Liberty MavenThe Money Matrix – What is a Dollar Bill Worth? (PART 2/15)
August 3rd, 2008 2:13 pm | by Jake Towne | Published in Banking, Debt, Economics, Federal Reserve, Free Market, History, Liberty, Money, national debt | 7 Responses
“Living so free is a tragedy when you can’t see what you need to see!” – Powerman 5000 ‘Free’
Originally published August 2nd, by Jake, the Champion of the Constitution at http://www.nolanchart.com/article4401.html
Open your wallet and take a look at the money you have inside. Hopefully you have some metallic coins and slips of paper (actually its linen). Take a closer look. At the top in large letters it reads: ‘FEDERAL RESERVE NOTE.’
The Federal Reserve is the central bank of the United States. It issued the money you hold in your hands, although the Department of the Treasury actually printed it. Although it has the word ‘Federal’ in the title, the Federal Reserve is a private bank or company delegated the power by Congress to manipulate the money supply. It is no more ‘federal’ than Federal Express or Wal-Mart for that matter. More on this later.
Now, far more curious is the use and definition of the financial term ‘note.’
Note – A written promise to pay a specific sum of money on a certain date. A written pledge to pay.
Interesting. A ‘Note’ is actually a form of Debt, i.e. you are owed its worth by the United States government. The linen also has text “THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER FOR ALL DEBTS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE.” ‘Legal Tender’ is a legalese that means money that cannot be refused by law when you are paid or go to buy something.
But what is this note for debt actually worth ? A common fallacy is that the worth of the dollar is indirectly tied to the gold at Fort Knox. Dead wrong! Another is that the dollar is tied to the nation’s GDP/GNP/purchasing-power parity. There is some truth to this, as the dollar’s worth ‘floats’ or fluctuates with the exchange rates of other currencies like the Euro and Yen, but what is a dollar actually worth ?
Well, fortunately, the Federal Reserve is kind enough to tell us. Visit this Fed link entitled “What is a Dollar Worth? ”
There is a nice formula: “If in [year], I bought goods or services for [$1.00] then in [year], the same goods or services would cost [$x.xx]”
Try the year 2008, how much was a dollar worth in 1913? Holy smokes, just a nickel!
Well perhaps that was just because it was way before you were born. Try the year 2008, how much was a dollar worth in 2000? Just eighty cents worth of goods and services? That kind of sucks, and 8 years isn’t all that long for the value to drop by 20%! Something is a little fishy here.
Of course the answer for this debasement of the currency, or loss in value, is inflation .*
What is inflation then? Well picture the United States, and imagine that $100 is the total worth of our economy. However, if we print and additional $100 and so increase the money supply from $100 to $200, then the price of everything will double. After reading Rothbard’s work from Part 1, one discovers that inflation is defined as any increase in the economy’s supply of money not consisting of an increase in the stock of the money metal. In other words, inflation is NOT rising prices. Rising prices are merely the effect from increasing the money supply, or “printing more money.”
However, the second part of Rothbard’s definition doesn’t really apply, as I wrote above that there is no tie between the US dollar and a “money metal.” More on this in Part 3. To prove this point, the Federal Reserve reports:
“The government still holds millions of ounces of gold and silver, but citizens and foreign governments can no longer exchange their US paper money for it. The government’s gold and silver are considered valuable assets rather than forms of money. Today’s coins and paper money are backed by the “full faith and credit” of the US government.
If that makes you a little uneasy, try the following exercise. Put a ten-dollar bill and a blank piece of paper on a tabletop, and ask people to choose between the two. Chances are everyone will choose the ten-dollar bill. Why? After all, neither the ten-dollar bill nor the blank piece of paper is backed by gold or silver.
The difference is that people all over the United States will accept the ten-dollar bill as payment if you want to buy something. But you would have a hard time finding someone willing to accept the blank piece of paper. That’s because the ten-dollar bill is backed by the promise of the United States government, and to most people, that promise is as good as gold.” – “Banking Basics “, Federal Reserve of Boston, revised 1/2007
So “full Faith and Credit” is the answer. Faith is just the belief that the government will pay you back – like the Fed excerpt hints, Faith alone in the value of the money is certainly not acceptable. Credit is a different matter, and actually the only reason why people would have Faith in the first place is they trust the government’s promise to back it up. As John Williams, the renowned economist from shadowstats.com, testified to Congress on July 24, 2008:
“The relative value of a nation’s currency is a measure not only of its trade position, but also of global capital flows that mirror how the rest of the world views that nation’s economic strength, financial system integrity and political stability … Underlying fundamentals that drive the relative value of the US Dollar, against the currencies of its major trading partners, could not be much more negative.”
Williams brings up an important point, which is that in today’s monetary system all currencies float against each other, although many Asian countries, for instance, peg their value to the dollar. A “strong dollar” is indeed very important as a weak dollar would enable other foreign countries to have a higher purchasing power and buy up American goods and assets cheaply – boosting our exports but most importantly depressing our purchasing power domestically. Also, the cheap imported goods from China and oil will become relatively more expensive for us as we buy in American dollars, but other countries’ purchasing power will be stronger and it will be easier for them to outbid us for the goods.
I need to pause here for a moment to describe just how important Purchasing Power really is. If you have $100,000 in 2000 and can buy 10 cars, and have $100,000 in 2010 but can only buy 1 car, you may have the same amount of dollars, but you have lost 90% of your purchasing power. So please rid yourself of the preconception that your Wealth is calculated by how many Dollars you have (and that your home is worth as much as you think it is). Real Monetary Wealth has and always will be determined by your Purchasing Power, in other words, how much you can Buy. Real Materialistic Wealth is a combination of your Monetary Wealth combined with all of your property and assets.
Williams goes on to present some solutions to strengthen the dollar but also reviewed a dollar portfolio that “could not be much worse:”
- “Trade Balance (Negative): Despite recently reported narrowing of the monthly trade deficit, the US trade shortfall remains unprecedented in its relative global magnitude
- Economic Activity (Negative): US business conditions are deteriorating, with the economy clearly in a recession in all but formal declaration
- Inflation (Negative): US inflation has risen sharply, with the CPI-U up 5.0% year-to-year as of June; broad money growth is highest since 1971; double-digit inflation is possible by early 2009
- Fiscal Discipline (Negative): The already expanding US federal budget deficit likely will be worse than expected, thanks to the developing recession
- Interest Rates (Negative): US interest rates are low, with Federal Reserve policy perceived to be on hold per current market expectations
- Political/Systematic Stability (Negative): The President’s approval rating (currently low) is a fair indicator of currency trends; the banking crisis is a negative”
Later in this series we will delve more into the above more, but for now just note that each parameter that influences the dollar is fairly soft – there is nothing concrete that stipulates exactly how much a dollar is worth. Still believe the Fed’s claim that the Dollar is “good as gold?” Even if there is really no gold or other tangible backing?
Let me now introduce the US Dollar Index (USDX). The USDX is a weighted basket of six (6) freely floating currency exchange rates with the US dollar – the Euro, Yen, Swiss Franc, British Pound, Swedish Krona, and Canadian Dollar. The index was originally set to 100.00 when the index was started in 1973, so this reflects the average value of the dollar relative to that period. The USDX is computed 24 hours a day, see it live here .
Source and formula
Next, from the chart below, the USDX is in a major bear market. Having reached a high of 120.97 in July 2001, the USDX is now slightly above its all-time low of 71.33, set in April 2008. Combined with all of the factors Williams delineated above, there are no positives and only negatives, so it is highly likely that the USDX will continue downwards in the future, the only unknown is whether this will be sudden or gradual. Let’s reflect for a moment on the loss of our wealth.
Since 2001, the Dollar has lost 41% of its overall purchasing power versus the USDX basket.
Since 2001, the Dollar has lost 18% of its domestic purchasing power to inflation.
As it would be quite difficult to even counter this loss by saving the dollars in a bank, surely the speculations or investments into Wall Street, into 401k retirement “savings” ** accounts, index mutual funds, and the like would yield a better return? Only if you were smart and/or lucky!
On January 14th , 2000, the Dow Jones hit a contemporary high of 11,723 with the USDX at about 105. In October 2007, the Dow set its all-time high of 14,164 – in dollars, that is. The USDX was about 75. So if priced in USDX units, the Dow was only worth about 10,100, or factoring in just domestic inflation about 11,600 in year-2000-dollars.
And as of August 1, the Dow is at 11,326 with the USDX at 73.36. Price the Dow today in the USDX, and it lost 30% from 2000 – it is worth just 7,900 in 2000’s dollars. Inflation adjusted the figure is 9,100. Although these figures don’t factor in dividends, investing in the Dow (or S&P 500) was unable to generate extremely high gains on a purchasing power basis, as is generally believed.
So, most Americans have been actually been robbed in this decade – whether a saver or investor or speculator – due to the loss of purchasing power in the dollar due to the drop in currency exchange rate and money supply inflation. Anyone upset?
To succinctly answer the question posed, a dollar is worth whatever Americans and the international community believes it is worth per the six factors Williams listed above. There is no hard way to calculate its true purchasing power, which fluctuates at all times, and increasing the money supply (or inflation) is debasing the dollar at significant rates. A dollar bill’s intrinsic value is no higher than any other slip of paper, in fact from the Fed’s comparison above, the blank piece of paper may be worth more, since it’s a commodity that can still be written on.
It would be of great value to read Rothbard’s “What Has the Government Done with Our Money?” from the link in Part 1.
The next article will review a basic question – what is money anyways? What are its properties?
* On the same page there is a link ‘Consumer Price Index and Inflation Rates, 1913- ’ where the column on the right gives the inflation rate for the year. However, the CPI calculation method, particularly in recent years is under dispute. John Williams of shadowstats.com believes the current inflation rate is over 10%, not below 5%. If you regularly visit gas stations and supermarkets, you would probably agree less than 5% is not possible.
** Actually even the true meaning of what savings really are have been lost, as the common man has been driven to the stock market for higher returns, see aside here .
August 4th, 2008 at 1:16 am (#)
Jake begins with the usual stuff about the so-called fact that the Fed is a private outfit, that Congress delegated to some private financial outfit the powers and functions of the nation’s central bank.
I;d like to see how he gets around the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, Title 12, United States Code, that not only created the Fed, but also have detailed rules and policies it must follow. No private contractor or vendor, much less Wal-Mart or Federal Express have their corporate boards made up of Presidential appointees, as an example. None of these corporations were created by a Congressional Act, not Wal-Mart or Federal Express.
So exactly where is the argument–not the assertion, argument by assertion being a favorite libertarian way of arguing and reasoning, as a drill sergeant would argue or reason–that shows, again, no assertions, that the Fed is a private outfit that Congress delegated the central bank powers and functions to? Repeating say, Rothbard’s assertions will not do. Show how the Federal Reserve Act actually has Congress delegating–not creating another government agency–but delegating to a private concern government powers or functions or wahtever.
I do not think that Jake can do this–but it is said that if a lie is told enough times, then it becomes the truth.
We must also remember that the Fed came in with the income tax, the repeal of the prohibition on the per capita tax, not to mention several more Progressive Era items, most of them libertarians abhor.
On a side note: James Madison wrote a letter to Hamilton at the end of the Philadelphis Constitutional convention, in which he stated his surprise and objection to the insertion into the Constitution of that prohibition–he called the prohibition on the per capita tax (also known as the direct tax, or income tax) objectionable because it deprived the states and the nation of needed revenues. He noted that this clause had been inserted by “an acclaimation to acquiesence”, which in todays language means that it was railroaded in, the opposition to it shouted down–and the later hiers of these anti-Federalists complain of a counter treatement of equal force in the way the 16th Amendment was shoved into law. How ironic–the Father of the Constitution wanted the income tax–I have yet to meet any tax protester who didn’t either run from this fact or make the comment that at least we didn’t have the income tax for a hundred years or so–thhat Madison defended this clause in the later ratification debates says simply that he wanted the bulk of the Constitution in, and was willing to compromisee on some details–the Constitution, Jake, is and was a bundle of compromises. Indeed, again, your arguments about the Constitution strike me as odd–that in fact you’d prefer the Articles of Confederation, where there’s no possibility of a Fed or those unelected judges or that constitutional monarch*the President), or that Imperial Congress–where the States are sovereign and secession is legal. But the Constitution is not of that purely confederal nature–it is, as Madison wrote, partly national and partly confederal(federal) Of course, you may also argue that Madison and co went beyond their authority in making the Constitution–one writer claims they stole the Articles and usurped them–but Madison has his reply to that in the Federalist.
Let’s just say that the Fed, the three branches of the national government, the power to suspend the Writ, the Supremacy clause and the rest are not going away.
August 4th, 2008 at 7:35 am (#)
RBurnett -
Again, point taken, thanks.
Thanks for your detailed reply and your references to the Federalist Papers and Articles of Confederation. I confess I have not had the time to read them completely – exactly which letters are you referring to? I do address the Fed in more detail later on, its a bit higher up the pyramid than this more basic stuff. And I do acknowledge your point that Fed Express and Wal-Mart are not referred to in a Congressional Act – perhaps they need to fail like Fannie and Freddie and get bailed out first to qualify?
In the meantime, enjoy your dollars as they are debased and let the gov’t take 6.2% in social security from you, another 6.2% from your employer, 15-28% off your investments, and another 20-30% or so in income and other taxes
Jake
August 4th, 2008 at 8:09 am (#)
RBurnett -
Actually let me try one leg of the case on you to answer –
“Show how the Federal Reserve Act actually has Congress delegating–not creating another government agency–but delegating to a private concern government powers or functions or wahtever.”
How about you prove to me that the Fed itself is not unconstitutional and that the US abides by the Constitution in providing gold and silver coinage?
And “delegate” not the proper term, try “transfer”. The Congress has transferred control over our money creation to the Fed. I cite the 1935 case A. L. A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935) that ruled:
“Congress is not permitted by the Constitution to abdicate, or to transfer to others, the essential legislative functions with which it is vested. Art. I, § 1; Art. I, § 8, par. 18. Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan, 293 U. S. 388. P. 295 U. S. 529.”
There are rumors the BIS will audit the Fed, has Congress ever done this? Really when people blame the Fed, they should be blaming Congress or requesting their reps to do something.
Here is another interesting read http://www.monetary.org/federalreserveprivate.htm
August 9th, 2008 at 2:51 am (#)
Jake:
Let me give you a few answers to your stements and questions.
Madison’s statement that the new Constitution would be partly federal*confederal) and partly national is at the end of the 10th Federalist. Madison defends the Constitutional convention, which was accused of overstepping its authority given by the Congress of the Articles, in the 40th Federalist.
As to your answer to my challenge to show how the Federal Reserve Act has Congress delegating to a private concern government powers and operations, you replied first with the challenge to show how the Fed is not unconstitutional and that the US follows the Constitution in providing gold or silver coinage–there are two answers to this challenge. First, the example of the Lousiana Purchase, or indeed, the creation by the Jeffersonian Republicans of the Second Bank of the US, a forerunner of the Fed. In the Purchase, Jefferson, with a Congress composed of many framers and founders (who, it may be said, should have known better) went ahead with this illegal act (by his own admission) based upon the idea that there’s a lwa higher than the Constitution (his words, not mine, see his letter to John Breckenridge, written in late 1803) In a word, it was necessary(his word) to purchase that territory in a timely manner (he complianed that the states, following the Tenth Amendment and the Constitution, would have argued away the opportunity) Besides which, the monies paid out went to Napoleon, who used these funds to make war on Europe. The Fed was necessary, at least the likes of J P Morgan and the President and the Congress in 1913 thought so, in spite of anything written in the Constitution. Indeed, these necessary acts began almost immediately with the Republic–one of the most onerous was the Sedition act, which made it a crime to criticise a government official, only repelaed with the advent of the jeffersonians. Indeed, Madison noted in reference to the Constitution and the laws as mere parchment provisions, that if the people had a passion for, and here he used the example of paper money, and they held that passion or interest long enough, they’d get their paper money, despite whatever good economy or the Contitution may say.
Let’s also look at the second response to your challenge. Has the Court found the Federal Reserve act unconstitutional–not at all.The cited Schechter case is about the transfer of government functions to a private concern–the Federal Reserve is not a private concern like Schechter Poulty. That poultry company was not created by an act of Congress–so the Court’s ruling that affects the unconstitutional use of congressional or executive power to transfer to a private concern government powers is not relevant regarding the Fed.
You begin again with the notion that the Fed is a private concern or private sector company, and as you grufgingly admit, this isn’t so–no private corproation is created by a Congressional Act–articles of incorporation are not Congressioanl acts.
Now, is there anything in the Constitution that may permit, under the enumerated powers or other language, the creation of the Fed? In the making of the Fed system, there were months of hearings and debates before Congress during 1913–perhaps some references to the Constitution were in those hearings and debates–indeed, Republicnas then were against the Fed, Democrats for it. Wilson thought it was wrong–but went ahead and signed off on the Fed. There is more than a simple yes or no answer to the Constitutionality of the Fed–in part, the answer to the Fed’s Constitutionality brings us back to Jefferson’s defense of that necessary action with the Purchase.
In the end, this is another way of restating that the Constitution was, and is, a collection of compromises, that the words, seemingly so clear, are not–to use Plato’s description of such a document, it is a work of art. The dictionary is useless, as are any such assertions that this or that word or clause means what we assert it means. Sure, there’s Madison’s leter about how, if the words were to be twisted around, that no one would have ever ratified the Constitution–and yet, in the 37th Federalist, he writes that even the Almighty must be chagrined to have to have his will delivered in human language. It’s not for nothing that men as diverse as Adam Smith (in his Theory of Moral Sentiments) and Rousseau (in his On the origin of Language)or Aristotle (in his Rhetoric) make language a key issue.
AM I arguing that anything goes–not at all. But i have a similar problem with this issue of language that the Apostle Paul has with another, who wrote that shall sin increase so that more grace may abound? God forbid. But what to do?
I am amused that you wrote at the end that people have hit at the wrong target, that it’s not really the Fed that’s at fault, but the Congress and the President–which is another way of restating that the Fed is a government agency and that it’s the people who want it this way, as Madison noted about self-government and representative government. As a last comment, it amuses me that as voters or citizens, many writers, some of then libertarians, castigate us as being bad voters or citizens–yet, at the same time, as consumers, there are some writers, many of them libertarians, who applaud the wisdom of the consumer, of the free market–how is it that we can be so wise ands wonderful with our private money, our personal decisions, and so bad with our public money and decisions? Well, it’s really this: we are just as good consumers as we are citizens. Or vice-versa.
August 9th, 2008 at 4:18 am (#)
RBurnett –
thanks for the reply, i do see your points and respect them, esp the point that peeved you about the fed being a private company, i do understand where you are coming from. how about this? for the reasons I’ll outline in this series, long-term I desire no fed pseudo-government system whatsoever, regardless of any constitutionality. Can I win the argument that the constitution does not mandate that we must have a fed, that congress could take over the nation’s credit once again? please be patient, im still writing away actually i could probably use your expertise on how the fed works
i think the discovery on whether American citizens and the government are “wise and wonderful” with their private money and public money is still pending. Americans are great at reacting and taking advantage of the situation – look at the savings rate plummet from 5-10% to -1 to +1% after the Fed made credit super easy. People naturally realize its best to spend the money rather than hold it, so you will never find me calling the American consumer bad or stupid, the main point that I’ve tried to illustrate through Part 4 is that Americans ARE ignorant of what their money really is. I used to be ignorant as well.
can’t wait to find out what happens with the USDX! what do you think, is the FRN ’strong’ and the USDX is going back to the 90-100 range? it seems this rally was set off by foreign gov’t’s buying up more American gov’t paper.
take care, and thanks for writing back! Jake
August 9th, 2008 at 8:13 pm (#)
Jake:
As to why Congress created a Federal Reserve system and didn’t have some Congressional committee do that work, you will have to look at the legislative history, those debates and hearings in 1913. I do not know the exact reasons, however, there are any number of bureaucracies that one could argue that Congress ought to be doing the work, or indeed, be privatized out–whoops, that what was the whole issue of the Schechter Poultry decision was all about–
The Constitution does not mandate that we must have the federal Reseve–and it did not mandate that we must have bought the Purchase territory, or indeed a lot of other actions or things or bureaus, But as I noted with Jefferson’s defence of that illegal act of the Purchase, there’s necessity.As with the use of the Constitutional convention to create another Constitution, not to simply fix an unfixable Articles of Confederation, we have the Federal Reserve. But it was never Constitutionally mandated like say, the office of the president or the makeup of the Congress or the enumerated powers.
So sure, you win that it isn’t mandated–you could argue that the Congress overstepped its bounds–but unless there’s another court case that says that Congress may not transfer powers to another government agency, even one under its control, then you are stuck with thye Fed.
Even Wikipedia, which is sometimes sympathetic to the libertarian point of view, noted in its piece on the creation of the Fed, that the private sector bankers, such as Morgan, wanted a national government run central bank to check some of the more outrageous swings in the free market. Now if one uses Andrew Jackson’s attacks on the central bank–recall that that bank wwas a creation of the Jeffersonian Republicans–you can see the debate over whether to have a central bank–acrosss the nation’s history.
You do not want any psuedo government or government organization por system running the money supply, interest rates and the rest, which is the approach of some economists–not Adam Smith, John Locke or Madison and Hamilton.
Take, for example, another look at The Wealth of Nations–in it are many of the same complaints about capitalism (which is the Marxist’s term for Smith’s new system–he calls it the natural system of liberty–and as I have already alluded to, words have maenings and their uses consequences, it is remarkable that many libertarians and conservatives use the enemy’s name for their free market system)that the Marxist have–indeed, Smith gave them to the Marxists, However, he also noted that there was a necessity that government interfere in the economy. Ditto Locke. The framers and founders did not use say, von Mises or Freidman as their authorities on how the government shoulkd interact with the economy–and they also didn’t use Keynes. But then, there was no industrial economy or our current whatever it is economy–technology, information, what have you.
Still looking at Smith, there’s also this: his Theory of Moral Sentiments–now how important is that to any economist? The question of what virtue is and how it is eligible, the approbation that authorises any trnasaction is of the greatest importance for Smith–it means that the natural system of liberty can work, but only with a people that has such virtue–indeed, Washington himself echoed this sentiment when, writing to Lafayette, he noted that the Constitution would work if there was any virtue left in the body of the people.
August 10th, 2008 at 12:22 am (#)
RBurnett -
Thanks again for writing back. Wealth of Nations is on my reading list right next to the Federalist papers
On the Fed, your point is taken that it is legal and exists, and I agree. My point is that it is not mandatory that the US have a central bank outside the gov’t or even at all! For instance, similar to China the government could take over the Fed. So then the proper question is, should we retain the Fed and if not, do what instead? Again, will try to touch on this later in my little series.
Care to comment on the USDX with your thoughts? I think it will at least go down 10% from 71, so <64. However, this assumes certain free market fundamentals (free from government interventions), which is certainly not the case.