Paper Money and Inflation in Colonial America
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The Federal Reserve Act of 1913
THE FEDERAL RESERVE ACT OF 1913 HISTORY AND DIGEST by V. GILMORE IDEN PUBLISHED BY THE NATIONAL BANK NEWS PHILADELPHIA Digitized for FRASER http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/ Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Digitized for FRASER http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/ Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Digitized for FRASER http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/ Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Copyright, 1914 by Ccrtttiois Bator Digitized for FRASER http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/ Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis History of Federal Reserve Act History N MONDAY, October 21, 1907, the Na O tional Bank of Commerce of New York City announced its refusal to clear for the Knickerbocker Trust Company of the same city. The trust company had deposits amounting to $62,000,000. The next day, following a run of three hours, the Knickerbocker Trust Company paid out $8,000,000 and then suspended. One immediate result was that banks, acting independently, held on tight to the cash they had in their vaults, and money went to a premium. Ac cording to the experts who investigated the situation, this panic was purely a bankers’ panic and due entirely to our system of banking, which bases the protection of the financial solidity of the country upon the individual reserves of banks. In the case of a stress, such as in 1907, the banks fail to act as a whole, their first consideration being the protec tion of their own reserves. PAGE 5 Digitized for FRASER http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/ Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis History of Federal Reserve Act The conditions surrounding previous panics were entirely different. -
Is Paper Money Just Paper Money? Experimentation and Variation in the Paper Monies Issued by the American Colonies from 1690 to 1775
NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES IS PAPER MONEY JUST PAPER MONEY? EXPERIMENTATION AND VARIATION IN THE PAPER MONIES ISSUED BY THE AMERICAN COLONIES FROM 1690 TO 1775 Farley Grubb Working Paper 17997 http://www.nber.org/papers/w17997 NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 April 2012 Previously circulated as 'Is Paper Money Just Paper Money? Experimentation and Local Variation in the Fiat Paper Monies Issued by the Colonial Governments of British North America, 1690-1775: Part I." A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the Conference on "De-Teleologising History of Money and Its Theory," Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Research–Project 22330102, University of Tokyo, 14-16 February 2012. The author thanks the participants of this conference and Akinobu Kuroda for helpful comments. Tracy McQueen provided editorial assistance. The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer- reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications. © 2012 by Farley Grubb. All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit, including © notice, is given to the source. Is Paper Money Just Paper Money? Experimentation and Variation in the Paper Monies Issued by the American Colonies from 1690 to 1775 Farley Grubb NBER Working Paper No. 17997 April 2012, Revised April 2015 JEL No. -
The Satisfaction of Gold Clause Obligations by Legal Tender Paper
Fordham Law Review Volume 4 Issue 2 Article 6 1935 The Satisfaction of Gold Clause Obligations by Legal Tender Paper Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation The Satisfaction of Gold Clause Obligations by Legal Tender Paper, 4 Fordham L. Rev. 287 (1935). Available at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr/vol4/iss2/6 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by FLASH: The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History. It has been accepted for inclusion in Fordham Law Review by an authorized editor of FLASH: The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 1935] COMMENTS lishing a crime, a legislature must fix an ascertainable standard of guilt, so that those subject thereto may regulate their conduct in accordance with the act.01 In the recovery acts, however, the filing of the codes Will have established the standard of guilt, and it is recognized that the legislatures may delegate the power to make rules and regulations and provide that violations shall constitute 9 2 a crime. THE SATISFACTION o GOLD CLAUSE OBLIGATIONS BY LEGAL TENDER PAPER. Not until 1867 did anyone seriously litigate1 what Charles Pinckney meant when he successfully urged upon the Constitutional Convention - that the docu- ment it was then formulating confer upon the Congress the power "To coin money" and "regulate the value thereof." 3 During that year and those that have followed, however, the Supreme Court of the United States on four oc- casions4 has been called upon to declare what this government's founders con- templated when they incorporated this provision into the paramount law of the land.5 Confessedly, numerous other powers delegated in terms to the national 91. -
Report on the Legal Protection of Banknotes in the European Union Member States
ECB EZB EKT BCE EKP REPORT ON THE LEGAL PROTECTION OF BANKNOTES IN THE EUROPEAN UNION MEMBER STATES November 1999 REPORT ON THE LEGAL PROTECTION OF BANKNOTES IN THE EUROPEAN UNION MEMBER STATES November 1999 © European Central Bank, 1999 Address Kaiserstrasse 29 D-60311 Frankfurt am Main Germany Postal address Postfach 16 03 19 D-60066 Frankfurt am Main Germany Telephone +49 69 1344 0 Internet http://www.ecb.int Fax +49 69 1344 6000 Telex 411 144 ecb d All rights reserved. Reproduction for educational and non-commercial purposes is permitted provided that the source is acknowledged. The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Central Bank. ISBN 92-9181-051-7 2 ECB Report on the legal protection of banknotes • November 1999 Contents EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 5 I. LEGAL PROTECTION OF EURO BANKNOTES 7 A. THE CRIMINAL APPROACH: COUNTERFEITING 7 1. The legal situation in the Member States 7 2. The desired legal situation 9 3. The risk of increased counterfeit activity 11 4. The possibilities of prevention – co-operation and co-ordination 12 5. The harmonisation of sanctions 18 6. The detention of counterfeit banknotes 18 B. THE CIVIL APPROACH: COPYRIGHT PROTECTION (COMPLEMENTARY TOOLS AND SETTING CRITERIA FOR LEGAL REPRODUCTIONS) 20 1. Copyright protection for euro banknotes 20 2. The use of the © sign on euro banknotes 22 3. The enforcement of copyright 23 4. The reproduction of euro banknotes 24 C. THE MATERIAL APPROACH: ANTI-COPYING DEVICES FOR REPRODUCTION EQUIPMENT 26 II. LEGAL ASPECTS OF FIDUCIARY CIRCULATION 28 A. -
Lawful Money Presentation Speaker Notes
“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”, Thomas Jefferson 1 2 1. According to the report made pursuant to Public Law 96-389 the present monetary arrangements [i.e. the Federal Reserve Banking System] of the United States are unconstitutional --even anti-constitutional-- from top to bottom. 2. “If what is used as a medium of exchange is fluctuating in its value, it is no better than unjust weights and measures…which are condemned by the Laws of God and man …” Since bank notes, such as the Federal Reserve Notes that we carry around in our pockets, can be inflated or deflated at will they are dishonest. 3. The amount of Federal Reserve Notes in circulation are past the historical point of recovery and thus will ultimately lead to a massive hyperinflation that will “blow-up” the current U.S. monetary system resulting in massive social and economic dislocation. 3 The word Dollar is in fact a standard unit of measurement of money; it is analogous to an “hour” for time, an “ounce” for weight, and an “inch” for length. The Dollar is our Country’s standard unit of measurement for money. • How do you feel when you go to a gas station and pump “15 gallons of gas” into your 12 gallon tank? • Or you went to the lumber yard and purchased an eight foot piece of lumber, and when you got home you discovered that it was actually only 7 ½ feet long? • How would you feel if you went to the grocery store and purchased what you believed were 2 lbs. -
OIG-10-024 Audit of the Office of Comptroller of The
Audit Report OIG-10-024 Audit of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s Fiscal Years 2009 and 2008 Financial Statements December 22, 2009 Office of Inspector General Department of the Treasury DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY WASHINGTON, D.C. 20220 OFFICE OF INSPECTOR GENERAL December 22, 2009 MEMORANDUM FOR JOHN C. DUGAN COMPTROLLER OF THE CURRENCY FROM: Michael Fitzgerald Director, Financial Audits SUBJECT: Audit of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s Fiscal Years 2009 and 2008 Financial Statements I am pleased to transmit the attached audited Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) financial statements for fiscal years 2009 and 2008. Under a contract monitored by the Office of Inspector General, GKA, P.C. (GKA), an independent certified public accounting firm, performed an audit of the financial statements of OCC as of September 30, 2009 and 2008 and for the years then ended. The contract required that the audit be performed in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards; applicable provisions of Office of Management and Budget Bulletin No. 07-04, Audit Requirements for Federal Financial Statements, as amended; and the GAO/PCIE Financial Audit Manual. The following reports, prepared by GKA, are incorporated in the attachment: • Independent Auditor’s Report on Financial Statements; • Independent Auditor’s Report on Internal Control over Financial Reporting; and • Independent Auditor’s Report on Compliance with Laws and Regulations In its audit of OCC’s financial statements, GKA found: • that the financial statements were fairly presented, in all material respects, in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America, • no matters involving internal control and its operations that are considered material weaknesses, and • no instances of reportable noncompliance with laws and regulations tested. -
The Birth of the Continental Dollar, 1775
NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES THE CONTINENTAL DOLLAR: INITIAL DESIGN, IDEAL PERFORMANCE, AND THE CREDIBILITY OF CONGRESSIONAL COMMITMENT Farley Grubb Working Paper 17276 http://www.nber.org/papers/w17276 NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 August 2011 Preliminary versions were presented at Queens University, Kingston, Canada, 2010; University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK, 2010; the National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, 2011; the annual meeting of the Economic History Association, Boston, MA, 2011; and the University of Delaware, Newark, DE, 2011. The author thanks the participants for their comments. Research assistance by John Bockrath, Jiaxing Jiang, and Zachary Rose, and editorial assistance by Tracy McQueen, are gratefully acknowledged. The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer- reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications. © 2011 by Farley Grubb. All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit, including © notice, is given to the source. The Continental Dollar: Initial Design, Ideal Performance, and the Credibility of Congressional Commitment Farley Grubb NBER Working Paper No. 17276 August 2011, Revised February 2013 JEL No. E42,E52,G12,G18,H11,H56,H6,H71,N11,N21,N41 ABSTRACT An alternative history of the Continental dollar is constructed from original sources and tested against evidence on prices and exchange rates. -
Greenbacks, Consent, and Unwritten Amendments
Arkansas Law Review Volume 73 Number 4 Article 1 January 2021 Greenbacks, Consent, and Unwritten Amendments John M. Bickers Northern Kentucky University, Highland Heights Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uark.edu/alr Part of the Constitutional Law Commons, Jurisprudence Commons, Legal History Commons, and the Supreme Court of the United States Commons Recommended Citation John M. Bickers, Greenbacks, Consent, and Unwritten Amendments, 73 Ark. L. Rev. 669 (2021). Available at: https://scholarworks.uark.edu/alr/vol73/iss4/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UARK. It has been accepted for inclusion in Arkansas Law Review by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks@UARK. For more information, please contact [email protected]. GREENBACKS, CONSENT, AND UNWRITTEN AMENDMENTS John M. Bickers* I remember a German farmer expressing as much in a few words as the whole subject requires: “money is money, and paper is paper.”—All the invention of man cannot make them otherwise. The alchymist may cease his labours, and the hunter after the philosopher’s stone go to rest, if paper cannot be metamorphosed into gold and silver, or made to answer the same purpose in all cases.1 INTRODUCTION Every day Americans spend paper money, using it as legal tender. Yet the Constitution makes no mention of this phenomenon. Indeed, it clearly prevents the states from having the authority to make paper money into legal tender, and does not award this power to Congress.2 Yet today, without a formal written amendment to the Constitution, America seems united in accepting this fact to a degree that greatly exceeds our unity in the vast majority of Constitutional questions that might appear. -
Davis S Dissertation 2010.Pdf
The Trend Towards The Debasement Of American Currency A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at George Mason University By Steven Davis Master of Science Stanford University, 2003 Master of Science University of Durham, 2002 Bachelor of Science University of Pennsylvania, 2001 Director: Dr. Richard Wagner, Professor Department of Economics Fall Semester 2010 George Mason University Fairfax, VA Copyright: 2010 by Steven Davis All Rights Reserved ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Professors Richard Wagner, Robin Hanson, and John Crockett for their insight, feedback, and flexibility in their positions on my dissertation committee. Additional thanks to Professor Wagner for his guidance in helping me customize my academic program here at George Mason. I would also like to thank Mary Jackson for her amazing responsiveness to all of my questions and her constant supply of Krackel candy bars. Thanks to Professor “Doc” Bennett for being a great “RA-employer” and helping me optimize my Scantron-grading technique. Thanks to the Economics Department for greatly assisting my studies by awarding me the Dunn Fellowship, as well as providing a great environment for economic study. Thanks to my Mom and Dad for both their support and their implicit contribution to the Allen Davis game. Finally, thanks to the unknown chef of the great brownies available in the small Enterprise Hall cafeteria. Hopefully, they will one day become a topping at Mr. Yogato or at its successor, Little Yohai. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF TABLES .......................................................................................................... v LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................ vi ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................. viii Chapter 1: Introduction .................................................................................................. -
Statement on Hr 1098, the Free Competition in Currency Act of 2011 September 13, 2011 ______
STATEMENT ON HR 1098, THE FREE COMPETITION IN CURRENCY ACT OF 2011 SEPTEMBER 13, 2011 _____________________ Lawrence H. White Professor of Economics, George Mason University House Committee on Financial Services Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology Chairman Paul, Ranking Member Clay, and members of the subcommittee: Thank you for the opportunity to discuss my views on HR 1098, the Free Competition in Currency Act of 2011 (hereafter “the Act”). As an economist specializing in monetary systems I have studied and written for many years about the role of free competition in currency. Indeed the second book of my three books on the topic, published in 1989 by New York University Press, was entitled Competition and Currency. THE BENEFITS OF CURRENCY COMPETITION 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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. -
The Future of Central Banking: a Lesson from United States History
IMES DISCUSSION PAPER SERIES The Future of Central Banking: A Lesson from United States History Bennett T. McCallum Discussion Paper No. 2010-E-14 INSTITUTE FOR MONETARY AND ECONOMIC STUDIES BANK OF JAPAN 2-1-1 NIHONBASHI-HONGOKUCHO CHUO-KU, TOKYO 103-8660 JAPAN You can download this and other papers at the IMES Web site: http://www.imes.boj.or.jp Do not reprint or reproduce without permission. NOTE: IMES Discussion Paper Series is circulated in order to stimulate discussion and comments. Views expressed in Discussion Paper Series are those of authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Bank of Japan or the Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies. IMES Discussion Paper Series 2010-E-14 July 2010 The Future of Central Banking: A Lesson from United States History Bennett T. McCallum* *Professor, Carnegie Mellon University and National Bureau of Economic Research (E-mail: [email protected]) This paper is being prepared for the 2010 international conference of the Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies of the Bank of Japan, “The Future of Central Banking under Globalization,” to be held May 26-27, 2010, in Tokyo. I am grateful to Marvin Goodfriend for helpful discussions. 1. Introduction In this presentation I will begin by reviewing an important and interesting episode in United States monetary history together with some resulting decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court. This may seem like a strange topic for a conference on the future of central banking, but I believe that it is in fact highly relevant. In developing that position I will be referring to a paper given at the Bank of Japan conference in 2009 by my colleague, Marvin Goodfriend, a paper that promotes an analytical framework for thinking about monetary policy.1 Following this development, I will conclude by briefly outlining some ways of conducting monetary policy that are inspired by metallic standards of the past—thereby illustrating a second type of connection between today’s policy issues and the monetary arrangements of long-past historical experiences. -
US Constitution
HISTORICAL NOTE HISTORICAL NOTE ON FORMATION OF THE CONSTITUTION In June 1774, the Virginia and Massachusetts assemblies independently proposed an intercolonial meeting of delegates from the several colonies to restore union and harmony between Great Britain and her American Colo- nies. Pursuant to these calls there met in Philadelphia in September of that year the first Continental Congress, composed of delegates from 12 colonies. On October 14, 1774, the assembly adopted what has become to be known as the Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress. In that instrument, addressed to his Majesty and to the people of Great Britain, there was embodied a statement of rights and principles, many of which were later to be incorporated in the Declaration of Independence and the Federal Constitution. 1 This Congress adjourned in October with a recommendation that an- other Congress be held in Philadelphia the following May. Before its succes- sor met, the battle of Lexington had been fought. In Massachusetts the colo- nists had organized their own government in defiance of the royal governor and the Crown. Hence, by general necessity and by common consent, the second Continental Congress assumed control of the ``Twelve United Colo- nies'', soon to become the ``Thirteen United Colonies'' by the cooperation of Georgia. It became a de facto government; it called upon the other colonies to assist in the defense of Massachusetts; it issued bills of credit; it took steps to organize a military force, and appointed George Washington com- mander in chief of the Army. While the declaration of the causes and necessities of taking up arms of July 6, 1775, 2 expressed a ``wish'' to see the union between Great Britain and the colonies ``restored'', sentiment for independence was growing.