aus....http://www.thebinarycircumstan…s-a-return-of-fiat-money/
....Tt is no secret that our government is spending billions of dollars to fight the war in Iraq and to “rebuild” it now that the war has “ended,” at least in the reality-challenged mind of our President.
President Bush has stated that he doesn’t intend to raise taxes but plans to make his previous tax cuts permanent.
So how will the disaster in Iraq, the war for liberation, be financed?
If history is any indicator, the answer is the printing press, or in other words, fiat money and the hidden tax of inflation.
Section II of The Creature from Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin is entitled “A Crash Course on Money.” It is the most remarkably clear discussion of money and how it has evolved over the course of history that I have ever read.
He defines money as “anything which is accepted as a medium of exchange” and classifies it into four forms: 1) commodity money, 2) receipt money, 3) fiat money, and 4) fractional money. (pg. 138)
An example of commodity money is gold. Receipt money, evolved from commodity money:
When the [gold] coins were placed into the [goldsmith’s] vault, the warehouseman would give the owner a written receipt which entitled him to withdraw at any time. At first, the only way the coins could be taken from the vault was for the owner to personally present the receipt. Eventually, however, it became customary for the owner to merely endorse his receipt to a third party who, upon presentation could make the withdrawal. These endorsed receipts were the forerunners of today’s checks.
The final stage in this development was the custom of issuing, not just one receipt for the entire deposit, but a series of smaller receipts, adding up to the same total, and each having printed across the top: PAY TO THE BEARER ON DEMAND.
As the population learned from experience that these paper receipts were truly backed by good coin in the goldsmith’s warehouse and that the coin really would be given out in exchange for the receipts, it became increasingly common to use the paper instead of the coin. [pg. 151-2]
Then along comes fiat money. It’s first record of it’s use was reported by Marco Polo during his travels to China in the thirteenth century. [pg. 155] Griffin explains the nature of fiat currency.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines fiat money as “paper money decreed legal tender, not backed by gold or silver.” The two characteristics of fiat money, therefore, are (1) it does not represent anything of intrinsic value and (2) it is decreed legal tender. Legal tender simply means that there is a law requiring everyone to accept the currency in commerce.
The two always go together because, since the money really is worthless, it soon would be rejected by the public in favor of a more reliable medium of exchange, such as gold or silver coin. Thus, when governments issue fiat money, they always declare it to be legal tender under pain of fine or imprisonment. The only way a government can exchange its worthless paper money for tangible goods and services is to give its citizens no choice.[pg. 155]......