A Brief History of U.S. Coinage
(the Good, the Bad and the Ugly)

 
God's perspective on coinage
About 3400 years ago, God said, "You must have accurate and honest weights and measures, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you." (Dt. 25:5) Then, about 3000 years ago, God said, "The Lord detests different weights, and dishonest scales do not please Him." (Pr. 20:23)

Good U.S. coinage at the start
In 1787, Article 1, Section 10 of the U.S. constitution stated, "No state shall ... make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts." The Coinage Act of 1792 established the dollar as the basic unit of account for the U.S. Section 19 of the Act stated that anyone who debased the currency was guilty of a felony and must suffer the death penalty! Thus, from 1792 until 1873 the U.S. dollar was freely backed by both gold and silver at a ratio of 15:1, and the dollar could be exchanged for 24.06 grams (0.84869 ounces) of silver or 1.60 grams (0.056438 ounces) of gold.

The rise of bad U.S. coinage
In 1913, members of a banking cartel were able to establish a U.S. central bank called the Federal Reserve System. This system has been slowly taxing the American people for decades. This was the beginning of the dishonest scales. Then, in 1933, President Roosevelt outlawed the ownership of gold by individual persons and corporations in amounts in excess of $100 in value by passing Executive Order 6102. This shortly after the U.S. state governments and other western countries went bankrupt and asked the international banking cartel to bail them out. Some people say it was planned this way.

The Coinage Act of 1965 removed all silver from quarters and dimes, which were 90% silver prior to the act. Now, all coins minted for general circulation are now 100% clad, and like the currency of most nations, the U.S. dollar is fiat money, paper that is not backed by any physical asset—i.e., a holder of a federal reserve note has no right to demand an asset such as gold or silver from the government in exchange for a note. Instead, the currency is backed by future claims to wealth of American taxpayers and other income sources of the Treasury.  It appears that most people have long forgotten that it was once a felony to debase the currency. Nobody at the Fed has suffered the death penalty ... yet.

The ugly result of a debased U.S. currency
Although some indexes indicate that inflation over the last 100 years has only been 3%, others say it has been much higher. Compared to a dollar in 1913, today's dollar is worth almost nothing.  Here is a chart that illustrates this:

Purchasing Power

Where did the lost purchasing power of the dollar go?  It did not just disappear. It went into the pockets of the Federal Reserve System and the international banking cartel. With this money, the banking cartel has purchased control of most institutions of influence in the world today, including governments, schools, TV stations, newspapers, magazines, movie producers and even many churches.  In addition to stealing and corruption, the system has also encouraged oppression of the poor throughout the world - no time to go into that now, though.

History repeated
For over 4000 years God determined that gold and silver were accurate measures of currency. However, nation after nation throughout history has debased its currency until it finally because worthless. Now, the US is in the process of doing that. Historically, governments always debase their currencies during times of war. As the war in Iraq wages on, we can expect more inflation of the US dollar until at some point it will either be replaced by something like the Amero or perhaps continue concurrently with a 2nd currency for foreigners (which is what existed from 1933 to 1971 for foreigners). According to Revelation 13, one day, we'll have a world currency controlled by a one-world government, but it's hard to say how far away that system is.

What this means to you
A lot of people work hard to save up money for their children's education or for retirement, but they keep the money in some form of cash or in stocks. The problem with this is that they are unknowingly giving their money to the international banking cartel, as the value of their dollars continues to decline, and the stock market is going down. Rising consumer prices are simply the natural result of inflation.  10% inflation over just 7 years means about a 50% drop in value. Some people say we are now experiencing 20% inflation. Anyone not receiving a rate of return on their savings equal to the rate of inflation is losing money.  Add to this the possibility of Peak Oil, and it spells trouble ahead for normal folks.  This means that a lot of hard-working, sincere Christians are unknowingly earning "wages to put into a bag with holes" (Haggai 1:6); or perhaps even worse, they are putting their talent under the ground and will not receive God's praise for their financial stewardship (see Mt. 25:24-30)!  

A possible response
So what do we do?  One approach is to ask experts who agree on this situation for their advice.  One man with a good track record is Mr. Jay O'Keefe.  He's an 80-year-old Christian living in Texas who has a long background in investing. For many years, he's followed many financial experts, and over the years he's asked God to show him a few experts he could trust - men who seemed to care about normal folks and who weren't trying to sell any investments through their newsletters. God answered his prayer, and Jay now focuses on what his experts have to say.

For years Jay has been helping Christians manage their own personal portfolios for free based on his own experience and the information he regularly gets from his experts. Last year he stopped the free management service, but he's been writing free letters teaching normal folks how to invest their money wisely on their own.  If you'd like to read these free letters, you can find them at http://somehelpful.info/Money/Letters/. Jay also posts his own personal portfolio on this web site and lists his recent transactions. He is not selling anything. He just wants to serve other Christians and gain treasure for himself in heaven (Mt. 6:19-21; Lk. 16:9).  If you are busy, you can get the gist of Jay's strategy by reading letters 1-4, 7 and 19. This should probably take you about 1 to 4 hours, depending on how fast you read and how much background you have in economics.

Basically, Jay believes that most western currencies are losing value quickly and stocks are now likely in a long-term bear market (i.e., the market is going down). Jay believes we are in the midst of a bull commodity market (i.e., the market is going up), perhaps not even half way so far. He believes that gold and silver, especially silver, are very solid long-term investments, as they have been considered valuable assets throughout history.  Jay has also written a book called Biblical Economics, which can be read for free in its entirety online at http://somehelpful.info/Money/B-Econ/.

References and links for further study

 

 

This article is public domain.
This page was last updated on 13 May 2010 .