The Money Is No
Good ©
by Fred
Dungan
"If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can
never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all
the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all
of the time; but you can't fool all of the people all the time." - Abraham Lincoln
Monopoly money is what it most closely
resembles. Never have
portraits been rendered so unprofessionally
as on the new, larger
portrait $5, $10, and $20 bills. Who did the
engraving - a child
with a sharp stick? And there is no sense of
symmetry. Lincoln,
Hamilton, and Jackson deserve
better.
Why would I bother to concern myself with its
artistic value?
Because, in the final analysis, that's all it's
worth. All United
States coin and currency (and virtually all in
the world) is fiat
money. Unlike the commodity money on which our
nation was built,
fiat money consists of worthless coins with little or
no precious
metal in them (if melted down, they would not be worth their
face
value), and of paper currency that cannot be redeemed for gold
or
silver and is, in fact, backed by absolutely nothing. Fiat
money
is money by government decree. That it is worth anything is
only
because the government says it is worth something. We could
just
as easily be using monopoly money and arcade
tokens.
All United States currency bears the slogan
"In God We Trust"
on the reverse side. God has my infinite trust,
but I've learned
the hard way not to trust the government
completely. Neither, it
seems, do most people. The Susan B.
Anthony dollar coins stacked
up in the Treasury's vaults and the government could only
dispose
of them by giving them as change in postal machines. The
outlook
for the new "fool's gold" dollar is much better, but, not to
take
any chances, the government has stooped to saturation
advertising
in order to promote them - clever little commercials in which
the
father of our country takes on a cool image. Personally, I
liked
George Washington just the way he was, but that only goes to
show
how advertising devilishly attempts to manipulate our most
sacred
values.
Considering that the cost of
printing paper money is minimal,
the federal government makes an enormous
windfall profit whenever
it places new bills in circulation. It has
been argued that this
is an unjustified source of revenue. Perhaps
a fairer method (at
least in the perspective of the average citizen)
would be to toss
the bills out the open doors of helicopters hovering
over densely
populated inner city neighborhoods. Ludicrous as this
may sound,
it makes more sense to me than most government giveaway
programs.
Any nation, such as the United States, that
elects to utilize
"funny money" runs the risk that some brave individual,
sometime,
like the small boy in Hans Christian Andersen's The Emperor's
New
Clothes, will shout that the money is no good. As I see it,
that
would be to no one's advantage. Discounting its many faults,
our
monetary system functions remarkably well. Now, imagine how
much
better a gold and silver bullion-backed, crash-proof,
convertible
currency would work! Allan Greenspan, are you
listening?
The demands of economic globalization will
eventually dictate
that the world adopts a single currency.
Something like this has
already occurred in Europe with the advent of the
Euro. How long
will Canada maintain the fiction of a seperate stock
exchange and
currency uninfluenced by Wall Street and fluctuations in the
U.S.
dollar? I predict that the spheres of influence - U.S.,
European
Common Market, and Japanese - will continue to expand.
Once they
have devoured the Third World, the only options remaining will
be
to war among themselves (unlikely when you consider that it
would
be tantamount to nuclear suicide) or merge. With each G8
summit,
the developed nations take another step towards a single,
unified
currency.
What makes our leaders think that
facilitating the electronic
transfer of funds is more important to
Americans than our borders
and national identity? Could their
decision making be influenced
by generous contributions from
multi-national corporations?
Under U.S. campaign
finance law, neither foreign corporations
nor foreign nationals are
permitted to make contributions to U.S.
elections. However, due to
a loophole in the law, U.S. companies
owned by a foreign parent can - and
do - make soft money campaign
contributions.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics,
a non-profit
research group based in Washington, D.C., 21 foreign
corporations
made large (greater than $75,000) contributions to the
Republican
and Democratic national committees for use in the 1996
elections.
Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, a Canadian-owned distiller,
contributed
a total of $1,938,845 to both parties. Immediately
following the
election, Seagram abrogated the long-standing voluntary
agreement
which prohibits advertising liquor on radio and
television. What
did the FCC do about it? Absolutely
nothing. Seagram definitely
got more than its money's worth and is
now sponsoring rock groups
and rock concerts. That their primary
audience consists of teens
below the legal drinking age ensures a steady
supply of customers
for yet another generation.
As
of July, 2000, Seagram has given $324,970 to the Democrats
and $171,269
to the Republicans to finance candidates in the 2000
elections.
Anheuser-Busch is also a significant contributor with
a combined total of
$742,106 to both parties. Other contributors
with questionable
agendas include Bacardi-Martini USA ($189,024),
the Distilled Spirits
Council ($177,968), E & J Gallo ($245,000),
and Philip Morris
($1,268,602).
But does soft money actually buy
politicians? Let's go to an
insider to find out. In a speech
before the United States Senate
on October 14, 1999, Senator John
McCain had this to say:
"I believe that part of the problem, indeed a 'key
ingredient' of
wasteful spending and special interest tax breaks is the
effect
of soft money on the legislative process....I have already
cited
...the large amount of soft money given to
both parties by
various industries and the aggregate amount of tax
breaks those
industries received. I believe, even if some of my
colleagues do
not, that these amounts have impaired our
integrity. I believe
that as strongly as I believe
anything. Unlimited amounts of
money given to political campaigns
have impaired our integrity as
political parties and as a legislative
institution....if special
interests did not believe that their millions
of dollars in
donations buy them consideration in the legislative
process, then
...those special interests - who have a fiduciary
responsibility
to their stockholders - wouldn't give us that money,
would they?
Those interests enjoy greater influence here than the
working men
and women who cannot afford to buy our attention but who
are
affected, sometimes adversely, by the laws we pass....that
seems
to be a good working definition of an impairment of
our
integrity, which is...Webster's [dictionary] definition
of
corruption."
Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution says that
"Congress
shall have power to...coin money [and] regulate the
value thereof
...." And Congress in its wisdom has decided that
our money will
be backed by our faith in the government.
Only a generation ago,
that was more than enough. But
soft money has corrupted Congress
and perverted the political
process as well. Allowed to continue
unabated, the practice of
selling influence to the highest bidder
may ultimately force us to
reflect that money isn't worth anything
more than the
government that prints it.
The implications, however, go far deeper. Because the global
economy is dependent for the most part on the integrity of United
States currency, we need to at least give the appearance
that our
money has actual worth. Allowing the trade deficit
to spiral out
of control is extremely dangerous. Whether
accomplished by force
of arms or economic trickery, commerce that is
primarily going in
one direction will inevitably be labled imperialism
by workers in
other countries who, though they labor long hours,
cannot hope to
ever afford the goods they make. Paper promises
of future reward
will eventually have to be redeemed, i.e. the
balance of payments
cannot continue its negative flow devoid of
consequences. Paying
of the national debt is only half the
battle - we need to pay off
the international debt as well.
