| Libertarian Party of NY |
Economic issues will be at the forefront of this year's election: the employment picture is still shaky and the dollar has been volatile. Economic Issues--The Money we Use
One alternative to Federal Reserve Notes (FRNs) is the Liberty Dollar. Bernard von NotHaus, who bills himself a Monetary Architect, has been planning the currency for decades, and launched it 6 years ago. There are millions of Liberty Dollars in circulation already, thanks to the details of distribution that Bernard has worked out.
For some years, silver dollars have been growing less and less popular. The number now in use is far below what the Secretary considers "normal." It will be remembered that as a war measure, the Pittman Act authorized the Treasury to melt down a large quantity of our silver dollars for sale as bullion to India. At the same time the act called for the restoration of these coins to circulation at a future date, and silver has been purchased for these replacements. Unfortunately, many persons have gotten out of the habit of using silver "cartwheels," and their current use has dropped from 84 millions in 1919 to 54 millions in 1924. The life of the silver dollar is virtually unlimited, whereas the paper dollar seldom lives longer than ten months. The Treasury figures that if it can restore to circulation 30 million silver dollars in the continental United States and 10 millions more in our insular possessions, and with these displace equal amounts of paper currency, an actual saving of $828,000 can be effected on this item alone; which, the Secretary points out, is equivalent to interest at 4 per cent, on 21 million dollars of the public debt.
Secretary Mellon's appeal is to our own elightened self-interest.
from Current Opinion, November 1924
Theron Burrough writes about the latest goings-on at NORFED:
[P]eople figured out we could just go back to metals. And did it. Bernard von NotHaus cooked up his own metals-backed currency, the Liberty Dollar, and an organization to say the Federal Reserve is a scam, NORFED, and grew them.Now von NotHaus is our Presidential candidate's choice for Secretary of the Treasury. The Liberty Dollar is about to do a split, in which your $10 Liberty Dollar bill will become worth $20 Liberty Dollars. You can trade it in. It will still be worth the same ounce of .999 fine silver. But it'll be worth $20 Liberty Dollars, because the value of silver has increased.
And now you can send this silver money using the Internet. NORFED's eLibertyDollar.com site has an electronic version of the silver-backed Liberty Dollar. It's WAY COOL. I've been fooling with it and so far it works just fine.
This just got better -- you can now receive your pay in Liberty Dollars if you like and then print bankable money orders or put them into a MasterCard. You'll have to pay a conversion fee to do this. But if you like, you can use your NORFED currency 100%, but issue dollars to those requiring them, and not have your Social Security number tied to the transactions. This means you have access to the banking infrastructure and can issue checks, while basically remaining a Liberty Dollar, cash-based life.
This can be done by joining an organization called Americans for Lawful Financial Independence and Information. It's at ALFII.com. You join, you get an account also at MYICIS.com, a service ALFII also runs, which allows you to print money orders. There are some other interesting services such as health insurance offerings.
What is happening is that a parallel currency and banking structure are being successfully grown by those who do not like the existing one.
--- From a message to LPNY_discuss on Wed, 18 Aug 2004.
More Reading
For more information on the Liberty Dollar:
The Liberty Dollar or NORFED / 225 N. Stockwell Road / Evansville, Indiana 47715
888.421.6181 or Truth@LibertyDollar.org
http://www.LibertyDollar.org/Murray Rothbard's The Case for a Genuine Gold Dollar from the Ludvig von Mises Institute
e-gold: gold itself, circulated electronically
Notable Quotes on Money from FAME, the Foundation for the Advancement of Monetary Education
Interesting links about money
Alternative Currencies
IthacaHours, a community currency
LETSystems information
"Complementary Currency" Overview
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