Texas Bill to Establish Gold & Silver as Legal Tender, Dealing Massive Blow to Federal Reserve

A bill recently introduced in Texas seeks to obliterate the Federal Reserve’s much-maligned monopoly on currency by establishing gold and silver as legal tender — but the groundbreaking legislation, if passed, would also prohibit those precious metals from being seized by State authorities.

If passed, Texans would secure stability by reclaiming their purchasing power — without being subject to the whims of The Fed — an institution widely regarded as a devious manipulator of currencies and markets.

Senator Bob Hall introduced the bill last month, which, the Tenth Amendment Center explains, “declares specifically that certain gold and silver coins are legal tender, and prohibits any tax, charge, assessment, fee, or penalty on any exchange of Federal Reserve notes (dollars) for gold or silver. The bill authorizes the payment of taxes and fees in gold & silver in certain circumstances. It would also prohibit the seizure of gold or silver by state authorities.”

Further subverting the current economy’s fealty to Dr. Ron Paul’s Enemy Number One, SB 2097, as the legislation is better known, would prevent any contracts explicitly to be paid in silver or gold to be instead paid with Federal Reserve notes — if you agree to pay in precious coins, you cannot then proffer payment in dollars.

Enforcing such contracts legally, the Tenth Amendment Center notes, would encourage their proliferation — and that of gold and silver coinage.

Constitutional tender expert, William Greene, agrees. He explained,

“Over time, as residents of the state use both Federal Reserve notes and silver and gold coins, the fact that the coins hold their value more than Federal Reserve notes do will lead to a ‘reverse Gresham’s Law’ effect, where good money (gold and silver coins) will drive out bad money (Federal Reserve notes). As this happens, a cascade of events can begin to occur, including the flow of real wealth toward the state’s treasury, an influx of banking business from outside of the state – as people in other states carry out their desire to bank with sound money – and an eventual outcry against the use of Federal Reserve notes for any transactions.”

Texas law currently mandates all debts and taxes be paid in Federal Reserve Notes and coins issued by the Treasury — ironic, considering Article I, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution states,

“No State shall … make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.”

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It wasn’t until 1913, with the passage of the Federal Reserve Act — which only came after a concerted, covert campaign by U.S. banking magnates — that the loosely hybrid system placed massive control of money in the hands of Big Banks with little oversight from the government. But the ‘central banking’ system has failed to prevent further financial crises — and has been given even a greater chokehold and increased authority as compensation.

Additionally, fiat currency has become a monster issue — once gold no longer backed U.S. dollars beginning in 1971, excuses to just print more bills naturally multiplied.

Where the public has no voice in the value of Federal Reserve Notes, Texans — and any states to follow its lead — could theoretically eschew using dollars, altogether, in favor of payment in gold and silver coins.

As it stands, officials of the Federal Reserve — a private institution — make decisions behind closed doors, where collusion and corruption can easily sway opinion away from the public’s, if not world’s, best interests.

Notably, the most efficacious watchdog against such practices in any given industry — an independent audit — has never been required of The Fed.

“While the debasement of the currency is the result of federal policy and banker collusion, the effect is broad and deep,” Tenth Amendment Center explains. “While there has been talk about reform, or at least an audit of the Fed, it is virtually a certainty that the federal government will never relinquish the power it enjoys through control of the monetary system.  That said, there are practical steps that can be taken at the state level to promote the use and acceptance of sound money and undermine the Fed’s monopoly on money.”

If passed, Texas would join a smattering of states instituting sound money policies by returning gold and silver to a status as legitimate currency the metals have enjoyed throughout much of recorded history.

Last June, Texas paved the way for this new bill by establishing the first state-level gold depository, where an “account holder may transfer any portion of the balance of the holder’s depository account by check, draft, or digital electronic instruction to another depository account holder or to a person who at the time the transfer is initiated is not a depository account holder.”

Should lawmakers side with the financial interests of Texans and pass this legislation, Texas would join Utah, which began recognizing gold and silver coins issued by the United States as legal tender in 2011.

Bill To Audit The FED Passes House Committee, Could Become Law

Washington, D.C. — For decades, the Federal Reserve of the United States Government has been ignoring Freedom of Information requests (FOIA), even finding and using loopholes to get around such requests from citizens, in regards as to how the world’s most powerful financial institution conducts its business. Nearly everything about the Federal Reserve remains a carefully and closely guarded secret. Yet, despite repeated requests from officials aware of its unscrupulous nature, the FED refuses to open its doors, let alone its financial books, to those stakeholders who dutifully claim the rights to know more: the U.S. citizenry.

For years, proponents of transparency have made repeated attempts to force the FED to operate with at least the same level of transparency with which the Congress operates to no avail. However, that could soon change.

The latest bill to hold the FED accountable was approved by the Republican-controlled Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Tuesday. This bill began under former Congressman Ron Paul’s term and is being pushed through by his son.

As Market Watch reports, analysts said the measure has a better chance to become law now that Republicans control both houses of Congress and the White House. Paul’s son, Rand, the Republican senator from Kentucky, has introduced a similar measure in the Senate.

Proponents of auditing the FED say the central bank wields too much power, operates in near total secrecy, and is accountable to no one. Only an “outside auditor” employed by the FED is allowed to audit the FED’s books, not the government itself.

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Supporters of the FED’s practice of keeping its business dealings secret say they believe the FED’s activity should not be politicized and forcing the FED to be audited, in much the same way an average citizen is audited by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the financial institution’s autonomy would be in jeopardy.

“This bill would open the floodgates to political interference in monetary-policy making,” said Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat from the District of Columbia.

Reuters writes, “Currently, the Fed publishes detailed audits of its finances but it keeps the inner workings of its monetary policy deliberations secret, publishing transcripts of policy meetings only with a five-year lag.”

Criticisms of such blind support for the FED are numerous. Ron Paul calls the Fed “the chief culprit” in the financial crisis of 2008. He says the FED’s willful printing of more currency creates a “boom” and “bust” scenario which has eroded the value of the U.S. dollar to record lows amounting to a loss of 96 percent of its value. Paul is not alone. Others who’ve tried to get any information from the FED have been frustrated by the lack of transparency the new bill seeks to enforce.

Getting around FOIA requests is easy for the FED. It denies such requests by stating it’s either not privy to the information or that a private entity has the information and therefore, FOIA does not apply. Here’s an example. While attempting to answer the question as to what extent minorities were responsible for defaulting on federally insured mortgages (during the latest recession) journalist Steve Sailer issued a FOIA request to the FED for the data. Here’s the response he said he received, which may also serve as rationale for the need to audit the FED. “The information you seek does not currently exist in the form you request,” wrote the FED’s Board of Governors in response to his FOIA request.

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Going further, the explanation continued, “Even assuming the information could be derived and produced in the format you seek, the resulting table, like the underlying data set would be a record of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, not the Board. Accordingly, we cannot provide you with any such information.”

In other words, the FED acknowledged its data is housed under the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (Private Bank) and is therefore not subjected to FOIA requests. Sailer’s  discovery brings up one of the most contentious criticisms the FED faces by those who seek to force the central bank out of the shadows of privacy and into the light of transparency. All of the FED’s branches are privately owned. “The 12 regional Reserve Banks—Located around the country, the 12 Federal Reserve Banks are chartered as private corporations. Employees are not civil service,” writes the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. So all the FED has to do to keep its activities secret is to transfer its data to one of its branches and FOIA no longer applies, as Sailer discovered.

The need to audit the FED is agreed to in somewhat of a bipartisan fashion, yet some Democrats and Republicans largely resist any calls for the audit. As a result, getting Congress to pass a bill requiring the FED to be audited by its own government has been no easy task. Similar bills calling for the FED to be audited were introduced in 2009 and in 2015. In both cases the bills passed in the House and failed in the Senate, and would likely have been vetoed by then president Barack H. Obama. President Donald Trump has voiced support for auditing the FED, however, that was prior to being elected. Whether or not he intends to keep that promise remains a mystery.

Arizona Challenges the Fed’s Money Monopoly

(RPI) History shows that, if individuals have the freedom to choose what to use as money, they will likely opt for gold or silver.

Of course, modern politicians and their Keynesian enablers despise the gold or silver standard. This is because linking a currency to a precious metal limits the ability of central banks to finance the growth of the welfare-warfare state via the inflation tax. This forces politicians to finance big government much more with direct means of taxation.

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Despite the hostility toward gold from modern politicians, gold played a role in US monetary policy for sixty years after the creation of the Federal Reserve. Then, in 1971, as concerns over the US government’s increasing deficits led many foreign governments to convert their holdings of US dollars to gold, President Nixon closed the gold window, creating America’s first purely fiat currency.

America’s 46-year experiment in fiat currency has gone exactly as followers of the Austrian school predicted: a continuing decline in the dollar’s purchasing power accompanied by a decline in the standard of living of middle- and working-class Americans, a series of Federal Reserve-created booms followed by increasingly severe busts, and an explosive growth in government spending. Federal Reserve policies are also behind much of the increase in income inequality.

Since the 2008 Fed-created economic meltdown, more Americans have become aware of the Federal Reserve’s responsibility for America’s economic problems. This growing anti-Fed sentiment is one of the key factors behind the liberty movement’s growth and represents the most serious challenge to the Fed’s legitimacy in its history. This movement has made “Audit the Fed” into a major national issue that is now closer than ever to being signed into law.

Audit the Fed is not the only focus of the growing anti-Fed movement. For example, this Wednesday the Arizona Senate Finance and Rules Committees will consider legislation (HB 2014) officially defining gold, silver, and other precious metals as legal tender. The bill also exempts transactions in precious metals from state capital gains taxes, thus ensuring that people are not punished by the taxman for rejecting Federal Reserve notes in favor of gold or silver. Since inflation increases the value of precious metals, these taxes give the government one more way to profit from the Federal Reserve’s currency debasement.

HB 2014 is a very important and timely piece of legislation. The Federal Reserve’s failure to reignite the economy with record-low interest rates since the last crash is a sign that we may soon see the dollar’s collapse. It is therefore imperative that the law protect people’s right to use alternatives to what may soon be virtually worthless Federal Reserve notes.

Passage of HB 2014 would also send a message to Congress and the Trump administration that the anti-Fed movement is growing in influence. Thus, passage of this bill will not just strengthen movements in other states to pass similar legislation; it will also help build support for the Audit the Fed bill and legislation repealing federal legal tender laws.

This Wednesday I will be in Arizona to help rally support for HB 2014, speaking on behalf of the bill before the Arizona Senate Finance Committee at 9:00 a.m. I will also be speaking at a rally at noon at the Arizona state capitol. I hope every supporter of sound money in the Phoenix area joins me to show their support for ending the Fed’s money monopoly.

By Ron Paul / Republished with permission / Ron Paul Institute / Report a typo

Myth-Busters: Those Who Depend on The Fed

There are many different interests that depend on the existence of the Federal Reserve and its ability to create money out of thin air. Today we discuss those groups and the reasons why they have no interest in getting rid of the Fed.

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