From the presidential dollar coin bill passed by the house on 4/27/05

5 (7) at such time as the Secretary of Treasury
6 determines to be appropriate, and after consultation
7 with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve
8 System and the submission of notice to the Con-
9 gress, the Secretary should declare to be obsolete
10 any circulating $1 coin that bears the design of the
11 $1 coins being issued immediately before the
12 issuance of coins with the design referred to in sec-
13 tion 5112(n)(7) of title 31, United States Code;

Sounds to me like they want to collect up all the SBA's and melt them down.

Get 'em while they're hot! Lol.

Well, I guess I better pick up a few. It is kind of errie though. As a matter of fact, I don't like it one bit. Why do you just say SBAs? Is that they design they mention?



Jerry

Look carefully. This is an abdication of the power of Congress to coin money. It simply hands off to an appointed bureaucrat the authority to increase the supply of (non) circulating coinage thereby increasing the money supply and furthering inflation. Note that the requirement is for "consultation with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System" while merely making a "submission of notice to the Congress" before exercising what is clearly an exclusive Section I power of Congress under the Constitution.

This is a typical piece of unconstitutional trash which should never have been passed and which can be challenged in the courts. While Congress is granted the power to coin money, it is not granted the authority to transfer that power to the Executive branch or to hand over that power to any outside agency whatsoever.

Yes, it's a formalization of the intent to declare circulating coinage obsolete and to demonetize it and replace it with new designs which are equally worthless for any purpose other than increasing an already inflated supply of fiat money. Disgusting.

Depending upon how you interpret that it could just refer to the demonetisation of the SBA $s as they were the ones issued IMMEDIATELY before the Sac (which i presume is the one being referred to in; 5112(n)(7) of title 31, United States Code)


Or does 'immediately' refer to every issue before the Sac? Which means this bill is effectively demonetising Morgans, Peace and Ike Dollars if they haven't already been demonetised that is?

Yes, I wonder which coin that is referring to. Perhaps they are really trying to sack the Sac?

well Now aint that just peachy !!

Rick

Nope, The bill was changed to keep minting Sackys during and after the president dollar program. I think their after Suzie B.

I don't think they would ever be demonitized but as the banks recieved them they would turn them back to the Fed to be destroyed.

It is hard to say what motivates these things. For all we know, they are bowing to pressure from numismatists.

Declaring US money to be "obsolete" is not to be done lightly. The gold notes were demonetized. There might be some other obvious exceptions, but basically, all federal money has always been good. In fact, coins that had been of limited convertibility -- the 2 cent, 3 cent, half cent, etc. -- were made fully fungible. You could pay your income tax with 3-cent nickels if you wanted to.

In most of the world, if the money changes, it means that the government has fallen. That is not a message we want to send. Also, we have exported a huge fraction of our inflation as the dollar is an international currency. Demonetizing any of it could cause much of it to come home as dollars are exchanged for euros or whatever.

How come we get coins demonetised all the time then? One or more denominations were demonetised in the following years;

1696, 1733, 1816, 1869, 1971, 1980, 1984, 1990, 1993 and latterly 1998.

Demonetization of coins and currency is an act of tyranny and fraud. The US government has already done that in a few cases. It will become the norm as the dollar sinks further in value. The practice of demonetizing circulating instruments of exchange is part of the buildup to hyperinflation.

Mexico has been doing it for decades.

You guys are scaring me.

Actually i think i'd better throw this on in at this point.

In England in the 9th-12th centuries, the coinage was generally made of very high silver content (except for a bad patch in the 1100-1140 period), but generally the 'government' made a policy of demonetising coinage regularly to maintain the high standard set.

A new design would be introduced in good quality silver (think Æthelred II hand type pennies) which would circulate for about 6 or 7 years and then a new issue of say second hand type pennies would be introduced in the same standard of silver. There would be a period of grace and then the old coinage was demonetised, called in and recycled to make the new coinage. Any that were not returned only became worth their weight in silver and merchants/traders were not required to take them. Then after another say 10 years a new type of long cross coinage would arrive and the second hand type would be demonetised.

This process continued for nearly 200 years. Except for the periods of internal strife during the early 12th century the system worked.

Me to

-Bobby