into this picture was Alan Greenspan and his highly conspiratorial PRIVATE BANK called the Federal Reserve, used in efforts to rescue those caught in the short selling trap worked by Soros. Soros was demanding huge DELIVERY from Goldman Sachs, a major gold contract peddler. To force down the price of gold by criminal means, Goldman Sachs and others had sold short subject to DELIVERY, the equivalent of TEN YEARS OF GOLDMINE PRODUCTION worldwide. And Safra and gang were in the middle. A default of a short selling contract results in the "long" buyer owning everything of the short seller. Soros was about to own Goldman Sachs and have an armlock on the Bank of England.
So Goldman Sachs reportedly was considering the invoking of a seldom-used contract provision, "force majeure", that an Act of God, horrendous storm, or such, made fulfilling the gold contract impossible. Of course, under the facts, this would be a ridiculous assertion by Goldman Sachs as aided by Greenspan. [Critics call him REDSPAN, since he acts like a rotten Soviet Commissar.]
To again fraudulently force down the price of gold, in December, 1999, the Bank of England conducted another "phantom" gold auction, purporting to sell what they did not possess. That is, the gold stolen by the Moscow criminals and handled by the Dutch with the aid of the Vatican and the Swiss. Just as gold started to collapse again, Edmond J. Safra was murdered.
Not the first time such an assassination happened. At a key point in gold treachery in the 1970s, a major gold promoter, who tangled with the paper-money crowd like the Rockefellers, was thrown to his death from the window of a building in Indianapolis, Indiana.
A flood of stories has developed. Such as, Safra was murdered by the Russian mafiya, because he double-crossed them on Russian ruble gambling. And that Safra's gang were going to finger the Russians with specifics of how the Moscow bandits embezzled billions of dollars from U.S. foreign aid and the International Monetary Fund, and others, and reportedly washed the sums through Safra's money ships.
Then there are the stories that the accused dope money laundry, Bancomer, a Mexican bank empire now spread out across the world, was reportedly criminally implicated with Safra and gang. And this, jointly with the money laundry experts disguising dope money as "soybeans" and "foreign currency" and "gold" dealing, on the Chicago Board of Trade, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the Chicago Stock Exchange, and the Chicago Board Options Exchange.
The more likely explanation? That the French CIA, operating in their neighbor Monaco, snuffed out Safra. Remember, the French are great fanciers of gold. When real problems develop in Monaco, the authorities there somehow call upon their neighbor, the French police. Yet, in Monaco they have some 300 police officers for about 25,000 residents---a higher proportion than in nearby Nice, France. Once in a position with the secret political police to understand such things, Safra doesn't laugh anymore. Ha! Ha!
Post 92 is responsive to my assertion that there are no historical examples of deflations caused by the built in requirement that the money supply needs to expand on roughly the same basis as the economy or there will be deflation and my further point that deflationary examples in history of the structural character have not been material. Cobalt says well look at the Depressions of the 1890's and 1930's and follows up with: "In Sayer's history of the Bank of England, he details how Montagu Norman deliberately kept millions of pounds of gold off the books to continue deflating the money supply because Britain decided to return to the pre-war exchange rate despite the fact that the money supply had increased during the war. This lead to massive unemployment and a moribund economy. Similar actions were taken by the US Fed - using open market actions to "mop up" "excess liquidity.""
All of these examples however in a perverse way support my position in favor of a specie money system. I do not favor, a gold standard like the one in use in the United States prior to Bretton Woods, that led to the events of the 1890's and 1930's. My vision of a specie backed currency is that the currency is a receipt for a specific quantity of gold having a nominal trading value in the monetary system. The receipt would trade at par with physical gold. The physical gold is the money, pure and simple. The so called gold standard system like the US system, or the Mexican system, or a number of others over the course of history is no better than what we have now.
Whenever you have the government fixing the process, you have significant rates of inflation and deflation because individuals are not able to outwit the market.
Norman's effort to adjust the exchange rate by holding gold out of the monetary base is just another example of a different kind--in the US system, you just had Congress deciding that the value of the gold was now different and doing it by fiat.
The whole point is that you can't have the government doing anything with the money system except serving as guarantor that the paper is really a receipt for real gold that exists in the government warehouse or you wind up with bureacrats who can't make a living in the real world running your economic system with predictably disasterous results.
Colbalt ends #92 with the old fallacy about how there is not enough specie to go around (Colbalt says "gold" but maybe silver ultimately has some monetary role). That is just plain wrong. Colbalt and the politicians just don't want to face the fact that gold probably has a true economic value, because of its perfection as money, of maybe $100,000 an ounce. No economic, policy, political or other reason why you can't pay for your $5.00 ham sandwich with a coin containing 5/100,000 of an ounce of gold (not very heavy or difficult to carry around either). Practically, in the modern commercial world, you charge the 5/100000 ounce bill for the sandwich on your master card and pay your bill with a check for 1000/100000 ounces at the end of the month. Why is this such a problem?
In post 94, Cobalt now reaches the real relevant issues about money--how do you structure the system. At one point in my life when I though maybe the world could be saved, I gave some thought to this and if you were really determined to sit down and structure a system that would work and be the perfect money system, I went around the structure issue a lot. The answer is you don't back components of the money system, the gold is the money. And the next morning after you adopt this, the market tells you what the value of the gold is--and it is probably a lot more than anyone would predict--but so what? The unit in which exchange prices for goods in the consumer economy are based (the gold dollar if you will) is 1/100000 of an ounce of gold--that what it is--the market fixed it there. And when you get your ham sandwich, you have to hand somebody 5/100000 of an ounce of gold--so what? That's what the guy with the ham sandwich priced his sandwich at.
The end of post 94 is really a lead in to post 95 which is complimentary of my almost unreadable description of the problem Doug Noland is describing--what do you do about these commercial transactions, or derivative bets on the direction of commodities or interest rates or whatever. Again, the real answer is now simple. This base monetary unit (hypothetically) 1/100,000 ounce of gold, is the measure for everything.
The "private money" that resulted from the loan or derivative transaction is not a demand on the physical specie until the transaction unwinds at which point the profit or loss is a demand on the specie but that amount is a small fraction of the transaction and is the measure of the economic production that resulted (or the economic cost to be paid) and it then gets banked or paid in specie and is part of the GDP which has to be supported by the monetary aggregates of specie (which maybe grows in value by 4 1/2% per year of which 3% is supported by more gold we dig out of the ground and the remaining 1 1/2% by deflation). A high class problem if your economy is growing by 4 1/2% every year.
And most important is the answer to number 95--this specie money setup is not vunerable to collapses caused by excesses like those Mr. Noland describes--so I don't have to respond to Colbalt's rhetorical question about what I would do about it. As for Doug, I cannot speak--ask him. If he has an answer, I have not been able to get it out of him. But I think his analyisis is sound. It is only a matter of time until a supersize LTCM brings the monetary system down.
I suppose as a politician I might think that the government could restructure the money system tomorrow morning. But to do that, the people who run the government would have to give up the Fed which is really the foundation of their power and I doubt they will do it. You could take the gold which the Fed holds and turn it, and the circulation bullion, of which there is really quite a bit in this country, into a specie circulation system which would work just fine. The government is going to let the system go down before it does that.
From what I understand on the latter matter, is that when needed government barrows money from the fed, at a pre-determined intrest rate, money which in fact congress has the power to print itself. It seems very wrong to me to pay intrest to a 3rd party as it were, for something that could be "created" interest free.
It seems to me that you are arguing that due to gold's relative scarcity, if the nations of the world decided to switch to - I think this is your suggestion - 100% backed money, e.g., money as the functional equivalent of deposit receipts - that gold would then have a much, much higher market value.
The $100,000 seems high to me, BWDIK?
Here is a free market argument for free market money backed by gold, which you might like.
http://www.mises.org/journals/scholar/Blockgold.PDF
I think switching regimes would be more deflationary than you realize.
"Do banks get their money Free from the FRS"?
Again, I can't decipher what you are asking. Are you asking about their currency, or about loans they might take? If you mean currency, they don't pay anything above face value for currency. No different than what you do. Perhaps you are fixating on the "Federal Reserve Note" legend on currency. The BP&E could change it overnight to "US Notes" (the old Greenback issue name) or to something like "American Currency" and it would be exactly the same as it is now with the FRN legend. The only loss is that we wouldn't be entertained by all conpsiracy theories that focus on the FRN legend, and that would be a big loss. The vast majority of money banks deal with is all log entry anyway. It's possible for a bank to avoid dealing in currency entirely.
As for another possible meaning to your question, banks don't have to borrow from the Fed at all, so they don't have to pay the Fed anything. Unless they borrow at the discount window.
And what price would the FRS pay if they screwed us over on the interest?
I have no idea what this means. "Screwed us over on the interest"? What interest? The Fed doesn't pay us interest, and we don't pay the Fed interest. Americans pay interest to the Treasury, in the form of taxes, on the debt instruments issued by the Treasury at the behest of Congress. The only interest the Fed collects is the interest on T-bills that they own. Just like you do, if you buy T-bills.
Can we vote them out? The FRS does not ultimately answer to us or the gov.
Fed governors are appointed; some, if not all, by the President. You need to do some basic fact checking before you post.
I don't argue the $100,000 is a real number--I don't know and suspect we could not devise a method to figure out what the real number is. But so what if the real number is $100,000 an ounce--or some other number. Makes no difference. Once you got there, in a stable economy, there is likely not going to be much movement.
There have been some honorable men in politics over the course of history who might have done something much like what I advocate. The reason they didn't is because of the $100,000 number and the total volume of gold available. They were not able to intellectually grasp the concept that the $100,000 is just a number--the point is to have a real asset with a market value number that is independent of any act of government or the politicians. So that the end result of any economic transaction has as its ultimate recourse, the seller takes the net in gold coins--the number of gold coins is not significant because the value of the gold is determined by the marketplace.
In fact, I really suspect that the $100,000 might be low, not high but who knows. Your understanding of my basis for value is correct--the world; the aggregate economy; will value gold higher because it alone is capable of being the non government, non contract, self enforcing foundation of the money system. It adds value.
It will be argued that other commodities could serve equally well. The wise person will understand Revelation 13:17 as describing an individual computer account driven monetary system. I suspect that the Anti-Christ will use oil as a basis for determining the unit value. Problem with oil is that it would have no utility if and when an alternate energy system is developed at which point your money system would collapse. I don't see any other commodity that works like gold does.
Click on Kitco.com and you will learn that your $300 is a little low also as spot gold has continued to tick up after the New York close.
Money, as in the monetary base, didn't go anywhere. But it was only a fraction of the money supply. "Credit money", the pyramid built atop the monetary base via banks extending loans, can contract, and that's what "disappeared" at a 30% rate over the period of 1930-33. When banks failed in the 30s, there was no deposit insurance to keep depositors from being wiped out. And the Fed didn't attempt to get solvent banks to take over failing banks.
I haven't read this book, but it seems he's saying that the "silly old gold standard" kept the brilliant economists of the day from manipulating the economy by pumping in millions of "dollars" of fiat paper to "bring us out of the depression." Oh, wow. That is so brilliant. However, it begs the question, rather than winning the debate. How droll.
I know you're not going to be convinced by anything I write here but listen to this: In the late 1800s, a $20 gold piece would buy a good men's suit.
Today, that same $20 gold piece, "traded" for FRNs, will buy . . . a good men's suit. Now pull out $20 in paper money and go shopping. You might come back with three or four pairs of socks. Walk on.
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