Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Elite Bankers Suddenly Interested In Past Hyper-Inflations?


The UK Telegraph had an interesting article on Sunday, entitled "The Death of Paper Money". It talks about a couple of books that are suddenly in demand among "elite banking circles" - books dealing with the causes and results of past hyper-inflations.

Both books are out of print in the U.S., but both of them can also be downloaded for free online:

Dying of Money: Lessons of the Great German and American Inflations, by Jens O. Parrson (1974)

When Money Dies: The Nightmare of the Weimar Hyper-Inflation, by Adam Fergusson (1975)

You can also buy a new paperback reprint of Fergusson's When Money Dies from the UK Amazon for under $30.

So, when unbacked fiat paper money dies... will we finally return to Constitutional Tender?

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Local News Story: Competing currency being accepted across Mid-Michigan

These local news stories on competing gold & silver currency being accepted locally in Michigan were linked to from The Daily Paul:

Make sure you watch the short videos.

Part 1:

New types of money are popping up across Mid-Michigan and supporters say, it's not counterfeit, but rather a competing currency.

Right now, you can buy a meal or visit a chiropractor without using actual U.S. legal tender.

They sound like real money and look like real money. But you can't take them to the bank because they're not made at a government mint. They're made at private mints.



http://www.connectmidmichigan.com/news/story.aspx?id=481793

Part 2:

In part one of NBC25's special series "Competing Currencies," NBC25's Dan Armstrong showed how the government says any private business can accept or refuse any kind of payment.

In part two, Dan goes deeper, discovering why certain businesses say it's better to have private currency than actual U.S. legal tender.

There was a time in America when you could buy four gallons of gas for a dollar.

That dollar came in the form of a coin, around one ounce, made mostly of silver.

In today's market, that same coin is worth about 10 times its face value because of the silver.

Therefore, that same coin in theory, could still buy around four gallons of gas.



http://www.connectmidmichigan.com/news/story.aspx?id=482130

Friday, July 2, 2010

Gold: The "New" Money


Gold: The "New" Money
by Paul Nathan

Ben Bernanke said in testimony in front of congress that he did not understand what was causing the gold price to go up. In fact he said he didn't understand gold. Larry Kudlow has been asking everyone on his program "what is causing the price of gold to move up?" The use of the term "gold standard" and "new reserve currency" has been used more in the last few months than in the last few decades. Perhaps that is the tip off...

My suggestion to Ron Paul and all those wanting to return to gold, is the best way to accomplish this is not by proclaiming your determination to replace the Federal Reserve Board with the gold standard, but to attack the legal tender laws of this country. I was one of the few back in the early 70's along with Ron Paul that fought for the legalization of gold to be allowed back into the American system. That was the first step in returning to the gold standard. Today is very much the same. The next step is to institutionalize competing monies.

The key is to go after the governments monopoly on money. If broken, gold will find it's way into the monetary system, as it is today, and reclaim it's superior role as long as it is not prevented from doing so. Legal tender laws do just that. They prevent choice.

Today, to be an advocate of a gold standard is to be laughed at and ridiculed as naive. But, to be against legal tender laws, wipes the snickers off the face of those against gold very quickly. To be against legal tender laws is to be for freedom of choice and against government coercion. You will not find the same chuckles from "intellectuals" when confronted with a proposal of this nature. On the contrary, you will find terror...

In my opinion the private market is in the process of developing a private competing money. No one can predict where this will lead us, but it is happening as we speak. We are seeing the emergence of gold ATMs whereby individuals can convert dollars for gold on demand. If those machine eventually are equipped to also accept gold for paper money, we will have the specter of convertibility on street corners everywhere.

"We are going to make gold public with these machines," said Thomas Geissler, CEO of Ex Oriente Lux AG, which owns “GOLD to go." Fifty thousand machines are being produced to be placed in countries all over the world. And retailers such as Sears and K-Mart have announced they will now be dealing in gold. Companies that buy gold are everywhere, and companies that sell gold are increasing. Convertibility is becoming an industry. This is a further sign of the establishment of the "new" private money.

How this will evolve, not even the market "knows". But it is obvious the market is telling us that there is a demand for gold as money. Will we start computing commodity prices, stock values, and possibly all prices in terms of gold as well as the dollar to know whether we have deflation or inflation and to what degree? Will credit card companies start pricing and translating purchases of goods and services in terms of dollars and gold as they do foreign currencies? Will financial institutions store gold as a new form of savings account, en masse? In a new world of modern technology there is no telling how gold will be used, but it is being explored by entrepreneurs world wide as we speak...

READ MORE...