The original silver dollar, created at the birth of the United States, was based upon the silver Spanish “Pieces of Eight” minted at the Royal Mint in Mexico City, under Spanish rule at that time. This was a very widely used coin throughout the world. Because in its early years the US had no mint, the first US silver dollars were minted in Mexico, for the Revolutionary Government of the US. The US silver dollar contained .774 ounce of pure silver.
Since the prevailing ratio between silver and gold was 16 ounces of silver = 1ounce of gold, and the silver dollar only contained .774 oz of silver, it required 20.67 silver dollars, to equal 1 ounce of gold in value.
1 ounce gold = 16 ounces of silver.
.774 oz. silver x 20.67 = 16 ounces of silver.
This is why the original price of gold was $20.67 – 20.67 was the number of silver dollars necessary to equal the value of 1 ounce of gold.
Consider the following table:
1776 to Dec. 1913: Price of gold $20.67/ oz. = 20.67 silver dollars.
1914 to 1933: Price of gold $20.67/ oz. = $20.67 Federal Reserve (FR) dollars.
1933 to 1934: Price of gold rises as FDR fiddles with the price of gold.
1934 to 1971: Price of gold $35.00/ oz. = $35.00 FR dollars.
1971 to 2019: Price of gold rises from $35/ oz. to $1300/ oz. = $1300.00 FR dollars.
When the Federal Reserve began issuing “One Dollar” Federal Reserve Notes (1914), people very naturally began to use these bills instead of silver dollars: the population of the US valued the silver dollars more than the paper “One Dollar” bills; people kept the silver dollars back and tendered paper “One Dollar” bills in their purchases. Thus began the disappearance of silver dollars from everyday use in the US. (A Federal Reserve Note is a remarkable thing: it is a promise to pay, with another promise to pay).
We can – and should – present the monetary history of the Federal Reserve, created in December 1913, as follows:
1913 – 1933: One Federal Reserve dollar would purchase 0.0484 oz. of gold (1 oz of gold divided by $20.67 FR dollars = 0.0484 ounces of gold per FR dollar).
1933-1934: Federal Reserve dollars purchased less and less gold, as FDR fiddled with the currency.
1934 to 1971: Federal Reserve dollar purchased 0.0286 oz. of gold (1 oz. of gold divided by $35 FR dollars = 0.0286 ounces of gold per FR dollar).
1971 to 2019: Collapse of the Federal Reserve dollar, able to purchase only 0.000769 oz. of gold (1oz. of gold divided by $1300 FR dollars = 0.000769 oz of gold per FR dollar, March, 2019).
The monetary history of the USA in the 19th Century is a history of banking collapses, either from poor management or outright fraud upon unsuspecting populations.
In the early 20th Century, 1907, a massive banking collapse in NYC was only averted by the intervention of J.P. Morgan who funded the rescue.
It has been famously said that the only thing a banker needs to know, is “the difference between a Bill and a Mortgage” – meaning to say that a Bill was usually dated payable at 90 days, whereas a Mortgage was liquidated over the course of up to 30 years.
The fundamental crime habitually committed by bankers has been to “lend long and borrow short”. This means, to lend money for a long term, for a high interest rate, and fund the operation with low-interest money which is returnable to the depositor either after a short period of time, or even immediately, at the depositors option – which inevitably leads to illiquidity and banking collapse. This is what had to cause the crisis of 1907 in NYC.
After the 1907 crisis, the top bankers in NYC decided that it was time to set up a system which would avert banking crises: they got together in secret, at the famous Jekyll Island, to cook-up their scheme, and came up with the idea to found a “Federal Reserve”, which would serve to bail-out banks that got into trouble by “lending long and borrowing short”.
There is nothing “Federal” about the “Federal Reserve” – it is a private corporation formed by big banks, which are shareholders.
The public was told that the Federal Reserve would guarantee the safety of deposits, in a banking system which would operate under FR supervision. However, the banks that made the most money were the ones that broke the rules the most, and so what happened, had to happen: they all broke the rules – they all became illiquid zombies – as no banker wanted to get left behind, in the scramble for profits from bad banking.
This explains why the Fed dollar is now worth only 0.000769 oz. of gold. And it also tells us, if we want to know, what lies ahead:
The Federal Reserve is in box; it’s boxed itself into an insoluble problem. It cannot stop creating more credit, expanding its Balance Sheet, no matter what Mr. Jerome Powell, President of the Fed, may say he is doing or going to do. To stop creating more FR dollars means only one thing – total collapse of the whole humongous FR dollar scheme.
The small-town shysters who established State Banks out in the rural countryside of the USA, back in the 19th Century, and issued fake money as “scrip”, which time and again turned out to be worthless, have simply been supplanted by polished shyster economists at the Fed who now deal in trillions of money that is not even paper any longer – it’s mostly imaginary digital FR money in bank accounts, which the public moves around through credit cards.
What lies ahead:
Federal Reserve dollar = 0.00000000 oz. of gold.
Written by Hugo Salinas Price for Plata ~ March 19, 2019
