The United States Constitution declares, in Article I, Section 10, “No State shall… make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.”
State-Level Constitutional Tender laws seek to nullify federal legal tender laws in the state by authorizing payment in gold and silver or a paper note backed 100% by gold or silver.
The concept of Honest Money is lost on most US citizens, thanks in part to a complete and utter lack of discussion in public schools and universities, but certainly not lost on the elite financial organizations who vehemently oppose such reform. When Nixon decoupled the dollar from its traditional gold backing and replaced it with fiat debt (private Federal Reserve notes) in 1971 because we could no longer cover our bets with gold, he substituted the last vestige of real value (our dollar) with a promissory note (debt) representing nothing more than the willingness and ability of US citizens to shoulder the artificially created debt burden via taxes.
The current private US Federal Reserve, the third central bank in our history, creates money from nothing but the unacceptable privilege to do so, making an arbitrarily agreed upon bookkeeping entry and thus creating an imaginary value which it then extends to their private member banks to trickle down to Main Street, or tells the Treasury they have a like amount of credit to either print money or issue Treasury bills with nothing to back it but an elaborate accounting and taxing scheme which can be viewed as a tenuous financial house of cards.
The first version of the Fed was Hamilton’s first US National or Central Bank as described in this timeline:
February 25, 1791
President Washington asks his cabinet members for opinions on the National Bank. Thomas Jefferson submitted that such a Bank was unconstitutional and would also violate the yet to be ratified 10th Amendment. Alexander Hamilton submitted that Congress’s power to collect taxes was also power to create a national bank. Not convinced by either side, Washington sided with Hamilton as it was Hamilton’s job as Secretary of the Treasury to know what he was doing. December 12, 1791
The Bank of the United States opens its doors in Philadelphia.
January 21, 1793
Hamilton and the National Bank are accused of corruption and mismanagement. Opponents to the National Bank call for the demise of the unconstitutional Bank. Congress fails to act.
February 20, 1811
Congress refuses to let the National Bank renew its Charter on the grounds that the Bank is unconstitutional.
March 4, 1811,
The Bank of the United States is dissolved.
What is astounding about our current situation is the continued willingness of Congress to take one of the highest powers granted them in the Constitution and surrenders it to the private Federal Reserve. This being the same body which consistently erodes our basic rights and freedoms with powers they do not have, passing unlawful legislation such as the Patriot Act and nebulous health care reform, yet it hands away a rightful power they do have to a highly secretive and self-serving third party. One would almost believe there was a parallel government in DC.
In fact, Wright Patman, Chairman of the United States House Committee on Banking and Currency, had this exact sentiment in when he stated in 1964, “In the US today, we have in effect two governments. We have the duly constituted government, then we have an independent, uncontrolled and uncoordinated government in the Federal Reserve, operating the money powers which are reserved to congress by the Constitution.”
He went on to say, “”The dollar represents a one dollar debt to the Federal Reserve System. The Federal Reserve Banks create money out of thin air to buy Government Bonds from the U.S. Treasury … and has created out of nothing a … debt which the American people are obliged to pay with interest.”
US monetary policy, the resultant money supply and interest rates are the life’s blood of our economy. From providing for the national defense to underwriting Main Street, nothing happens in our market without this critical resource. We depend on a stable and legitimate money supply for our basic pursuits of life and liberty and to divorce ‘We the People’ from our basic right of influence and understanding of this critical element of our lives is simply unthinkable. But it is our economic reality; all by the design of an unaudited cabal of bankers who answer to no one.
There is no elected US official who has the power of the Chairman of the Fed. He dictates our monetary policy and answers to no one. It is interesting to watch the omnipotent Fed Chairman, when asked by Congress to delve into details of our current monetary state. His typical condescending reply is that the inner machinations of his private financial gambling house are simply too complex for the average citizen to understand, that it is beyond our modest comprehension, and to ‘just trust us’, they have our best interests at heart and are doing a fine job. So let’s take a quick look at exactly how this financial behemoth evolved and what our trust and ignorance of it has wrought since we lost our financial sovereignty to it in 1913.
Within 20 years of its inception, the US Federal Reserve had managed to finance a world war which very well never would have happened without it, incurred a record $24b war debt which caused major US inflation and halving the net worth of the nation, then facilitating a bubble economy followed immediately by a devastating manufactured depression which literally redrew the face of the nation, allowed insider elites to plunder assets, and finally to underwrite an emerging Germany which set the stage for yet another world war.
All by an organization that was simply to insure reliable and secure money supply. So rather than serving we people, instead the Federal Reserve has not only been a failure in monetary policy and controlling inflation, it has literally been an instrument of tyranny on the populace and a parasitic drain on national finance.
The 10th Amendment and honest money can bring this 97 year Federal Reserve crime wave to an end, by first creating, at the state level, a competing currency to inhibit the Federal Reserve from continuing to debase the currency. Contact your State Representative and ask them to support a Constitutional Tender Law, model legislation is provided here for you.
Paul Warren [send him email] is the Communications Director for the Colorado Tenth Amendment Center.
Poster Comment:
"Gold is the money of kings; silver is the money of gentlemen; barter is the money of peasants; but debt is the money of slaves."1
1Money and Wealth in the New Millennium, by Norm Franz, copyright © 2001, Whitestonepress, page 154.
Some random notes next on the Constitution, money, competing currencies, and so on.