patrick.net

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/man-up-friday-december-13-2024-c

Local News-4 Jacksonville ran a valuable story yesterday headlined, “Florida CFO announces launch of study to see how gold, silver can be used as legal tender.”

https://www.news4jax.com/news/local/2024/12/12/florida-cfo-announces-launch-of-study-to-see-how-gold-silver-can-be-used-as-legal-tender/

Florida’s Chief Financial Officer, Jimmy Patronis, announced an official Sunshine State study of an official state currency backed by precious metals not just hypothetically but “to determine the best way to get it done.” In addition to being useful as legal tender, to buy and sell goods and services in the Sunshine State, Patronis pointed out that gold and silver coins protect citizens against inflation and protect the state against a future central bank digital currency.

Concerns about proposals to issue legal coinage include precious metal price volatility, the inconvenience of safely storing them, how sale transactions could be handled elegantly and efficiently without requiring haggling over the set price, and the lurking risk of greedy Leprechauns.

Texas, is also pursuing an independent, gold-backed state digital currency, and is moving forward with its plan, which has been in the works since 2015. Making the gold-backed currency digital, if you can make it work, would resolve all the concerns over physical metal coins. Headline from the Jerusalem Post, two weeks ago:

Texas Pushes Forward with 100% Gold-Backed Transactional Currency Legislation
Texas unveils bold plan: Gold-backed digital currency. Lawmakers propose state-wide
digital coins fully redeemable in precious metals, offering alternative to traditional currency.

OK, but the digital currency should come with a HUGE warning: "Not money, only a debt, may default at any time."

Patrick says

Texas Pushes Forward with 100% Gold-Backed Transactional Currency Legislation
Texas unveils bold plan: Gold-backed digital currency. Lawmakers propose state-wide
digital coins fully redeemable in precious metals, offering alternative to traditional currency.

Which will be overruled by SCOTUS.

States can only make gold and silver legal tender, not derivatives thereof. Nor can they coin money.

"No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility."

OK, I'm fine with only gold and silver as money, as long as it is by weight of pure metal alone and not in bullshit units which can be debased.

The Constitution is nice and clear about this.

And no paper for wages and small contracts. Metal only. MAYBE a ticket to metal in a storehouse with no charges (storage charges paid by the paper giver, not receiver), not a bank, but 100% reserves.

Otherwise the big boys hoard the metal and give everybody paper to a bank, which loans out 80-90% of the metal and only has a bit actually in house.

Also, foreign holders CANT get the metal, except a receipt for paper kept at a US storehouse. They can only get paper. GREAT way to balance the trade deficit; they can only spend US Metal in the USA.

Then, foreigners can only own US real estate by buying cash in metal, and bonding the purchase price equivalent in metal stored in the USA. Including foreign companies.

And finally, residential real estate income is taxed at short-term capital gains; unless the rent is paid in one lump sum over a year or more.

The Fed is replaced by the USPS Bank, which is the only entity issuing FHA loans. FHA and VA loans will be limited 25 years, dropping a year starting two years after the 25-year is imposed to 15.

If you can't pay it off in 15 years, you can't afford it. Or get a full private.bank loan. 15 year loans used to be the standard.

Make housing affordable again.

College loans are limited to STEM fields and capped at $20k year + CPI. and only available to the top 10% of students.

AmericanKulak says

If you can't pay it off in 15 years, you can't afford it.

Bingo! Car loans should be 20% down and two years max.

The first and greatest sin was permitting fractional reserve banking. That was the lie that seeded the great corruption that is overwhelming us today.

Banks pretend they have more money to lend (1000% more under 10% reserves) than they have. Eventually, everyone is pretending to own what is on credit, including the US gub'ment.

HeadSet says

Bingo! Car loans should be 20% down and two years max.

Yep.

I certainly don't remember 72-month loans back in the day.

stereotomy says

The first and greatest sin was permitting fractional reserve banking. That was the lie that seeded the great corruption that is overwhelming us today.

Banks pretend they have more money to lend (1000% more under 10% reserves) than they have. Eventually, everyone is pretending to own what is on credit, including the US gub'ment.

Right?

The late 19th century was a deflationary period. The price of almost everything went down over several decades.

It wasn't crazy a few decades ago for ordinary people that didn't have top 10% incomes to pay cash for a NEW car, or to pay tuition out of income.

AmericanKulak says

The price of almost everything went down over several decades.

Yes, as it should when productivity increases.

But around the 1970's, all increases in productivity resulted in more money for shareholders and less than nothing for the workers who were being more productive.

Patrick says

But around the 1970's, all increases in productivity resulted in more money for shareholders and less than nothing for the workers who were being more productive.

Be careful about that statistic. For example, a small farm could have bought a tractor and replaced several workers. The labor costs have gone down for the farmer due to fewer workers, but that tractor driver gets paid more than any of the former field hands.

AmericanKulak says

If you can't pay it off in 15 years, you can't afford it.

True. All attempts at increasing "affordability" by guaranteeing loans or extending them actually make housing (or education, or whatever) less affordable by increasing the price. Suppliers always increase the price to negate any such "affordability" program. This is why housing and education prices are insane.

Banks love it. More and longer loans to collect interest on.

The public gets fucked, but is generally so stupid that they just don't understand.

I was reading the history of mortgages, and the immediate postwar decades, the mortgage was 15 years.

By 40, most men had paid off their homeloan or were about to.

Also, we need to make Credit Cards fall under the law of the state where the grantee lives.

"But states rights". No problem here. We are just changing the standard from the State Law of creditor to State Law of the grantee. Don't like it? Then Dakota credit companies don't loan in states with usury laws.

I suspect keeping people on the plantation as share-croppers was a side-effect.

There's been so many innovations, like the Grid Nail. That innovation alone reduced materials and time costs at least 15% from the suburban home builds of the 1940s-50s while increasing roof strength and reducing the need for load bearing interior walls. Yet houses are more expensive?!