Neal's Workshop

With the Federal Reserve in the limelight and having just completed Murray Rothbard’s America's Great Depression as well as the fact that I’m keeping an eye on the yield curve, gold and the stock market, I keep returning to thoughts on our fiat currency.

In particular, I’ve been thinking about how our currency is painted with depictions of various presidents of past. You have George Washington on the dollar bill and the quarter, Lincoln on the penny and the five dollar bill, Jefferson on the nickel, F.D.R. on the dime and J.F.K. on the fifty cent piece (Thanks for the correction sockrotter!), Susan B. Anthony and some Native American on the two one dollar coins, Hamilton on the ten dollar bill (Thanks Los), Andrew Jackson on the twenty dollar bill, U.S. Grant on the $50 and Benny Franklin on the $100. Did I miss anything? Probably.

It’s fitting that our paper money have these mythological gods printed all over them. I don’t mean to say that our presidents weren’t real people or that none of them did great things (That said, ancient Pharaohs did a few “great things” like create the pyramids). Rather, I’m pointing out that these people have taken on a legendary status. They are the Jesus figures of recent history. Instead of Christianity, their religion is Statism.

Fiat currency is counterfeit. It’s not that it’s worth nothing. However, it’s only worth what you can purchase with it. Thus, if you’re stuck with a lot of hyperinflative cash, that cash is going to be worthless. Only when currency has value by default will it have real lasting value. The only lasting value of a dollar bill is the paper it’s printed on. Compare that meager value to gold, stock, machinery, land or any asset. Money should be an asset: it’s that simple.

And that is why the combination of fiat currency with Statist propaganda is fitting: it’s bullshit mythology for shitty currency.