Quote Originally Posted by Lafayette View Post
Oh... i see. So for the sake of argument lets just forget for a second that the bankers and all the other special interests and complexes don't infest and control government. We just put the printing press into the hands of guys who bring us such wonderful things as the patriot act, NDDA, assassinations of US citizens, TSA, the war on drugs, endless foreign wars and 10s of trillions in debt and unfunded liabilities and things will be sooooooo much better....
I didn't say that. It is not the Treasury or the Mint that does those things, but the executive and to a lesser extent the legislature. While it is true that many historical examples of hyperinflation have resulted from putting the power to create money in the same hands that spent it, that is not the proposal. The proposal is to put the power to create money in the hands of an independent Mint. Its primary legal mandate would be price stability. It would achieve this goal by printing enough money to accommodate economic growth, and delivering it to the Treasury to spend into circulation. It would be legally prohibited from printing money if the previous year's measured rate of commodity price increase was greater than some small number, say 2%. It would be legally required to print a fixed fraction of GDP in new money each month that the previous year's commodity price index declined, and deliver it to the Treasury to spend into circulation. Between those two extremes, it would have discretion to smooth anticipated price fluctuations.