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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Cloudsweeper99, post: 89595, member: 3011&quot;]Doug,</p><p><br /></p><p>With all due respect, you owe it to your readers to inform them as to what was being used as money prior to the dates you cite if it wasn&#039;t gold or silver coinage.&nbsp; Citing the years that various governments officially accepted the currency system that was already in use in those nations, or the shift from silver to gold as was the case in the US, doesn&#039;t add much to the discussion.&nbsp; The US is a perfect example since people are probably most familiar with it.&nbsp; The Constitution plus the Coinage Act of 1792 put the US on silver dollar based bi-metallic system.&nbsp; Silver coinage was preferred in commerce even prior to that time.&nbsp; Trying to tie this to the &quot;official&quot; date upon which the banking system was converted to a gold reserve basis [for the purpose of giving eastern banks which held primarily gold reserves a commercial advantage over western banks which held primarily silver reserves] doesn&#039;t tell us much of anything about how commerce was conducted prior to then.&nbsp; The colonial use of fiat currency, Continentals, did not end well.&nbsp; The Confederacy&#039;s use of paper currency during the Civil War didn&#039;t work out much better.&nbsp; Other nations that adopted unbacked currencies did not fare well either [research France toward the end of the 18th century].&nbsp; Maybe you could provide just one example, say Great Britain, of countries that never used gold or silver coinage prior to the dates you cite.&nbsp; If gold or silver were not in use as currency prior to 1844, what was?&nbsp; The readers should know.</p><p><br /></p><p>In one sense you are correct.&nbsp; It is possible to Google about a million web sites that will cite how gold and silver based currency systems don&#039;t work, particularly the sites with some connection to central banks and universities.&nbsp; History is written by the victors.&nbsp; There is even a Nobel Prize for work in this area.&nbsp; Consider for a minute where this comes from.&nbsp; The correct title for the Nobel Prize in economics is the &quot;Bank of Sweeden Prize in Economics in Memory of Alfred Nobel.&quot;&nbsp; The Bank of Sweden&#039;s main product, as it were, is fiat currency.&nbsp; Can you imagine any situation where the Bank of Sweeden would give a prize to anyone coming forward with research that suggests their fiat currency might not be the only or best alternative?&nbsp; Of course, the defenders of fiat currency will reply that no such research is possible.</p><p><br /></p><p>You are also correct in another sense, gold and silver currencies don&#039;t work for governments bent on spending more than thier citizens are willing to provide in tax revenue.&nbsp; Fiat currency solves this problem by debasing the currency and savings of the people, and as Keynes once said, not one man in a million will figure it out.&nbsp; So a fiat currency is a great tool for a government to use to conduct war and buy votes.</p><p><br /></p><p>So the readers have both sides of the story, and are free to conduct whatever research they wish, or none at all.&nbsp; Most won&#039;t.&nbsp; If one does, this has been a worthwhile discussion.&nbsp; Good places to start are with the writings of the Austrian School of Economics and with the writings of Professor Antal Fekete, a university professor in Canada whose specialty is researching the history of international commerce back to the middle ages under the gold system. </p><p><br /></p><p>Good luck to everyone in whatever they decide to do or believe.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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