When I think of the late Naomi Judd it brings back memories of my grandfather, due to hers and her daughter, Wynonna’s, Grammy award-winning song, “Grandpa, Tell Me ‘Bout the Good Days.”
In 2017, my wife, Karen, and I heard Wynonna at one of her fine Christmas shows, where her “Grandpa” song got me thinking about my first interest in rare coins, sparked by my own grandfather, nicknamed “Red” Lievens for the color of his hair. When I was growing up in Louisiana, by the time I was 7, “Red” began giving me an uncirculated silver dollar every time I scored an “A” on my report card – and also for every birthday and holiday. (He got uncirculated silver dollars at face value from the bank until 1965.)
Before that, my parents and my grandfather put a silver quarter (now worth over $5) under my pillow for each tooth I lost.
From my childhood, I was intrigued by the design on Grandpa’s old Morgan dollars, so I set out to learn more about them. This inspired me to pursue the path I’m still following – rare coins as both a hobby and a career of endless joy and satisfaction. Grandpa taught me that coins made of precious metals carry a real “heft,” which implies they would always “trump” paper money of equal face value. Sure enough, dollar bills from the 1960s are still worth $1, but uncirculated Morgan silver dollars are worth a whole lot more – over $60 apiece at the present time. The silver dollars I got from my grandfather were part of those old values – coins whose worth was real, not just symbolic like the paper dollar. Merle Haggard said the same thing in, “Are the Good Times Really Over?”
I wish a buck was still silver.
It was back when the country was strong…
…Is the best of the free life behind us now, and are the good times really over for good?
Another country singer I know, Larry Gatlin, had a hit song back in 1979 called “All the Gold in California,” when gold was rising rapidly in price. He recently said he should have followed the recommendations of his financial advisors to purchase gold when it was about $300 an ounce in 1979. Instead, he said, “I bought horses and cows and cars and guitars and a lot of other stuff … Now, gold is about $2,700 an ounce while the horses are dead, the cows are dead, the cars won’t run and the guitars are, well, just guitars. The bad news is, I didn’t buy gold. The good news is, I now own gold and I’m going to buy even more.”
In the end, the silver dollars my grandfather gave me had the desired effect: I studied diligently in order to earn more A’s – and more silver dollars. If you have children, grandchildren, or other youngsters special to you, follow my grandfather’s example by giving them something with intrinsic value when there’s a reason to celebrate. You can’t get silver dollars for $1 at the bank, but silver coins or silver rounds still make great incentives for rewarding “A” grades, teach a valuable life lesson and they might well increase in value a lot faster than today’s dollars in a bank. After all, silver is up 470% since January 1, 2000.
Every State in the Union should mint it’s own
silver/gold coinage. Another idea is that States should have their own Gold back treasury and State citizens could carry State debit cards do draw on their account.
No Federal Reserve paper money.
If it were silver it would have some value and could not be printed like advertising fliers.
Since reading G. Edward Griffin’s book “The Creature from Jekyll Island”, and knowing an amendment to the Constitution was not done to extremely modify it, I propose; Now is a great time (when President Trump comes to office) to re-enact precious metal backed currency described in the Constitution, since alternative currencies are allowed and legal (eg. bitcoin, and other digital currencies). Small business would favor it as well as more than 50% of citizenry. I am not suggesting replacing the Federal Reserve Notes (World Reserve Currency) but rather compete with the fiat Fed Notes (at least for now). I envision that it may actually stabilize our economy better and Congress certainly has the power to do this, if not under globalized influences. Furthermore; How did this this major deviation from our Constitution get enacted by the “Federal Reserve Act” without an amendment?
While having a currency backed by something “real” is a nice and comforting idea, there’s a major problem with the approach.
Our money supply *has* to grow in line with economic growth (and population growth). If it doesn’t grow fast enough then deflation hits, and deflation is far worse than inflation (it causes depressions). If the money supply grows too fast then it causes inflation.
If our currency is dependent on precious metals, then our economic growth is dependent on the supply of those metals. Our growth would be limited to our ability to extract enough of those resources from the ground. That is, we have to mine it at exactly the right rate — but mining is a private enterprise and subject to natural restrictions, limitations and challenges. It’s unpredictable, you never know when a mine will run dry or when you’ll have a major new find. If you mine too slowly then you will have a shortage of currency creating deflation and trigger depressions. If you mine too quickly you run the risk of inflation (as the price of the backing metal(s) drops). US and world history is full of examples.
Example: One of the reasons Rome fell was it ran out of gold for currency. Via the silk and spice roads it shipped tons and tons of gold to Asia in exchange for consumables. This left Europe starved for gold and thus currency poor. The so-called Dark Ages were what they were partly because of that shortage. It took nearly a 1000 years to rectify the situation! (and it’s no coincidence that the Renaissance happened at exactly that time). This brings up any problem with this idea — trade deficits. When you run a trade deficit, eventually people will start demanding you redeem your currency in the backing metal(s). That’s what was happening in 1972, countries were demanding to exchange paper dollars for our gold reserves and our reserves were dwindling. The gov’t would have had to buy gold just to redeem the dollars. It’s possible to use “real” currency when you are a net exporter, as the US was for most of it’s history, it’s nearly impossible to do so when you are a net importer (unless you have just massive gold/silver deposits lying around).
To illustrate the problem, imagine that the US had no gold and/or silver deposits to mine. Every single ounce of the metals would have to be imported. That means that in order to increase our money supply we would have to trade away a portion of our economic output in order to acquire the gold and/or silver just to make/back our currency. That’s wasted production and inefficient. Even with local mines, it means the gov’t has to spend tax dollars to purchase the resources, dollar for dollar, for any increase in the money supply. Not only is that inefficient, it is crazy hard to do correctly. The gov’t has a hard enough time figuring out what the economy was doing 6 months ago, nevermind trying to predict what it will do in the future so that they can make sure that there is sufficient currency available (and not too much of it). Say what you will about fiat currencies, their benefit is that they *automatically* somewhat adjust the money supply to economic conditions. No human foresight/wisdom needed to guess at what is or is about to happen. Now, add in the complexities of foreign trade into the mix with having to purchase gold/silver in order to cover redemptions (or mint coins that go overseas and don’t come back). The gov’t will simply get it wrong more often than not and our economy (and we) will suffer for it.
What we need is a free, independent, market for money — not controlled by government (or played with by Central Banks) and not tied to any single natural (limited) resource. Our best economic minds need to come together and figure out exactly what that would look like and how it would function. The market would need to *automatically* increase the money supply in alignment with economic growth and restrict or even shrink it during times of economic contraction. Fiat currencies do that to a degree, but not perfectly, and as they are currently implemented, are far too prone to Central Bank shenanigans.
It’s possible that digital currencies could work that way, but I’ve yet to see one designed with that approach in mind. Most follow Bitcoin’s flawed model in mimicking resource scarcity by arbitrarily putting a limit on supply. That’s why they all have such crazy valuation swings. They aren’t designed to supply just enough currency to meet demand, no more, no less. We need a Goldilocks currency, i.e. always the “just right” amount, never too much, never too little. Gold and silver just don’t meet that criteria — especially not when under gov’t control of the issuance.
Mike Fuljenz ~ Your wish is coming true and we speak. The entire world is transitioning from fiat currency–phony printed papers used by Globalists to enslave us–to all gold-backed or precious metals backed. This will impoverish the evil ones and it will enrich all the people. Mr.Trump has shuttered the Federal Reserve [neither federal nor with any reserves, but a Central Bank owned by City of London and the Vatican]. Everything is changing and all for the better. A new, bright and shiny world is on the horizon…rejoice!
Blessings, 07 Dec 2024 ????✨✨????
83rd Anniversary of Pearl Harbor, 1941
The Federal Reserve took over US currency in 1913 under Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat. They are not a federal government agency, but independent. But they are always responsible for inflation (printing money) or recession (which usually follows inflation) due to higher interest rates to curb the inflation. It’s a yo-yo effect.
What would happen if the Federal Reserve Act was removed? May be bad initially since we would be finding our way. But it no doubt would result in a class war and elitists (wealthy) would likely try to dictate as they do now. And they have the money to do it, but ‘regular’ citizens outnumber them by large margin. Interesting idea?
Growing up in the 50s ‘n 60s my father was in retail cash ‘ carry in the old Bronx and a lot of items cost less than 5 bucks price to the oodd penny so dollar bills and coins were important and prolific, occasionally an Indian head penny or buffalo nickel would turn up and well worn Mercury dimes, Standing Liberty Quarters, and 1/2 dollars with Eagles or Ben Franklin would be encountered. All the Silver dollars were the Morgans. Once we had a sliver slug that I think was a Quarter, the only faded partial mark was the top of “1852.” In 1964 when the coinage was being converted to copper clad slugs Dad wisely had us kids separate and hoard the silver coins, to this day held by a trusted family member come of age. And in 1965 when the dollar paper silver certificate bills were called in we segragated those too, cashing in at 3 to 1 as that market fluctuated with the approaching deadline. For a few years afterward these would still be in circulation.