States Should Restore Gold and Silver as Legal Tender before the Monetary Crisis ArrivesBy JP Cortez The Constitution for the United States of America is not merely a set of suggestions. So when the Constitution says, in Article I Section 10, No state shall make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts, it means exactly that. Recognizing that the departure from gold and silver backing to our money has led to crushing debt and great financial instability, a few freedom-minded state legislatures have begun to consider how to defend themselves and their citizens. In particular, Utah has charted a path towards a widespread acceptance of gold and silver, declaring any gold and silver coins issued by the U.S. government as legal tender in the state and free from any taxation. Even though laws such as Utahs are just a small step in the right direction, they serve an important purpose because they encourage greater use of gold and silver as circulating media of exchange. And such measures start a conversation with the public about the useful role that gold and silver can play in protecting ones purchasing power, while hedging against the abuses of Washington politicians and Wall Street bankers. Utah has a modest population of almost 3 million. However, Oklahoma followed with its legal tender law, bringing the total people impacted to almost 7 million. The more people are exposed to gold and silver, the more they are likely to recognize their superiority as media of exchange and stores of value. Gold Silver Are Money Another benefit of passage of laws like those in Utah and Oklahoma is that they dispense with the notion that gold and silver are merely investments or speculations. Gains on investments, more times than not, are taxed in one way or another. But gold and silver are money and imposing a tax on the exchanging of one form of money for another is both ludicrous and unjust. People should be encouraged to save in real money. The inflation tax on every person holding fiat money whittles away at their savings and purchasing power. While the Federal Reserve Note dollar has lost more than 97% of its purchasing power since the Federal Reserve System was created in 1913, gold and silver is a much better store of value, having risen 60 and 20-fold, respectively, in their dollar-denominated price. Devaluation of fiat money is no accident. Even John Maynard Keynes, the socialist who developed todays economic playbook for central planning through monetary policy, confessed: By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. Key to precious metals use as legal tender and a form of payment is elimination of regulations that decrease its liquidity and therefore its usefulness. Many state and local jurisdictions impose draconian rules on dealers who buy gold and silver from the public, reducing options, raising transaction costs, and endangering financial privacy. Dealers are often required to collect personal information from sellers, including names, addresses, social security numbers, voter identification cards, and copies of drivers licenses. Furthermore, dealers have been forced to upload all this personal information daily into law enforcement databases, along with pictures of the metals purchased. And finally, some jurisdictions bar dealers from re-selling the gold and silver to anyone for as long as seven days, forcing them to tie up and large amounts of capital and absorb market risk. It is unimaginable to consider the government forcing a merchant or buyer of lima beans, for example, to disclose or collect personal information. These discriminatory requirements which dont apply to redeeming paper money, only redeeming gold and silver violate basic privacy rights of individuals and substantially burden those who provide important liquidity to gold and silver transactions. By enacting legislation to establish a state precious metals depository last year, Texas plans not only to pull its state pension funds physical gold out of the clutches of Wall-Street bankers, but it will also save money and create jobs by storing the gold inside the Lone Star State. Privately owned and at no cost to the taxpayer, the state-chartered depository would also enable people to store their precious metals for a fee. And the involvement of the state potentially provides an additional layer of constitutional protection against federal government intervention With an account at a depository, people could have the ability to engage in transactions using gold and silver electronically. An account holder could make a purchase and pay the seller by transferring precious metals to the sellers account or it could be converted to Federal Reserve Notes and deposited into an account at a normal bank. The ability to transact electronically like this may help bring gold and silver further into use as an alternative to using our rickety paper money system. More fundamentally, the fact that bills such as these are being introduced speaks to an important mindset surrounding gold and silver as legal tender. Assuming we respect the Constitution, we must accept Article I Section 10 to mean exactly what it says. The implication of this is simple yet resounding: in the question of whether or not states will adhere to their responsibility to make gold and silver a tender in the payment of debts, the burden of proof should fall on the lawmakers and bureaucrats as to why gold and silver SHOULD NOT play this role, not the other way around. The passage of state legislation that promotes constitutional money is becoming more and more urgent as financial shenanigans of central banks and governments increasingly spin out of control. Bills like those passed in Utah, Oklahoma, and Texas move us toward a new acceptance and use of gold and silver as money. We hope more states will pick up the mantle before an all-out monetary crisis puts their people and their economies at grave risk. Stefan Gleason also contributed to this report. Again this Gold-is-Money NONSENSE ! Banksters would LOVE it ! I have seen some of the Money Masters stuff. Loads of good information, but the final conclusions drawn are not based on sound economics. The Founding Fathers were correct in defining money by weight; Its value is free to then fluctuate with the supply of precious metals and at the same time remain out of the hands of those who would, as you quoted Rothschild, seek to control it. And before anyone rails against the importance of metals and their values fluctuating with actual market forces PLEASE read Rothbards Man, Economy and State. As for greenbacks, Lincoln was indeed killed for trying to completely replace bankster money with them, no doubtbut he was, again, wrong on the economics side of things. Purely fiat currency (regardless of who prints it) has only the value that can be forced upon it (in fact, Lincoln did that too: imprisoned, fined and even killed those who would not accept his worthless scrip). And YES I understand even golds value is almost completely subjective, but it cannot be multiplied at whim. Since fiat money CAN be multiplied without practical limits to wreck economies and the money itself, it will always be an inefficient money, when compared to precious metals. And that is the real argument about specie money: what is most efficient? When property rights are strictly and constitutionally- enforced, specie money wins out over all other money-types without coercion or force involved, and always has throughout history. And that point must be emphasised: only when property rights are protected and a free market present can we truly measure the relative effectiveness of various monies. To illustrate, are you familiar with the marshmallow experiment performed on young children? Children, unless trained otherwise, love sugar. And marshmallows! But it was discovered that after eating many marshmallows (given as rewards), most children would cease to value the marshmallows more than the effort required to perform a task. Law of diminishing returns. This also applies to money! The more units of currency in existence (and more likely to be when they are paper and created by fiat) that chase a given amount of goods, the more units of currency that will be required to trade for each unit of good. Seriously. Please learn economics from books and NOT youtube. At the risk of shocking you into a coma, I can see the logic in your reasoning, now.. Thanks for the kind words, brother! We are all enlisted in this war against tyranny, and will be so long as we are alive. Glad we are on the same side. 