Do you Believe in “this state”?

“As ye believe, so be it.”  “As ye believe, so shall it be done to you.”  So sayeth the Lord (and so sez “this state”)

“And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.” Joshua 24:15

“Choose this day who you will believe—for that is who you will serve.”  Alfred Adask

I’ve understood for several years that all “belief” is based on second-hand information and therefore hearsay.  For example, when I was a child, I “believed” in Santa Clause.  Why?  I had no “knowledge” (direct, first-hand experience) of Santa Clause.  I’d never seen him enter my home or deposit presents or slide up or down a chimney.  But my “mommy” told me Santa was real and therefore, I believed.

 

The Gold is Falling! The Gold is Falling!

As I write this (Friday afternoon), the price of gold has fallen from a recent high of $1,218 per ounce on December 2^nd to $1,119 on December 10^th.   Ninety-nine bucks in nine days.  Pretty scary, hmm?

 

The Next Global Currency will be Gold . . .or maybe Oil

It’s arguable that the biggest mistake in our federal Constitution is found Article I Section 10 Clause 1 which declares in part, “No State shall . . . make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.”   Note that only the States (of the Union) are prohibited from declaring something other than gold and silver coin to be “legal tender”.  No such prohibition applies to the federal government or the territories.  By specifying only the States, the Founders left open a loophole through which the federal government and/or territories could make declare something (like paper, fiat “dollars”) to be “money”—or at least “legal tender”.

And that’s pretty much what happened.  But it didn’t happen all at once.  The American dollar was backed by gold and silver until A.D. 1933 but then President Franklin Roosevelt declared a “national emergency” and seized all of the gold from domestic circulation.  The States had not abandoned gold as “tender in payment of debt,” but the federal government removed the gold from domestic circulation preventing its use by the States.  Our dollars were still backed by gold, but only when those dollars were presented by foreign banks and governments—not States of the Union.  Within the United States, our dollars were no longer backed by gold, but they were still backed by silver.