me: >> Could the state back its paper money with sand, for example? Sabri: > Sure, why not? What does the US back its money with now?
its military might, etc. me: >> In the US, we had convertible commodity-backed paper money during most >> of the time before 1913 Sabri: > Without a central bank or, at least, without a continual entity acting as a > central bank, right? Don't know the pre-1913 > US monetary history that well. Who issued the money in the US back then and > who was going to pay that > commodity? The U.S. Treasury was in charge. If people wanted to convert their "gold certificates" into actual gold, it would be done by banks, who would get the gold from the Treasury. (The exception was the US civil war, during which the "greenbacks" were non-convertible and there was serious inflation.) -- Jim Devine / "In an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can purchase nothing but ugliness and unhappiness." -- George Bernard Shaw _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
