“The Central Bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the Principles and form of our Constitution. I am an enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes for anything but coin. If the American people allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation the banks and corporations that grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property, until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered.” – Thomas Jefferson
Our neighbors to the south in Georgia have introduced the Constitutional Tender Act (HB430), a piece of legislation that has profound implications for state sovereignty. This bill seeks to return the state of Georgia to a basic constitutional principle written in Article I, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution, “No State shall … make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.”
The bill will require all taxes and debts be paid to the Georgia state government in gold or silver coin, or bank accounts backed by gold and silver. This will build a reserve of real money, gold and silver bullion, for the citizens of Georgia which would provide protection against the devaluation of the U.S. Dollar.
The paper Federal Reserve Notes that we use today have no intrinsic value of their own, they are fiat currency – only legal tender because the government declares them to be so. Before 1933, Federal Reserve Notes could be exchanged for gold bullion. President Franklin D. Roosevelt abolished this practice making Federal Reserve Notes only worth the value of the paper on which they are printed. Rapid inflation has ensued since the gold standard was abandoned, so that it now takes $16.64 in today’s currency to duplicate the buying power of $1 in 1933 (US Bureau of Labor and Statistics).
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