I heard part of the Glenn Beck show last night and this is the part I heard. Just mind numbing amazing.

Neither the FED nor FDR had the ability in 1933 to track down and identify every purchase every individual made. Today they do. I suspect the drones soon to fill our skies will be able to "see" the gold nailed into soles of our shoes:-(

Why do you so ardently defend the actions of the Marxist socialist progressive democrats? Are you one of them pretending to be an Objectivist?

If you have overseas property or accounts, they already are. Look at the EU bank acccounts being looked at by the DHS for the IRS. (or vice versa)...

Know what's really sad?? People in the EU comment - rather a lot - that we Americans are the only people who are owned and controlled by our government - even on foreign soil, where they are not. Their example (and it's a good one) - As an American, you cannot legally purchase either Cuban Cigars or Rum overseas. While to some personal friends it makes those bottles of squirrled away Havana Club Añejo at an "undisclosed overseas holdings" a bit more precious... it makes the American who purchased them and that keeps them at their fireign property, even though it never left that foreign soil - a lawbreaker subject to federal arrest.

When I heard that - and through researching found out it was, indeed, factual, it broke my patriotic heart.

The market decides. No one authority rules. You can mint coins in any size you want and eventually, it all works out. As I noted, Honduras and the Netherlands struck small silvers worth about 1 or 2 US Cents. The US experimented with a 20-cent coin and a $4 gold (never issued) to align with the Latin Monetary Union of Europe.

Calling coins by the name of "money of account" (dollars, pounds, francs) caused no end of troubles and led directly to fiat. Note that the UK Gold Sovereign has no denomination on it. The very first US Gold coins had no denomination. The second series had it in the rims only. Later in silver, only an abbreviation such as QUAR. DOL. was added as a legend on the reverse.

The epistemology of capitalism expects that gold, silver, copper, etc., etc., will all fluctuate in price relative to each other every moment of every day, as do oil, lumber, sugar, and soy.

It is still possible to have a general or even universal "money of account." In the Middle Ages, probably 1000 different authorities struck silver and gold coins, the silver often debased. Bankers invented "pounds shillings pence" as an abstraction to deal with that.

That's why coins are normally an alloy, not a pure metal - eventually, however, it will "wear"- ask anyone who has bought a, say, $500 face bag of mercury dimes... I can pretty much guarantee you that you are *not* getting your .715 ounces of silver per face dollar on those. So yeah, eventually they wear out, but the alternative is "tokens" representing an alleged amount on deposit... I don't drive a Chrysler, but can you say Fiat? ;-)

Then again, the modern fiat coins don't fare much better - I found a '67 quarter in my change that was pretty thin and worn. At least the "real" money has some actual value to it... even if that silver 10 cewnt piece has only 9 cents worth of silver in it, it still has... 9 cents worth of silver, not .014 cents worth of base metal.