In Response to President Obama’s Request for Economic Solutions from the Citizenry
RECLAIMING AMERICA'S ECONOMIC PROVIDENCE
“The government [not private banks] should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credit needed to satisfy the spending power of the government and the buying power of the consumers. The privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of government, but it is the government's greatest creative opportunity. By the adoption of these principles, the long-felt want for a uniform medium [of exchange] will be satisfied. The taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. The financing of all public enterprises, and the conduct of the Treasury will become matters of practical administration. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity.”
- Abraham Lincoln, as attributed in Senate Doc. 23, 76th Congress
In the providence of Nations, each brings to humankind a gift. It is the destiny of America to establish in the earth a threefold social order to bring, first, a new birth of freedom, second, the rule of democratically determined law, and third, an economic life that nurtures individual liberty and provides for the common good. It is the neglect of this third dimension of the American experience via the abdication by Congress of its Constitutional power to create and issue the public’s own money that is at the root of unprecedented distress in the economic life of the nation, and, by extension, the world.
Accordingly, We the People of these United States, mindful of the hopes and prayers of millions around the world, do resolve to restore the economic providence of the American nation.
In the providence of Nations, each brings to humankind a gift. It is the destiny of America to establish in the earth a threefold social order to bring, first, a new birth of freedom, second, the rule of democratically determined law, and third, an economic life that nurtures individual liberty and provides for the common good. It is the neglect of this third dimension of the American experience via the abdication by Congress of its Constitutional power to create and issue the public’s own money that is at the root of unprecedented distress in the economic life of the nation, and, by extension, the world.
Accordingly, We the People of these United States, mindful of the hopes and prayers of millions around the world, do resolve to restore the economic providence of the American nation.
In 1690 the colonial assembly of Massachusetts became the first government in the Western world to issue its own paper money. It was based, not on precious metals, debt bonds, land parcels, or other privately controlled “backing” schemes, but on the need for a stable currency issued in proportion to commerce, the general welfare and human dignity. Massachusetts prospered, and its example was copied by its sister colonies. A protracted contention ensued between the American Colonies and the Mother Country to determine who would exercise the sovereign right to create and control the “coin of the realm”, and for whose benefit that power would be exercised.
Representatives of the Colonies gathered at the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia in June of 1775 and claimed the prerogative of the sovereign by issuing a new currency by fiat of the public will, the “Continental Currency”. A nation was effectively born, and the famed Declaration of July 4, 1776 followed.
Benjamin Franklin stated the root of the matter succinctly: “The Colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it not been that England took away from the Colonies (the right to issue) their money, which created unemployment and dissatisfaction.”
The struggle over the control of money was revisited time and again as the new nation evolved. Fateful events transpired around the chartering and eventual rejection of the First and Second Banks of the United States, financing of the Civil War, emergence of the Populist Movement, passage of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, the money and banking legislation of the Depression era, the “farm parity” monetary reform of the WWII and demobilization period, and the slide into an unbearable burden of private and public indebtedness, which has culminated in the monetary crisis we face today.
Furthermore, there are specific passages established already in the law by which the current monetary distress, can, and indeed is called to be relieved:
On June 4, 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 11110, which invoked “The authority vested in the President by paragraph (b) of section 43 of the [Agricultural Adjustment] Act of May 12, 1933,” passed under Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
This Agricultural Adjustment Act specifically directs the President to take whatever measures he deems necessary to protect the value of the currency of the United States, and states further in Sec. 43, Par. (b) that if he is unable to secure the cooperation of the Federal Reserve Board, or for any other reason determines that additional measures are required, he is specifically authorized:
“To direct the Secretary of the Treasury to cause to be issued in such amount or amounts as he may from time to time order, United States notes, as provided in the Act entitled ‘An Act to authorize the issue of United States notes and for the redemption of funding thereof and for funding the floating debt [bonds against the debt] of the United States,’ approved February 25, 1862. . . but notes issued under this subsection shall be issued only for the purpose of meeting maturing Federal obligation to repay sums borrowed by the United States and for purchasing United States bonds and other interest-bearing obligations of the United States: Provided, That when any such notes are used for such purpose the bond or other obligation so acquired or taken up shall be retired and canceled.”
Taken to its logical end, the effect of this act is to specifically authorize, and indeed direct, the President to redeem Federal bonds with United States Notes as they come due if a stable currency is not achieved under the auspices of the Federal Reserve. It outlines a process whereby the debt of the Federal government can be retired in an orderly manner, and debt-bearing Federal Reserve Notes replaced in the money supply with lawful US currency.
Kennedy’s executive order caused to be issued directly out of the US Treasury over $4 billion in non-interest-bearing United States Notes, in this case Silver Certificates. Further issues were halted shortly after his death.
Significantly, the ‘Act of February 25, 1862’ cited in this 1933 legislation is Lincoln’s original “Greenback Act”, by which he declined to borrow the money to finance the Civil War, and instead issued $450 million in United States Notes. Had he acted otherwise, the debt from that war would remain as a burden of the Federal Government to this day, compounded by interest charges to many times its original amount. Lincoln’s leadership may well have redeemed the Union, on the battlefield, and in the financial arena as well.
The Acts referred to above cite as their authority the power delegated to Congress to “coin Money (and) regulate the Value thereof . . .”, as stipulated in the United States Constitution. They remain the law of the land. Why then, it is fair to ask, are they not being implemented in this time of crisis?
We the People uphold the Constitution of the United States and the intent of the laws derived therefrom. Further, we support President Obama in his promise, stated during his February 24th, 2009 address to the Joint Session of Congress, to do “whatever it takes” to address our current economic crisis.
In the practical spirit of “whatever it takes”, immediate steps can be duly taken (the issuance of United States Notes to redeem outstanding Federal debt) as an emergency measure under the Agricultural Adjustment Act, until a more permanent solution can be effected by repealing the Federal Reserve Act, and returning the creation and issuance of the people’s own money to the public domain through the US Treasury.
Furthermore, the people and physical assets of the Federal Reserve can be incorporated into the Department of the Treasury, where they would continue to assist with administering our nation’s monetary policy, but now subject to the People’s will through our duly constituted system of checks and balances. It is this form of monetary system, we believe, that our most far-sighted and public-spirited Founding Fathers envisioned.
In the spirit of “With malice towards none”, this statement represents, not a condemnation of any segment of society, including bankers (whose due services will continue to be needed). Rather, it seeks to fulfill the American providence to establish a new economic principle on the earth whereby “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish” from falling under the control of the “moneylender”. It is alike in the best interests of all citizens of our nation, and in these times the world, that such a new economic order be at last established.
“The weight of this crisis”, President Obama stated in his February 25, 2009 address to the Joint Session of Congress, “will not determine the destiny of this nation. The answers to our problems don’t lie beyond our reach. They exist in our laboratories and universities; in our fields and our factories; in the imaginations of our entrepreneurs and the pride of the hardest-working people on Earth. Those qualities that have made America the greatest force of progress and prosperity
in human history we still possess in ample measure. What is required now is for this country to pull together, confront boldly the challenges we face, and take responsibility for our future once more . . . , that day of reckoning has arrived, and the time to take charge of our future is here . . . .
So I ask this Congress to join me in doing whatever proves necessary. Because we cannot consign our nation to an open-ended recession . . . . As we stand at this crossroads of history, the eyes of all people in all nations are once again upon us – watching to see what we do with this moment; waiting for us to lead . . . , in our hands lies the ability to shape our world for good or for ill.”
Richard Kotlarz
1904 1st Ave. S, #12
Minneapolis, MN 55403
218-828-1366
richkotlarz@gmail.com
The complete set of columns from this series is posted at the following websites.
http://economictree.blogspot.com/
http://www.concordresolution.org/column.htm
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