Constitutional vs. Confidence Game Fiscal System

Historically, silver and gold have always proven to be the best commodities to use as money, because they are uniquely suited to perform the three functions of media of exchange: namely,

(i) as units of value—for silver and gold coins and ingots are composed of known, fixed, and reproducible weights of elemental metals;

(ii) as measures of value—for the free market can always determine rates of exchange between every nonmonetary good and service and either silver (under a monometallic “silver standard”), or gold (under a monometallic “gold standard”), or both (under a duometallic system in which one metal is the “standard” and the other metal takes its value in terms of the “standard” from the free-market rate of exchange between the two); and

(iii) as stores of value—for over great expanses of time, throughout the world, silver and gold have always held their purchasing powers better than any other media of exchange.[1]

This is why the Constitution designates the (silver) “dollar” as America’s standard of monetary value;[2] delegates to Congress the powers “[t]o coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin”;[3] declares that “[n]o State shall * * * coin Money”;[4] prohibits every State from “mak[ing] any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts”;[5] grants no authority to Congress to emit “bills of credit” (the Founders’ term for paper currency), with or without the character of “legal tender”;[6] and absolutely prohibits every State from “emit[ting] Bills of Credit” of any description whatsoever.[7] Constitutional money is to be economically sound money, the only form of money that can promote economic “homeland security”.[8]

Unfortunately, Americans today do not enjoy the benefits of constitutional, economically sound money. Rather, this country’s present monetary and banking systems are based upon the shaky foundation of Federal Reserve Notes and bank-deposits payable therein. Although Federal Reserve Notes are “obligations of the United States” which “shall be redeemed in lawful money”, they are redeemable in neither silver nor gold.[9] And the supply of those notes is determined, not by the free market, but by the secretive decisions and for the recondite purposes of a corporative-state banking cartel.[10] Moreover, the entire arrangement is thoroughly unconstitutional.[11] And its continuation endangers not only America’s economic “homeland security” but also her security as “a free State” and even as an independent sovereign nation.[12]

Footnotes:

1.) As a store of value, silver has often seemed more volatile than gold in American experience. But that is because, although in principle the Constitution requires it, in practice America has never enjoyed a proper duometallic system in which: (i) both of the precious metals were treated as legally equivalent media of exchange; but (ii) the free market (rather than some governmental body) determined the fluctuating market value of one based upon the fixed legal value of the other. See, e.g., E. Vieira, Jr., Pieces of Eight: The Monetary Powers and Disabilities of the United States Constitution (Chicago, Illinois: R R Donnelley & Sons, Inc., GoldMoney Foundation Special Edition [2011] of the Second Revised Edition of 2002), Volume 1, at 119-126.

2.) See U.S. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 1 and amend. VII.

3.) U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 5

4.) U.S. Const. art. I, § 10, cl. 1.

5.) U.S. Const. art. I, § 10, cl. 1.

6.) Contrast U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 2 with Arts. of Confed’n art. IX, ¶ 5.