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NEVADA SILVER COIN
BILL:
SOUND SENTIMENT BUT BAD JUDGEMENT
But
how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the
law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to
other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits
one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen
himself cannot do without committing a crime. --Frederic Bastiat
Several people e-mailed
me copies of bill AB 532 introduced into the Nevada legislature.
The bill would require the state of Nevada to issue silver coins
with a face value of US$50 million. Each coin would contain one
ounce of silver but would carry a legal tender value of US$20
(twenty dollars). You can view the bill at <http://www.leg.state.nv.us/>.
As Mark Twain once said,
“It’s sound sentiment, but bad judgement.”
When I see something
like this, the first thought that crosses my mind is, “They don’t
know `sic ‘em’ from `come here’.” This is actually a fiat money
scheme masquerading as sound money. It’s ‘social credit” dolled
up in a silver robe.
Think about it.
Each ounce of silver has a market value of only US$4.50. The US$50
million circulation authorised would use only 2.5 million ounces of
silver. The silver would be forced into circulation with a legal
tender (gun to your head) value of US$20 each, about four times its
market value. In other words, of the US$50 million to be
circulated, about US$37.5 million would be created out of thin air
This is a paper money
scheme, but they’re printing it on silver instead of paper. The
logic behind this seems to be, ‘If the federal government can create
money out of thin air and profit from it, why not the state?”
At the foundation this is a social credit/paper money scheme,
because they are trying to fix the price of silver above market.
They have completely missed the “value for value” concept of gold
and silver money. Mercy! Even our “allies” are our
enemies. The worst thing about a monstrosity like this bill is that
it throws genuine reform into disrepute.
REAL REFORM
But the states can’t do anything about the
US congress’ failure to issue sound gold and silver money, can
they? Absolutely, they could. The constitution at Article
I, section 8 requires congress to “coin money,” and at Article I,
section 10 forbids the states from coining money or “making any
Thing but gold or silver coin a tender in payment of debt.”
Obviously, before the constitution the several states possessed and
exercised all the powers of a sovereign. Among those powers is the
power to coin money. They transferred that power to their agent,
the federal government, under the constitution.
Now their agent has failed to perform its
duty, so the power reverts to the states. As long as the federal
government defaults on its responsibility to coin gold and silver
money, any state has the right to coin its own gold and silver coin
immediately and place it in circulation.
But this Nevada bill
doesn’t solve a thing. It just places the state of Nevada in the
line-up beside that other crook, the US government.
-- F. Sanders
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