Ares
31st December 2012, 09:27 PM
In respect of the fiscal fight underway this weekend in the Congress, The New York Sun is in favor of recognizing that America has already defaulted on its obligations. The default has become evident in the collapse of the value of the dollar to below, at the moment, a 1,600th of an once of gold. It has plunged to as low as an 1,800th of an ounce of gold during the Obama presidency from the 860th of an ounce of gold at which the dollar was valued at the start of his first term and the 265th of an ounce of gold at which it was valued at the start of President Bush’s first time. This collapse is a default.
This is a context in which lifting the ceiling on the federal government’s debt, one of the measures now before the House, is a kind of fiction. What is the difference between refusing to pay a debt and paying it back with something of less value than what was borrowed? What we favor is an advance to the recognition of the monetary role of gold and silver. This is the constitutional legal tender. It is American bedrock. It means that lifting the ceiling on what the federal government is permitted under the law to borrow is a meaningless gesture absent certain reforms.
The most important of these have already been introduced in the Congress. One of them, a bill to audit the Federal Reserve, has passed the House by a wide, bi-partisan majority. That a measure has been championed for years by Congressman Ron Paul. A second reform is another of his bills, the Free Competition in Currency Act — HR 1098 — which would end legal tender paper money and permit the minting and circulation of privately issued coins and notes. A third measure, championed by Senators DeMint, Lee, and Paul, would remove taxes on gold and silver coins that are recognized by either the federal government or any state as legal tender.
Any one of these measures would be a step in the right direction. The audit of the Federal Reserve that the House has passed — and on which the Senate has been refusing to vote — would let us know where we stand and shed important light on the inner reasoning of the nation’s central bank. The Sun has long since endorsed it. The Free Competition in Currency Act, which the Sun was the first newspaper to endorse, would enact the ideas of the Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek, who toward the end of his gigantic career called for the denationalization of money.
The DeMint-Lee-Paul measure, which the Sun has also endorsed, would enable ordinary citizens to keep their savings in the money envisioned by Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, Jackson, Cleveland, McKinley, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, and Eisenhower, to name but a few of the establishment types who hewed to an integrity in respect of money that the modern press is attempting to set down as flakey. The combination of the three bills would end the American default and set the stage for a resurgence of our — and the world’s — economy and end charades of the kind the Congress is going through now over the debt ceiling.
http://www.nysun.com/editorials/anerica-defaults/88127/
This is a context in which lifting the ceiling on the federal government’s debt, one of the measures now before the House, is a kind of fiction. What is the difference between refusing to pay a debt and paying it back with something of less value than what was borrowed? What we favor is an advance to the recognition of the monetary role of gold and silver. This is the constitutional legal tender. It is American bedrock. It means that lifting the ceiling on what the federal government is permitted under the law to borrow is a meaningless gesture absent certain reforms.
The most important of these have already been introduced in the Congress. One of them, a bill to audit the Federal Reserve, has passed the House by a wide, bi-partisan majority. That a measure has been championed for years by Congressman Ron Paul. A second reform is another of his bills, the Free Competition in Currency Act — HR 1098 — which would end legal tender paper money and permit the minting and circulation of privately issued coins and notes. A third measure, championed by Senators DeMint, Lee, and Paul, would remove taxes on gold and silver coins that are recognized by either the federal government or any state as legal tender.
Any one of these measures would be a step in the right direction. The audit of the Federal Reserve that the House has passed — and on which the Senate has been refusing to vote — would let us know where we stand and shed important light on the inner reasoning of the nation’s central bank. The Sun has long since endorsed it. The Free Competition in Currency Act, which the Sun was the first newspaper to endorse, would enact the ideas of the Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek, who toward the end of his gigantic career called for the denationalization of money.
The DeMint-Lee-Paul measure, which the Sun has also endorsed, would enable ordinary citizens to keep their savings in the money envisioned by Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, Jackson, Cleveland, McKinley, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, and Eisenhower, to name but a few of the establishment types who hewed to an integrity in respect of money that the modern press is attempting to set down as flakey. The combination of the three bills would end the American default and set the stage for a resurgence of our — and the world’s — economy and end charades of the kind the Congress is going through now over the debt ceiling.
http://www.nysun.com/editorials/anerica-defaults/88127/