OPINION: Competing currencies: a defense against profligate spending

[PorkChopSandwiches]

get off my lawn

[Southern Belle]

Ron Paul isn't a whack job, he's a constitutionalist. (Spell check is saying that's not right )
Our paper money was backed by gold until sometime around 1933. Until then, the Feds couldn't "create" money by printing it and the paper dollar had real value. Sadly, it doesn't any more and never will again until there is something of value held in the government coffers that makes it have value. Kind of like your checking account. A check isn't worth anything unless there is money in the bank to back it up. We as a nation don't have money in the bank any more. Just paper that's getting worth less and less as time goes by.

[FBD]

going back to the gold std is completely untenable. that doesnt mean its not a good idea to end the fed and get the fiscal house in order, though.

[Teh One Who Knocks]

Ron Paul isn't a whack job, he's a constitutionalist. (Spell check is saying that's not right )
Our paper money was backed by gold until sometime around 1933. Until then, the Feds couldn't "create" money by printing it and the paper dollar had real value. Sadly, it doesn't any more and never will again until there is something of value held in the government coffers that makes it have value. Kind of like your checking account. A check isn't worth anything unless there is money in the bank to back it up. We as a nation don't have money in the bank any more. Just paper that's getting worth less and less as time goes by.

Sorry, he's a whack job hun

[Deepsepia]

Ron Paul isn't a whack job, he's a constitutionalist. (Spell check is saying that's not right )
Our paper money was backed by gold until sometime around 1933. Until then, the Feds couldn't "create" money by printing it and the paper dollar had real value.

But if you read the statement in the OP, he's not advocating a gold standard. He's advocating that the US have no specified legal tender-- a world of what he calls "competing currencies".

That's not a "return to the gold standard" -- its a journey off into the unknown, not serious.

Put another way, if I'm a company and I do business, in what currency do I have to report my earnings and pay my taxes? Reading Paul literally, I could decide to report my earnings in Mexican Pesos, Canadian Dollars, or bales of hay.

That just isn't logical, its a proposal that hasn't been thought through, and its not a gold standard.

To go on the gold standard today would be a disaster, for other reasons . . .