Not Legal Tender
Posted on 11/15/2007 12:05:00 PM PST by smoothsailing
Not Legal Tender
Guess you didn’t read one thing I posted, or any of the links. If you had you wouldn’t be spouting such absurd nonsense. No one has been duped into anything—except you, the government sure has you duped.
Every individual who had anything to do with the “raid” is a government thug, and taking the property of that business is just plain theft. Nobody has been convicted of anything—as far as I know, no one has been arrested or charged with anything either.
Hank
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The FBI actually raided Sunshine and took all the metals being stored there against the certificates.
I’m not sure what rationale the FBI had for this but I suppose that if they say it is evidence of a crime then they could confiscate it. Like most evidence it will be returned when they don’t need it anymore. Like several years from now. For most of the people who have the certificates it won’t be a problem, the silver and gold will only go up in value. It seems to me that the Government could have simply bought one of the certificates and then they would have had all the evidence they would need. This seems to me to be VERY HEAVY HANDED!
A government that can do anything for you can do anything to you.
Fair enough. Disney Dollars, McDonald's Bucks, etc., etc. all share one thing in common, when one takes the time to examine them. (I'm using these two as specific examples, as I happen to have samples of both at hand, and both are presently situated directly before me, in front of the keyboard.)
Specifically, they all bear cautionaries somewhere on their respective surfaces to the effect of "Not Legal Tender," or "Only Usable At The Following Locations," or some similar construction designated to warn the bearer that, no, in plain point of fact, they are NOT legal currency in the commonly accepted sense. (i.e., interchangeable with standard U.S. paper money and/or coin.)
The "Liberty Dollars" bearing Ron Paul's image include no such cautionary, which might reasonably lead one to believe that their issuer(s) genuinely DO mean them to be taken as such; in which case, all relevant federal counterfeiting laws and statutes doubtless apply.
Hope that helps.
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I apologize if jumping in here in answering part of your question sounds rude, I don’t mean to be rude at all. You were not asking me the question, but, At one time states made their own currency, the federal government took over that responsibility. I am not sure but I think the several states still have the right to make currency as long as it is gold or silver, none of them do. Having a certain amount of gold or silver does not make it legal tender. Legal tender means that by law a company or individual has to except payment in that medium for debts. There is no obligation on the part of any person or company to accept payment in Liberty Dollars. If offered a liberty dollar in payment of a dept the person or company can simply refuse it and demand “legal tender” which in this country is our paper money.
All that being said there are some people who will accept liberty dollars or other precious metal coinage as “tender”, and that is perfectly legal. Silver and gold are legal to use as tender but are not “Legal Tender”. I hope I have not confused the issue here. Using precious metal coins is like any other barter transaction. Bank checks and personal checks and even money orders are not legal tender but most people accept them but no one has to. There are many mom and pop stores or gas stations that post signs that they do not accept checks. There is no difference between the personal check you write and the real silver or gold coin you may try to spend. If the person you owe money accepts the coin then you have paid your debt the same as it would be paid if they accepted your check or the title to your car.
Above and beyond the call of duty. Excellent work; seriously. ;)
I think you need to dig up a basic business school textbook that gives summaries of the various scams that even highly rated auditors have put their stamps of approval on. The ease of fraud is why it’s extremely imprudent to invest a substantial amount of your net worth in one, or even a handful, of companies, no matter how wonderful they sound, and how great their audited financials look. In the great majority of cases, the auditors were being duped themselves. One of the all-time classics was the “Great Salad Oil Swindle” (the title of a book about the case), which is rather applicable to the discussion at hand, given that it turned entirely on inventory that had supposedly been directly verified on a regular basis by various respectable and qualified third parties, including at least on one occasion by an employee of the American Express company’s outside auditors. American Express’ stock dropped 50%, and many other large financial institutions also suffered major losses, when it was finally discovered that almost none of the oil had ever existed.
The short version:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salad_oil_scandal
No above-board auditor would accept business from a company selling an alternative currency with pitches such as the following (from the link you provided):
“Liberty Merchants are everywhere.
You don’t need to find a “Liberty Merchant” to use Liberty Dollars. Just offer the new gold and silver currency to every merchant you meet. You can’t tell a real money Merchant from a plastic loving merchant until you offer them real Liberty Dollars.”
This is Clintonesque language, carefully designed to mislead non-savvy investors, while using vague and evasive language that later enables the party that put it out to defend itself by pointing to the text and saying “Look! You can’t find anywhere that we actually said X”.
That would appear to contradict the statement in the EMail that the seizure took place at the strip mall location. Clearly assets at Sunshine could be seized. All sorts of interesting issues. I don’t know Sunshine, but I’ve no reason to think they’re anything but a legitimate depository. Interesting to see how their insurance/bonding covers a seizure, in the long run and in terms of short term liquidity. I know you’re a little more judgemental about this than I am, I can wait to see the charges and the basis of the warrant, assuming this happened, but I can see a number of issues here beyond the currency problem, largely dealing with banking and securities regulation, as well as campaign finance.
No, actually the company sold two products: paper certificates supposedly “backed” by a specified amount of silver in the warehouse, and silver coins which contained an amount of silver valued in the public market at approximately half the face value. IOW: “You send me $10 dollars, and I send you a coin made of $5 dollars worth of silver that’s marked “$10”, and then you’re on your own trying to convince some sucker to accept it in lieu of real currency for an item priced at $10.”
No. It is my contention -- which I'm perfectly willing to be argued out of logically, provided anyone can actually do so (and, as of this writing, they have not) -- that not having ANY sort of cautionary or advisory (not simply "not legal tender," as you continually insist instead) may well provide grounds for counterfeiting charges, in the case of "currency" intentionally designed to resemble authentic U.S. coinage as closely as possible, while simultaneously marketed as being readily interchangeable with federally sanctioned U.S. currency.
The devil, as they say, is in the details. And this really should not require any further splitting of hairs, surely.
Well, not exactly. If the person is induced to accept a paper certificate by being told that it's "backed" by silver or gold which can actually be retrieved by the holder, or to accept one of the coins by being told that it is made of silver worth at least the amount shown on the coin, then the person who accepts it is the victim of fraud. If the person telling him this actually believes it because it's what he was led to believe by the original seller of the certificate or coin, then only the original seller/issuer is the actual perpetrator of fraud, but there will be a heavy legal burden on the person who used the paper or coin as payment to prove that he really had no idea what the underlying reality was.
It is not counterfeiting if the coins and bills do not look like US coinage and notes.
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So does that mean that when the used car dealer tells me that my car is only worth $2000 and then sells it for $4000 that I was the victim of fraud?
People can lie all they want and suffer whatever the consequences, if a company puts "one dollar" on an amount of silver that by law is worth more than the legally defined value in silver or gold then where is the fraud? I do not think that the Liberty Dollar people lied about anything and to my limited knowledge there have been no complaints against the company. If there were a complaint by an individual then shouldn’t that complaint be adjudicated in a civil court?
My understanding is that Liberty Dollar was in the process of suing the federal government for a number of reasons. I really don’t know all the reasons but they are posted on the Liberty Dollar web page. I think the powers that be decided to shut down and remove all the assets of the company to keep them from being able to pay their attorneys and nip the problem in the bud. If so this is worse than being Nifonged.
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