Free Competition in Currency Act of 2011

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 19 Sep 2011 11:40:46 GMT  <== Politics ==> 

Lawrence H. White at The House Committee on Financial Services via The Monetary Future - A Professor of Economics at George Mason University speaks out in favor of Ron Paul's H.R. 1098, the "Free Competition in Currency Act of 2011". It repeals legal tender, eliminates taxes on physical precious metal trading, and strikes section 486 of USC 18, which bans precious metal rounds that are similar to US coins, the statute under which Bernard von Nothaus, the creator of the LIberty Dollar, was convicted. Original PDF of Professor White's talk at financialservices.house.gov/UploadedFiles/091311white.pdf. [grabbe]

It is widely understood that competition among private enterprises gives us technological improvements in all kinds of products, delivering higher quality at lower cost. For example, the competition of FedEx and UPS with the US Postal Service in package delivery has been of great benefit to American consumers. Currency users also benefits from competition. My research indicates that currency has been better provided by competing private enterprises than by government monopoly. For example, private gold and silver mints during the American gold rushes provided trustworthy coins until they were suppressed by legislation. Scientific appraisals have found that the privately minted coins were produced even more precisely than the coins of the US Mint. Private bank-issued currency was the most popular form of money around the world until government-sponsored central banks, with few exceptions, gained exclusive note-issuing privileges.

We do not rely on the Treasury or the Federal Reserve, but rather private financial institutions, to provide our checking accounts, credit cards, and traveler’s checks. The consumer benefits from the competition in payment services among banks. Consumers would likewise benefit from free and fair competition among coin issuers. Although Federal Reserve Notes and Treasury coins should of course be protected from counterfeiting, there is no good case for them to enjoy monopoly privileges in the market for currency.

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