The people of the United States are entitled to a sound and stable currency and to money recognized as such on every exchange and in every market of the world.
1 reply on “Grover Cleveland”
In the late Nineteenth Century, major powers intervened in the markets of the world to replace silver with gold. Amongst these powers, the US redefined “dollar” in 1873 to effect such a substitution. That redefinition set a precedent for later redefinitions that have left us with things called “dollar” that are purely tokens. And, in the late Nineteenth Century, the intervention naturally created losers as well as winners. Some of the losers embraced schemes still worse than the intervention, but the intervention should never have happened. Dollar-denominated debts should not have been legally transformed. Ideally, the US should have got out of the business of producing money; but, if it were going to continue to produce money, and if it were further going coin gold for money, then it should have introduced a different monetary unit with no fixed relation to the dollar.
1 reply on “Grover Cleveland”
In the late Nineteenth Century, major powers intervened in the markets of the world to replace silver with gold. Amongst these powers, the US redefined “dollar” in 1873 to effect such a substitution. That redefinition set a precedent for later redefinitions that have left us with things called “dollar” that are purely tokens. And, in the late Nineteenth Century, the intervention naturally created losers as well as winners. Some of the losers embraced schemes still worse than the intervention, but the intervention should never have happened. Dollar-denominated debts should not have been legally transformed. Ideally, the US should have got out of the business of producing money; but, if it were going to continue to produce money, and if it were further going coin gold for money, then it should have introduced a different monetary unit with no fixed relation to the dollar.