Daily Archives: 30 October 2025

Monetary Misconception

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Judy Shelton, a Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute, has this one. She wants the Federal government to issue a gold-backed bond would strike a blow for sound money.

Mr Trump has criticized currency manipulation in global trade relations. Challenging other nations to emulate the US [gold-backed bond] by guaranteeing some portion of their sovereign debt in gold would demonstrate America’s vision for stable money as the proper foundation for fair trade.

This is naïve. “Other countries” will continue to manipulate their currencies, just as they do now; this move only would add a new tool for manipulation—varying the value of the metal backing their own debt instrument(s).

Governments have been debasing their metal backed currencies ever since money was invented, doing so by shaving coins minted in the metal; by replacing some of the money-backing metal with other, cheaper metals; outright announcing a differing, lower values for a unit of the metal.

The most infamous recent example of the latter was during our own Great Depression when then-President Franklin Roosevelt (D) seized all privately held gold and then promptly devalued the gold in US dollar terms.

All currency is fiat currency, whether it’s minted in the metal or it’s printed on paper formally backed by the metal (at a rate the issuing government has announced for the time being), or it’s printed on paper and allowed to float in the markets for goods and services—and currencies. That currency has the value, in legal terms, that government says it has from time to time.

Backing a bond with a precious metal has no material meaning. What makes a money sound is the stability of the issuing government; the economy it oversees with a light hand; and that government’s ability to protect its people from invasion, whether physical, economic, or political. Nothing else does.

No—All Must Suffer

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Recall House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D, MA) saying the suffering of Americans during this Schumer Shutdown is leverage for Party. Recall further, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) saying the longer his shutdown continues, the better it is for Party.

Now we have two bills on offer that demonstrate the political bankruptcy of Party’s position, to say nothing of its moral bankruptcy. One is a bill on offer from Senator Josh Hawley (R, MO) that would fund the SNAP program during the shutdown so the needy could retain access to nutrition for themselves and their kids. Ten Republicans have signed on as co-sponsors. Exactly one Progressive-Democrat has.

The other bill is one offered by Senator Ron Johnson (R, WI) that would pay essential Federal workers and those furloughed now rather than after the Schumer Shutdown ends. Many of those employees, furloughed or still working, will without their paychecks find themselves—and in too many cases are alredady finding themselves—in any of a variety of breadlines because they can’t afford groceries. The bill would be especially important for those still required to work since those folks are ineligible for unemployment benefits. Here, too, only one Progressive-Democratic Senator has signed up to support it.

Marie Antoinette was a piker. The Progressive-Democratic Party politicians won’t even let our needy and our Federal employees have any cake* to eat.

*Cake: not the modern-day sweet confection, but for the French of Antoinette’s time, cake was the bread crust burned onto the peasants’ tiny oven walls as the loaves expanded hard onto those walls.