Missouri's Sound Money Act Would Make Gold & Silver Legal Tender
As outrage and concern over the Federal Reserve and its embattled fiat currency continue to grow, lawmakers in Missouri are considering legislation to protect residents by making gold and silver legal tender within the state. If passed, Missouri would join the state of Utah — which adopted a similar sound-money law last year — in its efforts to expand the monetary choices available to citizens.
Known as the “Missouri Sound Money Act of 2012,” House Bill 1637 would define precious metals issued by the US government as lawful money inside of the state. US gold and silver coins would then essentially be valued in commerce at the true market-price of the metal instead of the largely irrelevant face value assigned by the federal government.
The legislation would also eliminate an array of state taxes on gold and silver — capital gains and sales taxes, for example — in a bid to allow honest money to circulate more freely alongside the Federal Reserve’s inflationary debt-based paper currency. Federal taxes would not be affected, however, leaving at least one significant impediment to establishing true competition among currencies.
Under the proposed law, people would still be able to refuse payment in precious metals, and nobody could be compelled to pay in gold or silver. But supporters of the bill hope to establish sound-money depositories that would allow citizens to deposit precious metals and use debit cards to pay bills out of their accounts. The competition in currency, advocates say, would usher in an array of benefits.
A broad alliance of activists has worked tirelessly to advance the popular bill and similar measures in at least a dozen states, often for diverse reasons. Douglas Tjadon of the Sound Money Center and Greg Franco from the Utah Gold and Silver Depository both testified in favor of the legislation in Missouri.
“It’s about giving citizens of Missouri an alternative to the dollar that is not affected by the monetary policies undertaken in Washington,” Economics Director Rich Danker of the group American Principles in Action was quoted as saying in press reports. Some analysts, meanwhile, tried to portray the bill as merely a “protest” against the federal government and the privately owned Federal Reserve.
The legislation would, for example, help citizens to “hedge against inflation” and “protect the purchasing power” of their wealth by allowing them to save and trade in non-inflationary money. Meanwhile, the state would benefit by providing “more economic freedom” to the people of Missouri, Rep. Curtman explained.
“When prices begin to rise on the commodities index, I don’t know about you, but I don’t know of a lot of people in my district that have been getting a pay increase of 30, 40, 50 percent,” Curtman added, citing official data about the wild expansion of the currency supply in recent years. “It is a state issue because everybody in our state uses Federal Reserve Notes … That’s something that we’re all suffering from.”
https://thenewamerican.com/missouri-sound-money-act-would-make-gold-silver-legal-tender/
