Quote of the Day
Since its inception, the U.S. Federal Reserve’s monetary policies have led to a decline of over 95% in the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar. As a result, there have been several attempts to curtail or eliminate the Federal Reserve’s powers (e.g., the efforts of Rep. Louis T. McFadden in the 1930s; the efforts of Rep. Wright Patman in the 1970s; the efforts of Rep. Henry Gonzalez in the 1990s; and the efforts of Rep. Ron Paul since the 1990s).
However, none have proven successful to date, due mainly to the constraints of strong political opposition at the national level. In contrast to these “top-down” attempts at the national level, this paper proposes an alternative approach to ending the Federal Reserve’s monopoly on money: the “Constitutional Tender Act,” a bill template that can be introduced in every state legislature in the nation, returning each of them to adherence to the U.S. Constitution’s “legal tender” provisions of Article I, Section 10.
This approach would have a greater likelihood of success for a number of reasons. First, it is decentralized: rather than facing concerted political opposition at a single Federal level, it attacks the issue at the State level, where strategies and tactics can be adapted to the types and amount of political opposition they encounter.
Second, it is diffused: it can be attempted in any number of States, which can cause the opposition to spread its resources much more thinly than would be necessary at the Federal level. Finally, it is legally sound: it relies on the U.S. Constitution’s negative mandate in Article I, Section 10, that “No State shall… make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.” Therefore, in contrast to “top-down” attempts to “end the Fed,” a “bottom-up” approach using “constitutional tender” laws will find greater success.
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Under this Act, the State would be required to only use gold and silver coins (or their equivalents, such as checks or electronic transfers) for payments of any debt owed by or to the State (e.g., taxes, fees, contract payments, etc.). All contracts, tax bills, etc. would be required to be denominated in legal tender gold and silver U.S. coins, including Gold Eagles, Silver Eagles, and pre-1965 90% silver coins. All State-chartered banks, as well as any other bank that is a depository for State funds, would be required to offer accounts denominated in those types of gold and silver coins, and to keep such accounts segregated from other types of accounts such as Federal Reserve Notes.
Bill Green
April 4, 2017
Ending the Federal Reserve from the Bottom Up
It is an interesting thought.experiment. But will it work? It’s been almost seven years now and how much progress has it made?
Perhaps after the big crash people will give it more serious consideration.
Gold is currently tickling the $2,100/oz price as I type this… Prepare appropriately.
And once again we are seeing proposals that would do what? Go back to the constitution as it was written.
Our forefathers explained that money was the lifeblood of all government. And if a federal government could not only make the money, But also demand it be the only legal tender. Then there would never be independent states.
Which is what we have today.
That is why the congress was given the power to print money and regulate the value thereof. (As in comparing Canadian maple leafs to Krugerrands, and America double eagles for weight and purity.)
But to the states was given the power of declare legal tender. And the only legal tender they could ALLOW was gold and silver.
As in; No state shall make (allow), anything but gold and silver as a tender in payment of debt.
Decisions in the SCOTUS have born this out. As the constitution does not repeat itself.
And the power grant to one body of government in one section of the constitution, need not be deprived to another body in another section.
Thus clarifying the pertinent sections about money in our constitution.
So Bill, instead of starting the process of constitutional amendment. Why not just sue the federal government?
Not that there is enough gold and silver coinage out there anyway. We’ve been dumbed down to the point almost no one would understand your argument. Including SCOTUS.
And good luck with Wall street and the banks. To speak nothing of trying to end institutionalized theft/graft/bribery that hallmarks the system we live in today.
The happy thought is that it will be ending soon. Just as Von Mise and so many others predicted. You can tell because this time they’re bringing the enemy to America for the war needed to cover it all up.
What we need to do is quit lying to ourselves about the evil that runs things.
Good luck with that also.
The best asset class today is dry/canned goods and ammo. Lots and lots of ammo.
More than anything we need a will to live.
“A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of a higher obligation. … To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the ends to the means.” – Thomas Jefferson, from a letter to John B. Colvin, September 20, 1810
If anyone would know, it would be him.
As for the present American government? Yaaaa, were done here. They’re notwithstanding anymore.
P.S. Quote was shamelessly stolen from Survivalblog.
I would very much have liked for my salary to be denominated in Augoes (gram of Au, gold, or equivalent), and then it’d be up to me how much is turned into funny money. At least I’d be front-loaded on protection from currency debasement.
Reminds me a bit of being stationed in Italy in ’99. That was before they converted to the Euro, and they were still using the lira. Servicemen would have a ‘standing order’ to convert part of their pay in dollars to lira so they could pay their rent, have funds for working in the local economy (also before near-universal credit card penetration), etc. Once you converted dollars to whatever, you never converted it back, because you paid a service charge each conversion. So, it was money, but considering you were throwing around 2,000 lira notes as equivalent of 1 dollar, it was hard not to treat it as Monopoly money.
Central bankers in general, and the FedGov has sought to destroy any and all attempts to replace private-bank centrally-controlled fiat currencies, because it’s the key to achieving debt-slavery by the banking class. Bankers in England were the main opponents of Napoleon because of money reforms. Libya was bombed because they threatened a gold-backed currency. Same for many other nations.
Of course it would work…. that’s why it’ violently opposed by those who currently control things and benefit from the current trends, and plan on capitalizing on the chaos that will ensue when the system collapses. They’ve laid the groundwork with the plandemic (“oh no, it’s an emergency, we must grant ourselves extraordinary powers to save people and keep them safe and paper over the financial crater in the economy made when we shut it down and print money to indenture everyone who is not already a debt slave!”)
No solution that doesn’t involve ending the Fed will work, but none that does will be allowed by TPTB. Three possibilities; Trump wins in 2024 and changes a LOT of things in 4 years, we hit violent revolution within a decade or so and the entire western order (what used to be called Christendom) is remade into a lot of different countries than now, or the Globalists win and reduce the world pop by 80% or more in 30 years (Morlock and Eloi, here we come).
30 years? I give it 17 it best if not 7.
I think they were aiming for 90% by the end of 2025 with the Covid and the vaxx. Trump disrupted that plan bigly. My over-under estimate on the vax cull/cripple rate is 10% within five years (first said in late ’21, IIRC), floor is looking like 4% globally. However, the massive illegal immigrant flows (and deliberate data hiding/contaminating) are making that hard to pin down. Given roughly 30% of the vax lots have saline/placebo levels of reactions (meaning virtually non-existent) at it looks like a person needs 3 “active” shots to cause immunological class switching (VAIDS), there are too many variables to hake hard predictions. At this point if a vaxxed person keels over, I’m at the “shrug and say ‘well, yeah…” stage, unless they were a big vax pusher.
Back to the Fed, tho- one short-term solution to a part of the SS/Fed/tax crisis is to have a lot of expensive retirees older people die off and no longer incur SS or Medicare or other transfer-payment costs. That can help kick the can down the road a little further. So who was the vax pushed on first? There appears to have been a lot of turnover recently in my dad assisted care facility, and most of them now appear to have “rooms ready right now!” signs out. Would love to see their internal numbers.
Nah, it is going to take collapse at the international level and a replacement reserve currency. BRICS seems like the most likely if they could ever get their act together to produce a currency based on a market basket of real stuff. This will hose us in the short run as we will no longer be able to export inflation but help us in the long run for the same reason
Why would you expect China and other totalitarian or semi-totalitarian countries to support real money? The yuan is far less real than the dollar ever was. And India has a track record of summarily canceling the most common denomination of their fiat money. I don’t remember what excuse they gave for doing so, but the country barely survived that mess.