If you get a $1 American Dollar. Federal Reserve Note. Signed off by treasurer and secretary. Back side of $1 GOD at the center, IN GOD WE TRUST/ONE
Faith-based dollar, 195 countries in existence on Earth, only one says in GOD WE TRUST. The only legal currency backed by faith instead of instead of material like gold because GOD is gold . On the left side of the dollar you see the triangle with the eye on top the eye is the eye of God the all seeing eye omniscient omnipotent triangle pyramid trinity,father, son, holy Spirit. Above the triangle it says ANNUIT COEPTIS, the meaning is God favors our undertakings thatâs why the bill is faith-based originally and still today the entire basis of the dollar the country the founding fathers
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If English was our official language, we could have had âIn cod we trustâ on one of our bills:
Image source: Central bank of Norway
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The US dollar WAS gold-backed until 1933 (and was convertible to gold upon demand until 1971).
In addition, the US dollar is not unique in having abandoned the gold standard during the previous century. ALL currencies did so. At the present time NO currency is backed by gold.
So much for your claim that the US dollar is unique in not being backed by gold!
Of course thereâs a sense in which the dollar, and all currencies, are âbacked by faithâ in the sense of âa mutually shared fictionâ because they only have value because enough people widely agree that they do. Once people start to doubt the stability and creditworthiness of the issuer (as is currently happening big time with the US dollar), that can change relatively quickly. Most financial experts expect the US dollar will not much longer be regarded as the worldâs âreserve currencyâ. It is falling as US bond prices rise â a very bad sign, especially if stocks enter into an extended precipitous fall, which they came within a hairâs breadth of this past April and could very easily go back into free fall for any number of good reasons in this environment.
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Iâm not aware of any other country whose currency is still tied to the value of gold.
The U.S. got off the gold standard in 1933. FDR issued Executive Order 6102 that required everyone to turn over all gold to the government (with the exception of collector coins, jewelry, and a few others). It wasnât legal to own gold in the U.S. until 1975.
Annuit Coeptis comes from Virgilâs Aeneid, which was written before christianity came into being, so you can consider it pagan in origin.
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I remember this being announced under a Labour Govât / Chancellor, I believe it was Gordon Brown from memory.
Well it appears he sold off half of our gold reserves.
"Dubbed âBrownâs Bottomâ, the sale of half of the UKâs gold reserves between 1999 and 2002 by then-Chancellor Gordon Brown is considered a particular low point in British history.
Today marks the 20th anniversary of this event, so we revisit Gordon Brownâs mistakes; how a cautious Chancellor let down his guard and undersold more than half of Britainâs gold reserves."
It gets worseâŠ
"The total sale of the gold bullion sold was $3.5 billion, at $275 per ounce average sale value. It is somewhat ironic that Gordon Brownâs attempts to make as much money as possible from a staggered sale resulted in over $100 million less for the gold compared to when the sale hadnât been announced, but itâs damning just how much more that gold would have been worth further down the line. Gold was $921 per ounce early in May 2009, which would put the gold sold at $11.8 billion in value - $8.3 billion more than Brown got. The 20-year price rise is worse still, with gold currently at $1,279 per ounce. This would make the gold bullion worth $16.4 billion - $12.9 billion more than was received in 1999."
Ouch!
Itâs also worthwhile to point out to the OP that whatever gold a nation may possess does not mean itâs tied to its currency. The US has enormous amounts of gold in Fort Knox, and however unwisely some of it was sold off, the UK (and many other nations) hold gold reserves. They are just not proxies for anyoneâs currencies anymore.
Although itâs looking like this was a drive-by posting and we wonât be hearing more from the OP anyway. One of those imagined truth-bombs / âgotchasâ lobbed into the middle of a den of iniquity, and supposed to rattle us or something. It continues to amaze how the flies buzzing around inside such peopleâs heads have convinced them they have evidence for their god that is actually just incoherent gibberish.
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As others have suggested: I canât name a currency that is backed by anything other than faith. It seems like youâve been listening to the lunatics.
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It appears the newcomer discovered the concept of fiat money in a high school economics class, and wet himself at the ramifications âŠ
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I think it is interesting when faith in a currency erodes.
In Zimbabwe, hyperinflation caused them to print bank notes with a face value in the trillions. See below:
From what I understand, twenty or thirty trillion dollars might buy you a beer in a bar.
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The Zimbabwean hyperinflation was only the second worst hyperinflation in history. It was dwarfed by the Hungarian hyperinflation of 1945-1946. Prices doubled roughly every 15 hours, and the bank note with the highest amount issued was worth the amount of 100 quintillion (100 000 000 000 000 000 000) PengĂ”:
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100 quintillion?
This raises interesting questions.
For example, if you went into a strip club with paper money to feed to the adult entertainers . . . would they need to wear a backpack while they are dancing on stage?
Was there an underground black market that functioned on barter?
Did older people on a fixed income suddenly haveâeffectivelyâno income, and end up starving and/or homeless?
My guess is that barter would be the only meaningful currency in that environment.
Back in the 1980s or maybe the 70s a Christian Dominionist named Gary North published a book on how to barter, as itâs kind of a lost skill and he believed there would be widespread fiat currency collapse and he wanted Christians to be able to rise from the ashes. It was an early precursor of the nihilistic, apocalyptic thinking of modern Christers.
Barter can get pretty involved, with intermediate trades that can be done when you need to trade X for Y but the guy holding Y doesnât want or need X.
Probably of more real utility would be community (=âcommunistâ) cooperation where everyone works out of a common pot and bartering only happens at higher levels.
I hope we donât have to learn about all this first hand âŠ
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Even though it was not so bad as the Hungarian hyperinflation, the hyperinflation in the German Weimar republic was so bad that people had to use their money right away, before they became worthless. And this had some bizarre consequences. For example, people used wheelbarrows for transporting money;
children used stacks of money as toys;
bills were so worthless that their value as fuel was greater than the amount of fuel they could buy;
and some people used them as an alternative to wallpaper
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Ah, Gary North. Who was one of the swivel-eyed Christofascist loons who made the current shitfest possible, along with the similarly swivel-eyed Rousas John Rushdoony, whose slimy tome The Institutes of Biblical Law was a hyper-Calvinist orgy of death cultism and theocratic masturbation fantasising.
To give you an idea how much of a psychotic basket case Rushdoony was, he supported the re-institution of the slave trade, corporal punishment for children, burning people at the stake and public executions. Yes, he was outright Dark Age in mindset, a weird throwback to the 10th century.
North was similarly psychotic, who effectively claimed that exterminating gay people constituted some sort of perverse âholy missionâ, approved of death by stoning, and sought openly to eliminate the rights of those outside his narrow Christofascist pale.
These mutants were allowed to fester and spread their disease, until it became an epidemic.
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Yes, a lot of the current fuckery can be traced to North and Rushdoony. And it was during Rushdoonyâs time that Barry Goldwater uttered this prescient statement (although I think he was proximally addressing the likes of James Dobson, about 1980):
"Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and theyâre sure trying to do so, itâs going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they canât and wonât compromise. I know, Iâve tried to deal with them.â
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All government issued Fiat currency is backed by the faith and trust the holders have in the issuer. Nothing besides that backs the dollar.
The proverbial rock and a hard placeâŠGod or the GovernmentâŠ
Well at least money exists and actually buys things. So everyone mutually agreeing what value it has (or does not have) is way more meaningful that a bunch of people agreeing on the value of a god fantasy â particularly when gods invariably âinterveneâ in ways indistinguishable from random happenstance.