The troubling suppression of competition from alternative monies: the cases of the liberty dollar and e-gold.

• Author: White, Lawrence H.
• Position: Report

Proposals abound for reforming monetary policy by instituting a less-discretionary or nondiscretionary system ("rules") for a fiat-money-issuing central bank to follow. The Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee could be given a single mandate or more generally an explicit loss function to minimize (e.g., the Taylor Rule). The FOMC could be replaced by a computer that prescribes the monetary base as a function of observed macroeconomic variables (e.g., the McCallum Rule). The role of determining the fiat monetary base could be stripped from the FOMC and moved to a prediction market (as proposed by Scott Sumner or Kevin Dowd). Alternative proposals call for commodity money regimes. The dollar could be redefined in terms of gold or a broader commodity bundle, with redeemability for Federal Reserve liabilities being reinstated. Or all Federal Reserve liabilities could actually be redeemed and retired, en route to a fully privatized gold or commodity-bundle standard (White 2012). All of these approaches assume that there will continue to be a single monetary regime in the economy, so that the way to institute an alternative is to transform the dominant regime.

A different approach to monetary reform is to think about ways that alternative monetary standards might arise in the marketplace to operate in parallel with the fiat dollar, perhaps gradually to displace it. This approach prompts us to look at the alternative monetary systems that are currently available, or could become available if allowed. We can try to evaluate the likelihood that members of the public would spontaneously adopt, wholly or partially, one or more alternative systems (White 1989). Of more immediate relevance--and the avenue taken here--is to consider how legal restrictions are currently blocking the process of monetary innovation, and examine the case for removing such obstacles.

In his monograph Choice in Currency, F. A. Hayek (1976: 17) proposed an end to any legal barriers that block the monetary use of foreign fiat currency or gold within any domestic economy: "But why should we not let people choose freely what money they want to use? By 'people' I mean the individuals who ought to have the right to decide whether they want to buy or sell for francs, pounds, dollars, D-marks, or ounces of gold." He believed a government's "claim to a monopoly, or their power to limit the kinds of money in which contracts may be concluded within their territory, or to determine the rates at which monies can be exchanged, to be wholly harmful." Thus, governments should "bind themselves mutually not to place any restrictions on the free use within their territories of one another's--or any other--currencies, including their purchase and sale at any price the parties decide upon, or on their use as accounting units in which to keep books."

Increasing the competition among central banks for market share, Hayek argued, would make each of them more serious about keeping the inflation rate close to zero. Hayek's antimonopoly message bears re-emphasizing in light of tlie new technologies for producing private monies, and the troubling recent government efforts to suppress them in the United States and elsewhere. Open competition would enable ordinary money-users to protect themselves against bad money. It might even elicit better behavior from central banks, much as competition in express package delivery has elicited better behavior from the U.S. Postal Service. For the sake of money-users, legal barriers should be removed not only against traditional gold-and silver-based monies and foreign fiat monies, but also against new types of commodity-based monies and the new noncommodity cyber-monies.

The potential alternative monies include: (1) foreign fiat monies in paper or account-balance form; (2) physical gold and silver coins, and banknotes redeemable into them, for which the Liberty Dollar project provided one model; (3) electronically transferable gold account balances, such as e-gold; and (4) private noncommodity cybermonies, for example Bitcoin and Litecoin. Research is needed on how tlie holding and use of foreign monies is discouraged by various tax and regulatory policies. As detailed below, die Liberty Dollar and e-gold have been shut down and their entrepreneurs prosecuted by federal authorities. Bitcoin faces hostility from the same authorities.'

The U.S. federal government has been acting as though it resents challenges to its near-monopoly of basic money within the United States and is seeking to legally impede competition. If that sounds unduly alarmist, read the indictments and the accompanying press releases.

Ordinary citizens are harmed by the restriction of monetary competition. If we care about the welfare of ordinary citizens in their role as money users, then the law should allow the market for monies to be openly competitive. It should not make money production a privileged monopoly. To the same end, provisions in the law that grant the federal government the authority to ban non-fraudulent money enterprises, or subject non-dollar-based money services to higher obstacles than dollar-based services, should be removed. Prosecution of honest money entrepreneurs should stop.

The Story of the Liberty Dollar

The Liberty Dollar was a project of an entrepreneur named Bernard von NotHaus and his nonprofit organization, NORFED (National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve and Internal Revenue Code). Von NotHaus had previously produced collectable silver medallions as proprietor of a business called the Royal Hawaiian Mint. In October 2008, NORFED launched its one-ounce silver Liberty piece, with a face value denominated in dollars. Whether it was a coin became a disputed legal question because a federal statute prohibits the unauthorized issue of coins. The face value was initially $10, well above the then going price for other one-ounce silver pieces, and was later raised to $20 on newly minted pieces in a preprogrammed response to the rising price of silver. (2) The organization also issued dollar-denominated paper certificates ($1, $5, $10) redeemable at the same par rates for silver kept in storage at a warehouse. The Liberty Dollar project later introduced gold and platinum pieces in higher denominations and copper pieces in a $1 denomination.

The intention to offer a new kind of circulating currency, superior to the Federal Reserve's fiat money, was clear from the project's original name ("American Liberty Currency"), its promotional brochures, and its website. In mid-2005 the website masthead proclaimed Liberty Dollars to be "America's Inflation-Proof Currency." (3) At that point the Liberty Dollar website quoted a U.S. Treasury spokeswoman as confirming the legality of the project: '"There's nothing illegal about this,' Dickens said after the Treasury Department's legal team reviewed the currency. 'As long as it doesn't say legal tender there's nothing wrong with it.'" (4) It also quoted a Secret Service spokesman as stating, "It's not counterfeit money." (5)

In September 2006, however, the U.S. Mint issued a press release with an ominous message. It first advised that Liberty Dollar "medallions" were "not genuine United States Mint bullion coins, and not legal tender." No conflict there, as the Liberty Dollar's promoters did not claim otherwise. Indeed their whole marketing pitch was that these were an alternative to official currency. But then the press release added: "NORFED's 'Liberty Dollar' medallions are specifically marketed to be used as current money in order to limit reliance on, and to compete with the circulating coinage of the United States. Consequently, prosecutors with the United States Department of Justice have concluded that "the use of NORFED's 'Liberty Dollar' medallions violates 18 U.S.C. [section] 486, and is a crime" (U.S. Mint 2006). (6) Note the suggestion that "to compete with the circulating coinage of the United States" is a crime per se, a suggestion unwarranted by the language of the statute in question.

Here is the full text of the cited statute (18 USC [section] 486--"Uttering Coins of Gold, Silver or Other Metal") that the Liberty Dollar was accused of violating:

Whoever, except as authorized by law, makes or utters or passes, or attempts to utter or pass, any coins of gold or silver or other metal, or alloys of metals, intended for use as current money, whether in the resemblance of coins of the United States or of foreign countries, or of original design, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. (7) The U.S. Mint also warned that the "medallions might look like real money" because they bear inscriptions: "'Liberty,' 'Dollars,' 'Trust in God' (similar to 'In God We Trust'), and 'USA' (similar to 'United States of America')" and "images that are similar to United States coins"--namely, the torch of liberty and the Liberty Head. The latter image appeared on "the obverses of United States gold coins from the mid-1800s to the early 1900s." The 2006 press release did not take note of clearly dissimilar markings, such as the 800 phone number, "LIBERTYDOLLAR.ORG," and "ONE OUNCE 999 FINE SILVER" inscriptions on the reverse, nor did it suggest that the cited similarities constituted counterfeiting or fraud.

In November 2007, the FBI executed a seizure warrant against the Evansville, Indiana, head office of the Liberty Dollar organization, following what was reportedly a two-year investigation. Von NotHaus told a local newspaper that the FBI took gold, silver, and platinum stored on the site, together with "the dies used to mint the Liberty Dollars"; carted away "nearly two tons" of copper $1 pieces featuring Ron Paul's image; seized the organization's computers and files; and froze its bank accounts (Lesnick 2007, Taylor 2007).

When federal indictments came down in May 2009, von NotHaus was predictably charged with...