Virginia moves closer to creating state's own currency

Despite all the propaganda about the Fed Reserve, it has lasted nearly 100 years and has seemed to prevent all-out Depressions over the long-term (except the 1930s one).

Maybe it will drop the ball someday, maybe not.

The reality is we are far richer today (more stuff for less money, adjusted for inflation), than Americans were before the Fed Reserve.

The Fed Reserve may or may not have had something to do with that.

Which is why I don't jump on the Anti-Fed Reserve bandwagon.

The Fed Reserve Note's role in the world economy pretty much assures it will not go away anytime soon. It will take a LOT to erode that position.

So unless something unexpected happens with alternative currencies, I'm not paying it much attention.
 
Be careful. If VA want to make their own money, then they would no longer be part of USA. They'll have to have their own line of defense as our federal government will not protect VA.

It would be like a foreign country. If I was to visit VA, would my coins and dollars be good or will it have to be changed at bank?
 
dereksbicycles said:
Be careful. If VA want to make their own money, then they would no longer be part of USA. They'll have to have their own line of defense as our federal government will not protect VA.

It would be like a foreign country. If I was to visit VA, would my coins and dollars be good or will it have to be changed at bank?
Click to expand...

Not really, VA will not secede from US because of situation with currency.
 
dereksbicycles said:
Be careful. If VA want to make their own money, then they would no longer be part of USA. They'll have to have their own line of defense as our federal government will not protect VA.

It would be like a foreign country. If I was to visit VA, would my coins and dollars be good or will it have to be changed at bank?
Click to expand...

Utah has already adopted such law, and there are four states with similar bills for this year. So...

And no, it wouldn't provoke some kind of political warfare as you imply lol.
 
It takes more than simply creating a currency.

It has to be recognized and used.

How many of 300 million Americans will recognize Virginian currency?

How many of 7 billion human beings on the planet will recognize Virginian currency?

If a Virginian merchant asks for payment in Virginian currency, will you say, "Sure, I've got enough right here." Or will you say, "Why? I've got American dollars pay you with. Surely you won't turn down good old American dollars??"

If there aren't enough people who use it or want it, it's worthless.

Then there is the question of legal tender.

In the U.S., American dollars must be accepted for payment of debt if presented. If someone owes me money, I don't want Virginian currency. (Can I buy stuff in Minnesota with Virginian currency? No.)

The biggest advantage that the U.S. Dollar has is its wide recognizability.

The U.S. is effectively one large trade zone, where trade, denominated in U.S. Dollars, can flow. State currencies break up that trade zone, and that's not healthy for the economy.

The U.S. Dollar also helps effect a kind of global trade zone, too. Not as easily as within U.S. borders, but it is recognized almost everywhere in the world and accepted for payment almost everywhere in the world, even now.

Some governments, like Ecuador, use the U.S. Dollar as their official currency. All those dollar coins that Americans hate? They're used in Ecuador.

So in order for the U.S. Dollar to collapse to the point where state currencies can step in, it would have to lose its standing and trust in the world first.

It's not even close to that.

So states can pass currency laws as much as they want. Doesn't mean it'll get far.
 
Not to mention banks across the US and money trading establishments around the world would have to provide this currency too to people traveling there and that would not sit well with them cuz I'm sure it would cost a lot. We hold the common euro, sterling, and US at our branch and do special orders for almost every other currency but that would be a pain in the ass especially for americans.
 
I will reply to this later, as I am very busy with things going on in my life, but I saw this as part of my readings and had to pass it on.

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles...becomes-first-to-pass-anti-drone-legislation-

Edit: here is a more educated reply via this article, but it's still not the full story. I will come back up to read this thread and point out the mistakes that will doom this country if the mistaken views continue to persist within the monetary system.

http://www.nysun.com/editorials/virginia-in-the-vanguard/88184/
 
Some of Bix Weir's stuff is outlandish, but there are some facts that can't be disputed.

$8,500/oz Silver and ONE BANK...or maybe TWO!

Now, read these three documents at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. If you don't believe me, just truncate the address to the home address and that will take you there to show you that it is indeed the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and then read these publications.

http://www.bos.frb.org/education/pubs/roota.pdf

http://www.bos.frb.org/education/pubs/wishes.pdf

http://www.bos.frb.org/education/pubs/banking2.pdf

Now, here's what I think. The people who voted for the Federal Reserve System's creation were a skeleton crew who had assembled on Jekyll Island to discuss this and have it passed while most of Congress was at home during the Christmas Holidays. They were part of the group of people who sought to get the US off the gold standard (actually the US started out on the silver standard with a bimetallic arrangement via a fixed government ratio of 16 silver to gold 1) by instituting a paper money regime. This group of people are the banking class of the world who got their start by holding gold for their customers for safe-keeping, as people would get robbed on the roads by bands of thieves. They had noticed that the gold was sitting much of the time, so they decided to lend out the gold without telling where it was coming from, and be paid back per loan agreements. The problem arose when enough people happened to ask for their gold too closely together in time, thus revealing the money-making scheme of providing loans. The customers were not told that their gold would be loaned out like this. Now, follow my lead...

You need to read this book about the creation of the Federal Reserve System. [ame=http://www.amazon.com/The-Creature-Jekyll-Island-Federal/dp/0912986212]Amazon.com: The Creature from Jekyll Island : A Second Look at the Federal Reserve (9780912986210): G. Edward Griffin: Books[/ame]


The Coinage Act of 1792 allowed people "in the know" to game the fixed ratio by working the market ratio of gold and silver against the official ratio to make money without doing anything useful, once you had gotten some gold or silver in hand and got the game going. The idea was to game it so that you could increase the amount of money in possession by trading against the official ratio (16 silver = 1 gold). During the days when silver was devalued in the markets, you could make a killing by doing the following.

It goes like this. Let's say the going rate in the market is 17 pieces of silver for one ounce of gold (this can happen when you sell the metals on the market). You take your one ounce of gold and trade it for 17 ounces of silver and trade the silver at the bank for one ounce of gold. You end up out of the transaction with one ounce of gold PLUS one ounce of silver. Now, when you trade the ounce of gold again for more silver, and trade it in reverse again, then you keep accumulating silver like that. The reverse happens when the market ratio turns the other way against the official rate.

You need to study Gresham's Law, bad money chasing good money out of circulation, simply put. Gresham's law - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Later, in 1873, via the Coinage Act of 1873, the US was moved to a gold standard, severely devaluing silver, which most people had in possession as opposed to gold, which was held mainly by rich people or those who did well, financially.

The next step to get people out of metal was to implement the Federal Reserve System, a paper money system. Then the IRS was created, supposedly to give the illusion that paper money is real by collecting taxes from workers and businesses. What may have really happened is that government spending went completely out of control (intentionally) shortly after the implementation of the Federal Reserve System (or it was preplanned to have this in order to bolster the illusion that the government could only operate on money sent to the government by taxpayers while they were printing up money day and night and hiding this fact from the people).

Gold ownership was made ILLEGAL for the citizens of the US via Executive Order 6102, which was signed by FDR in 1933. This order criminalized the possession and trading of monetary gold by any American individual, partnership, association or corporation ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD. This specifically excluded gold for jewelry in possession by makers and fabricators and their customers, and up to $100 face value in a coin collection. Executive Order 6102 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Guess what? The people who did give into the executive order were paid $20.67 in paper money, and then soon after, via the Gold Reserve Act, gold was revalued to an official value of $35, which held until the gold window was closed on August 15th, 1971. Also, gold clauses in contracts were made void and unenforceable. This meant that the people who took paper money for the gold immediately suffered a loss. However, the Order was unenforceable because the order had to be validated through the signature of the Secretary of Treasury, not the President. That order was replaced by the Gold Reserve Act of 1934. This essentially meant that the US Government had defaulted on the gold standard to the US Citizens. The Nixon Shock in 1971, the closure of the gold window, was the default of the gold standard to international countries who wanted to redeem increasing amounts of paper money for gold. France tried to do that in the 60s, and the US shut that down cold to keep it from running out of official gold reserves.

Anyway, under the Trading With The Enemy Act of 1917, as amended by the Emergency Banking Act of 1933, violations of the Order was punishable by fines up to $10,000 (equivalent to $180 thousand today) or up to ten years in prison, or both. Most citizens who owned large amounts of gold had it transferred to countries such as Switzerland. You better understand where I'm going with this by now.

It looks like, according to Bix Weir, that the generation that created this mess had finally given way to the next generation, but it wouldn't be until the next generation after that who would be responsible for the gradual return to a gold standard of some sort in the future by making a gold-friendly environment for investors again. That generation includes former Fed Chairman Greenspan, by the way. It appears that they saw the errors of the older generation's ways, and started trying to correct it before it was too late, and do it VERY quietly, as a "run on gold" would be devastating for those who don't have any. You want the majority of the world to have gold and silver in possession and the stragglers having to get help to get back on their "gold feet," rather than the doomsday scenario where almost nobody has any and they're killing or robbing one another to survive.

The idea then was to transition back to some gold standard and minimize the potential for "civilization-destroying" forces that might happen in a run on gold. In other words, smooth out the transition for as many people as possible so that some of them can help those who don't have any by hiring them to do useful work to get them going again. First, they made gold bullion and coins legal again as before the Order in 1975, since the US dollar had been disconnected from the now-defunct Bretton Woods Agreement (and the international gold agreement on payment between nations), now being able to trade freely against currencies in a floating fashion. Gold would have no impact on the perceived valuation of the US Dollar, the world reserve currency.

Then, they wrote and passed the American Eagle Bullion program by Congress in 1986. This is a program at the US Mint - The United States Mint · About The Mint The idea is getting gold and silver back into private hands once again before the link back to gold and silver has been reestablished with modifications to the gold standard to eliminate the problems experienced in the previous 200 years, again, to minimize the impact on the public (and thusly reduce the risk of revolution through gradual reeducation of the public to gold and silver as money again). The intention of the generation in power during the 1970s through the early 2000s was to let the fiat, or paper money system, be so abused that people would finally learn the lesson of inflation, and reckless gambling of money in the markets, and why it was bad to have paper money instead of some stable monetary system. Greenspan was BRILLIANT in how he made this happen through his tenure at the Federal Reserve Bank. This would drive people who could see the signs of trouble into safety. These people would educate other people in the dark about the true nature of money. That way, we're making a transition back to at least having gold running parallel to currency. A movement is already underway to make this possible in México - A New Service For Silver Savers In Mexico - Hugo Salinas Price has been heading this effort down there for years. Now look at Banco Azteca's offering on a silver coin. Banco Azteca - Qué es la compra/venta de Monedas de Plata - the quote roughly translates to "Banco Azteca offers to his Clients the best options of investment. For it Libertad de Plata puts at your disposal the buy and selling of mints Ounce."

Now, in the international central bank scene, things have completely changed from what they were twenty years ago. Governments were actively involved in dis-hoarding the official reserves of gold and silver to keep the price down to mask the telling effects of inflation through a higher price in these metals, which are classic signs of inflation (as is increases in the general prices of goods and services, which has not been as easy to hide). The US Government does not have any strategic silver in its holding that I know of, as that was dis-hoarded into the open market in the 2000s. Pretty much all governments don't have any, either, with the possible exception of China. And the nature of the Washington Agreement on Gold - Washington Agreement on Gold - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - has changed over the years such that it was a way to manage the dis-hoarding of gold into the open market by central banks to minimize disruption in the gold market (I suppose to keep people from buying the stuff hand over fist once it became clear what was happening) through limiting how much they were selling into the open market per year during the five-year agreements. Then gradually, over the years, Central banks including Europeans ones started to decrease the amount of gold they were selling into the open market, and then the inflection point that was passed in 2009 was when the net buying of gold by central banks started to outweigh the net selling of gold for the first time in decades.

Get this, Students of the New Great Game: the central banks buying gold today include: Russia; Bangladesh; Philippines; Saudi Arabia; Thailand; Belarus; Venezuela; India; Sri Lanka; Mauritius; Mexico; Bolivia; Colombia; South Korea; Turkey; Kazakhstan; Tajikistan; Serbia; Ukraine; Mongolia; Malta; Greece; Argentina. Students, notice that these are Asian, Middle East, and South American countries! China is also buying gold hand-over-fist as quietly behind the scenes as they can by buying their domestic production. I believe they have about 1,000 tons of gold, and the next time they announce their "official" holdings, it may be said to be about 3,000-4,000 tons (and they probably would have passed that 1-3 years before making the announcement, so that they don't revalue gold upward very sharply before they have a chance to eliminate as much of their paper holdings in US money and treasuries).

This is scary for those of you who know because these regions have an axe to grind over the abuse of financial and mercantile power, like in the Opium Wars with Britain, the current wars in the middle east, and the 500 years of killings, theft, and destruction of the peoples, their culture, language, beliefs, and knowledge in South America. In other words, now that these regions have begun to understand the true nature of money through our efforts, they're telling the white governments, "Aaaawwwnnnffff! You're gonna get it!" (just like kids say when they see someone doing something bad and go running to the teacher, except that they will whip out their guns and tell the perp to cough it up or else)

India, Jesus. I hope they go easy on us as our eventual masters, because there is *** 20,000 tons *** of gold held in PRIVATE hands in India, and this number was surpassed some time ago.

India's Love of Gold - After you read the first part, you can click on parts two and three to get the understanding of India's connection to gold. Please consider what an Indian Hindu bride of means might wear - 22K Meenakari Patta Set(Bridal Set) - StBr11374 - US$ 19,682 - 22kt elegant and sophisticated latest fashion bridal necklace and earring set with beautiful filigre nearly $20,000!! I'm told this is quite common!

Do you have any idea what it's like to be homeless, receive your SSDI on the third, and go to a motel to get a room and clean up and sleep there for two or three nights before heading out again to live in your car for two weeks, and the people you rent the rooms from are typically INDIANS?? I've been in that position out in California when I was down on my luck, one of the worse places to feel like you're left out and a decent life seems unattainable and so far away no matter what you do. I think you need to look at the differences in work ethics of Indians and Americans.

Remember, he who has the gold makes the rules. At least it is in many of these countries outside the US. All it would take to shut down the US government would be for countries to refuse payment in US currency and instead demand gold in return for goods and services. The US military, being left to fend for themselves abroad with no gold to trade for fuel to get back home on, would be fighting for fuel to get back home on. To arrive to create destruction on people who disagree with US foreign policy, and then to turn around and leave destruction in the wake of their retreat back home would leave a very bad taste in countries' mouths when it comes to dealing with the US financially. That might be enough incentive for these three regions to create an allied force big enough to overwhelm the US military. Will we citizens be forced to attend classes in which we witness the bodies of victims of atrocities committed by our soldiers who are forced to go on certain questionable military adventures on the scale carried out that can only be possible with PAPER money (read Wiemar Germany and hyperinflation, and how they were able to rearm in spite of the Armistice). I feel for the soldiers because military service is supposed to be honorable, and they are asked to carry out these, these... Sigh... It is sad, the suicide rate of our Veterans. It is appalling what they are asked to do sometimes. That is no way to honor our soldiers. I support them, but not the missions they have to carry out.

Forcing a government onto a gold standard which limits their ability to spend faster than they earn serves to limit the amount of independence they have from the people they're supposed to serve and the amount of damage they can do through mismanagement of money and military destruction. You see, when nations go to war, they will run out of gold (at least the gold they're willing to put to the war effort), and then they go to paper money in order to make it possible to carry out the war far longer than is supposed to be possible with gold's reins on government spending.

That is Virginia's purpose behind the intent to accept gold and silver as legal tender. Next up is the question, "What is sound money?" If you read all this and you understand where I am coming from, then consider yourself among the most educated deaf people in the United States in financial matters, how things REALLY work, bar none.
 
What is sound money? Here's what Joe Bowman wrote:

----------------------
First, let us look briefly at why we desire money in the first place. Before cash, credit cards and PayPal, before money itself, there was barter. A barter system is one of direct exchange. It does not require money to function.

But the barter arrangement is primitive, at best – suitable only for relatively simple transactions in which both buyer and seller desire the exact good offered by the other. Therefore, in a complex economy, “my three pigs for your one cow” is not a viable monetary system.

Enter the need for money, a medium of exchange...the “great facilitator.”

But how can we tell good money from bad? What qualifies and what doesn’t?

As Ludwig von Mises puts it in his Human Action, “[Money is] the most marketable good which people accept because they want to offer it in later acts of impersonal exchange.”

The simple fact of the matter is that money can be whatever people want it to be...although that’s not to say it will be good or sound money. Some folk may agree to settle their payments in rounds at the pub, denominate debts and credits in lean hogs and pork bellies, or count their savings in gold, guns and secure places to hide them both. And good luck to them all.

Obviously, you’re going to want to arrive at some kind of consensus among those with whom you wish to trade...something approaching Mises’ “most marketable good.” You might want eucalyptus leaves to be money, for example, but you’d be hard pressed to find someone willing to accept them as a reliable store of value, given their relative abundance. One of the key characteristics of a good money is that it does not, literally or metaphorically, grow on trees.

Of course, being the only person on the block to accept eucalyptus leaves as payment has additional drawbacks. Think of it like being the first person on the planet to own a telephone. Who do you call? The true value of a money – any money – comes with its ability to perform the various and necessary roles of money, the primary one being as a medium fit for exchange (which, again, implies more than one person accepting it...hopefully many more). The more widely accepted a money is, the more goods and services you will be able to trade with it.
-----------------------------------

The role of money is simple; to encourage trade, which encourages the division of labor, which encourages production, which encourages wealth creation. When paper money falls in value, it robs productive people, and discourages production, and impoverishes us all.

Paper money today has no backing of gold and silver at all, and could easily return to the intrinsic value of the cost to create it, which is 3 cents to make a $100 bill.

Nobody, not even central banks, should have a monopoly on making $100 bills for 3 cents. Nobody should be able to do that. Central banks that have the government granted monopoly power to make a $100 bill for 3 cents, and then loan it out at 6% interest, for $6 per year, is indeed the biggest political interest that exists in our day.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BCE) defined the characteristics of a good form of money – which must be:

• Durable: Money must stand the test of time and the elements. It must not fade, corrode, or change through time;

• Portable: Good money needs to hold a high amount of 'worth' relative to its weight and size;

• Divisible: Money should be relatively easy to separate and re-combine without affecting its fundamental characteristics. An extension of this idea is that the item should be "fungible", defined as "being freely exchangeable or replaceable, in whole or in part, for another of like nature or kind."

• Intrinsically Valuable: This value of money should be independent of any other object and contained in the money itself, starting with rarity.

• Intrinsic Consistency: This value of money must remain relatively stable over long periods of time in terms of goods and services it buys.

Now, I'm going to point out something here. People here are confused about something. The mistakes that were made in the past included the fixed silver:gold ratio and putting a currency denomination on a coin (creating the "flash point" at which coins start to be withdraw from circulation because the value of the metal becomes higher than the denominated amount on the coin). The second mistake is rectified by two things; listing the fineness (99.9 percent silver, for instance) and the weight in troy ounces or fractions thereof). Of course, you want the hallmark, or the stamp of the refiner on the silver piece. This point does away with the problem of picking up a piece of silver made and used in Virginia and using it in Montana. What needs to happen is that goods and services need to be denominated in WEIGHT, such as one ounce, half-ounce, fourteenth-ounce for dimes, fifth-ounce for quarters. For example, a jacket costing about $160 would also be worth 5.09 ounces of silver today. In a parallel currency where previous metals would be used alongside paper money, the cashier would be asking how you would be paying. If you say gold, she would look at her register where it lists the amount in gold ounces and how much it is in gold ounces. If you deposit silver into your warehouse account, then your silver may be converted to "gold units" and frozen there to hedge against price fluctuations between the two metals and to simplify the transaction process so that the registers would not accidentally deduct your account of gold in silver units. Imagine that the transaction is for 2.5 ounces of silver, and the register deducts 2.5 ounces of GOLD instead!

This way, you eliminate Gresham's Law (I think). Goods and services would be quoted in paper money, gold, and silver. Think of it as cash, check, or credit cards.
 
Got this from Ed Steer's Gold and Silver Daily.

The catalyst for a spike into the $2,500 to $3,000 price range will be an announcement by China, probably in late 2013 or 2014, that they have acquired 4,000 tonnes or more in their official reserve position. This will put China on an equal footing with the US in terms of a gold-to-GDP ratio and validate gold as the real foundation of the international monetary system. Once that position is validated, gold will move to the $7,000 range in 2015 and beyond. Any lower price level is deflationary and must be avoided at all costs by central banks. The key is that the US and IMF do not want gold to achieve its full potential price until China has acquired its appropriate "share" of official gold reserves. Any other outcome is unacceptable to China. - Jim Rickards
 
This has been interesting read. I often wonder whether if US government doesn't exist since 1913 due to the inception of Federal Reserve system..

I remember back in the days at GMU, there was a student organization protests at "Federal Reserve" system... It was the largest one I've witnessed during the whole college years
 
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