AMENDMENT XXVIII Money and Credit – Congress Asserts Power To Coin Money, and Emit Bills of Credi

Great Debates
41

I’m going to tear the OP to shreds just for the mental exercise.

blows very gently on proposed amendment

Section 1: Does nothing. Congress already has the Constitutional authority to coin & regulate US currency, and to borrow funds at whatever rate of interest it can (including zero).

Section 2: Unnecessary. An authorization to seize the Federal Reserve Bank (or all 12 of them) can be done in legislation.

Section 3: Far too wordy. Also, establishing a central bank as part of the Treasury department can be done in legislation.

Section 4: Yet again, can be done in legislation. And good fucking luck passing legislation that:

  • Kills all outstanding US debt.
  • Issues all new debt at a price (interest rate) that nobody would normally sell at (invest in).
  • Treats property held by people and by banks differently.
  • Does not provide due compensation for seized debt.

Section 5: Good fucking luck issuing debt at zero interest. Also, permitting “Treasury Notes” and banning “Treasury Securities, or Bonds” accomplishes nothing whatsoever, as the only difference between a Treasury note and a Treasury bond is the maturation period – it’s merely a matter of terminology.

Section 6: Again, unnecessary as it can be done in legislation.

Section 7: Yet again, can be done in legislation. Also, it strips states of powers to charter banks, and banks of a part of their main trade.

Section 8 is a summary and is THOROUGHLY inappropriate in an amendment.

My analysis:

The proposal summarizes as nationalizing the central bank; devaluing commercially held federal debt; forcing future federal debt to be issued at zero interest (attempting to buy money for free), and stripping states and businesses of power.

No. fucking. chance. of passing as legislation, let alone as a Constitutional amendment. No. fucking. chance. of surviving court challenges.

42

It’s all academic anyway, because after devaluing current debt, no one will ever buy another US bond or note again. Ever.

43

Could anyone imagine if this amendment passed and a case was in front of the Supreme Court. How would the Court interpret the scare quotes around “value.” Could counsel argue that the notes didn’t really have value because of the quotes around it? Maybe we could use emoticons in future amendments. :slight_smile:

44

Seems to me it would require a Constitutional amendment to kill all the outstanding debt given the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of the debt.

And if a fit of temporal flux induced insanity it were to pass as a Constitutional amendment then I don’t see where there’s going to be much of a court challenge possible.

45

Especially not at the Constitutionally mandated rate of 0% interest (I assume that would mean 0% yield as well). But I wonder if that is by design. We can borrow, but only under conditions that no one would loan us anything.

46

I forgot about that. Amend. XIV asserts the legitimacy of the US debt; any attempt to cancel or devalue outstanding debt would potentially run afoul of that.

(This differs from defaulting on debt, which is a financial problem.)

47

I finally skimmed the manifesto in the OP.

  • The manifesto ignores that individuals can invest in T-bills et al, not just in savings bonds. Admittedly the proposal does not devalue T-bills et al owned by individuals.
  • The manifesto at no point claims a reason for insisting that future debt of the US government be issued at a coupon rate of zero %. This is on top of the market impracticality (under normal conditions) of getting investments into securities yielding zero. (Current conditions include cash investments that yield a tiny bit over zero.)
  • The manifesto starts from the positions that fiat money is bad and fractional reserve banking is bad. It never supports these positions.

And so the manifesto comes across at batshit crazy.