By Jeremy Holcombe
End The Lie
It looks as though a growing number of states are seeking new currencies that are made of silver and gold.
Worried that the Federal Reserve and the United States Dollar are both on the brink of collapse, 13 states are going about the business of seeking approval from their state governments to either issue their own alternative currency or explore it as an option.
The states seeking this currency include Minnesota, Tennessee, Iowa, South Carolina and Georgia.
The number of states looking to get approval for this has grown, and grown fast. Just three years ago only three states had this request in place.
It looks like more states may jump on the bandwagon as well, as more and more states will look towards their state governments because of a growing fear of a Federal Reserve collapse.
“In the event of hyperinflation, depression, or other economic calamity related to the breakdown of the Federal Reserve System … the State’s governmental finances and private economy will be thrown into chaos,” said North Carolina Republican Representative Glen Bradley in a currency bill he introduced last year.
While this may seem like a good idea, and in the long run may work out, here is where the law gets muddled and things get complicated.
Individual communities are allowed to create their own currency, as long as it is easily distinguishable from U.S. dollars. With that being said, the Constitution bans states from printing their own paper money or issuing their own currency.
The U.S. Constitution does, however, allow states to make “gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.”
This is definitely an interesting turn of events in how states and their state governments are beginning to view American currency.
The dollar is so weak right now that many states just want to discard it altogether and implement their own monetary system.
While I see how this may work, I also see how it could cause a lot of problems for the way we view money and how we spend it. What is to stop a state from charging a different amount of money on certain things, based on how their new monetary system is built?
We are only still in the beginning steps of this, and I don’t know that the Federal government is even going to consider this too much, but if they do, new laws would need to be written to enable a new state-by-state currency to flow smoothly.
There are also more technical concerns regarding tax collection and how the Internal Revenue Service (a federal agency) will respond to such developments.
