Monopoly "Money"

Bernard von NotHaus, the creator of the Liberty Dollar, is optimistic that he and his associates will have the benefit of “a spectacular trial” for the supposed crime of providing customers with something of value – platinum, gold, silver, and copper coins – in exchange for something innately value-less – the decorated ragpaper and junk metal slugs the Regime insists we treat as money.

Speaking with the New York Sun – the quasi-official publication of the Warfare/Homeland Security State – von NotHaus anticipated the opportunity to “put this country's monetary system on trial.”

He said this as if he truly believes the Regime would permit such a thing to happen. And even if von NotHaus were permitted the luxury of a trial – as opposed to having his company's wealth simply stolen through “asset forfeiture,” which appears to be the case at present – it's entirely possible that our monetary system will effectively collapse before the case against the Liberty Dollar is aired in a courtroom.

Relics of a time when there was money in U.S. currency: Kennedy Half-Dollars minted in 1964, the last year the Regime put silver in its official coins.

Should that collapse occur, von NotHaus – who, like most intelligent observers, has warned that the fiat money system eventually must destroy itself -- won't be allowed to argue that truth is a perfect defense. The FBI's investigation -- which took two years and employed the services of “confidential informants” and other covert means to collect evidence of peaceful, mutually beneficial commercial exchanges – is designed to set up a political trial, if a trial is even permitted.

According to the affidavit (.pdf) filed by FBI Special Agent Romagnuolo, the political objective of von NotHaus's organization, The National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve and Internal Revenue Codes (NORFED) makes it a subversive criminal conspiracy.

“As the organization's name implies,” writes Romagnuolo, “the goal of NORFED is to undermine the United States government's financial systems by the issuance of a non-governmental competing currency for the purpose of repealing the Federal Reserve and the Internal Revenue Code.”

As we should expect of someone good enough for government work, Romagnuolo is dishonestly amalgamating two issues here – the first being NORFED's creation of a currency intended to compete with the “dollar” (the quotation marks are apposite here, since the fiat scrip known by that name is not a dollar as defined in law), the second being the effort to repeal the measures that created the Federal Reserve and Income Tax systems. The latter is a far broader movement than the former, and it includes many millions of people who had nothing to do with NORFED or the Liberty Dollar.

Romagnuolo being a Fed, can't write with economy or clarity (only the top-of-the-line tax feeders can even speak clearly), so it's difficult to know to what extent conscious dishonesty, rather than mere ineptitude, is in play here. But his description of the “criminal activity” NORFED and its associates supposedly engaged in leaves the impression that anyone who seeks the same objectives is likewise engaged in criminal conduct, albeit through other means.

Consider: What are the elements of this supposed crime? More specifically, what is the mens rea, or criminal intent? The allegation is not that von NotHaus and his associates sought to commit robbery or fraud, but rather that they sought to bring about the repeal of existing laws, and changes in present institutions, through peaceful, consensual means.

Where “undermining” the nation's financial system is concerned, nobody does it better than the Fed. The greenback's relentless decline is driving economically marginal Americans toward starvation, while buoying the spirits of foreign detractors. Yet we are supposed to believe that NORFED's largely unsuccessful efforts imperil whatever remains of our national prosperity.

Now that Chavez and Ahmadinejad have made explicit public mention of the innate worthlessness of the fiat dollar, it wouldn't surprise me to see the Regime make an attempt to describe NORFED, the Liberty Dollar (and perhaps even the Ron Paul presidential campaign) as “ideational co-conspirators” with our foreign enemies du jour. Implausible as such a charge would be, it would still make as much sense as the “crime” alleged in the FBI affidavit.

The “offense” here, in fact, is to find a creative and peaceful way to challenge the Regime's fraudulent financial system, which is upheld by lethal force. And it's not as if the Liberty Dollar crack-down illustrates that “the government hates competition,” in the words of a familiar punchline.

Nobody involved in the Liberty Dollar movement ever compelled anyone to accept the private currency, or deliberately defrauded people into accepting it. That's the government's racket. Nor did the movement circulate counterfeit US currency – that is, non-official counterfeit currency. As the FBI affidavit concedes, the Liberty Dollar was exactly what it was advertised – privately minted coins made out of precious metals, or warehouse receipts backed by the same.

Tyranny exists wherever government exercises the power to force people to live a lie. NORFED threatened to “undermine” the fraudulent and tyrannical system under which we live by providing a tangible example of a hard money system in operation.

Critics of the Liberty Dollar -- the kind of people who mistake sub-sophomoric snarkiness for substance -- sometimes describe it as the equivalent of Monopoly money, because it's not backed by the "full faith and credit" of the Regime. The inescapable truth, however, is that the dollar is an instrument of force and fraud, and since the Regime claims a monopoly on the same, it is the federal "dollar" that is best described as monopoly "money."

Dum spiro, pugno!