THANKS!

Imagine a society with a perfectly free market. Banks issue notes, which they promise for some interval to accept in exchange for some basket of goods (which interval and basket may be peculiar to the bank in question). As the interval approaches expiration, each bank makes a new promise, good for a new interval overlapping the expiring interval, which promise may be for the same basket, or for an adjusted basket. During the over-lap, both promises will hold and so the presenter will have the choice of basket.

For example, Joe’s Bank might promise that from January through June they will pay 5 grams of osmium and 10 grams of palladium in exchange for J$1. At the end of March, they might promise that from April through September, they will pay 6 grams of osmium and 9 grams of palladium. At the end of June, they might promise that from July through December they will pay 5.5 grams of osmium and 1o grams of palladium. And so forth.

Free-market contestability would push banks towards provision of baskets such that their currency was a reliable unit of account. And the free market would almost surely do much better that baskets of just gold or just silver or just some combination of these.

I never believed Keynesianism to be correct but never knew good arguments against his ideas. Your book has started me down a quest to gain truth and knowledge by reading Hazlitt and others on your recommended reading list. Thank you for doing so much to contribute to the enlightenment of those who are searching for the truth. Good luck with all your future endeavors.

Thinking from a political strategy perspective, what about using the Monetary Reform Act as put forth by The Money Masters (with some modifications) to accomplish some of our desired goals? It seems to me we could easily add clauses that abolish legal tender laws and taxation on gold/silver. I agree that in such a scenario people will likely trend toward hard money.

Utilizing the Monetary Reform Act, we get the added bonus of neutralizing the Federal Reserve and fractional-reserve banking; plus, monetary inflation is *relatively* stable at 3%/year. There are the additional benefits of eliminating the national debt, interest payments on that debt, etc. Some aspects of the Act would make great selling points… some are not necessarily steps in the RIGHT direction, but they’re not steps in the WRONG direction, either.

Anecdotally, I’ve noticed I get a lot of push-back on the legal tender and gold standard ideas in political conversation… but if I explicitly include those same ideas in a Monetary Reform Act-style bill, the reactions are significantly more favorable.

Finally — we’re the “Ron Paul supporters”! Everyone knows who we are and nobody would willingly turn away such a dedicated following (except, apparently, the mainstream GOP). I image that current supporters of the Monetary Reform Act would be thrilled to incorporate our ideas in exchange for the support.

Anyway, just something I’ve been thinking about!

-Brasten