Posted on 11/16/2007 7:30:20 PM PST by traviskicks
They’ve been doing it for nearly ten years, and only after they sued the Feds did they get raided. Go figure.
This smells like a sleazy divorce attorney pressure play.
Or a Disney Dollar, or a Bay City Downtown Dollar, or a wooden dollar:
... or, gee, maybe, a "Liberty Dollar" or a "Ron Paul Dollar."
I don't like it either, I'm a constitutional originalist, but I try to choose my battles. The Fed may be the biggest counterfeiting ring in history bar none, but putting "TWENTY DOLLARS" and "$20" and "USA" on a coin was poking the govt in the eye.
Besides being stupid for that reason, it's also stupid because it obviates the advantage of a silver coin by tying it to a falling US dollar/federal reserve note. Why put $20 on a coin, that next year might be worth $30 or $50 FRN? In an era of debased fiat paper money, better to call a coin what it is that is immutable: a set weight of silver or gold. One ounce of silver will always be one ounce of silver, but the US$/FRN might well be the next Weimar currency.
Look, I’m on your side, but a wise man chooses his battles, and doesn’t stick Uncle Sam in the eye when it’s stupid and pointless, as I described in the post above.
NEW YORK, June 12 (Reuters) - Morgan Stanley (MS.N: Quote, Profile, Research) plans to settle a class-action lawsuit, brought by clients over the purchase and storage of precious metals, in a deal worth $4.4 million, according to a court filing.
The proposed settlement, which still needs to be approved by the federal court in Manhattan, includes a cash component of $1.5 million and economic and remedial benefits valued at about $2.9 million, according to the filing on Monday.
The lawsuit, filed in August 2005, alleged that Morgan Stanley had told clients it was selling them precious metals that they would own in full and that the company would store.
But Morgan Stanley was actually making either no investment specifically on behalf of those clients or making an entirely different investment of lesser value and security, according to the complaint.
Morgan Stanley was not immediately available for comment. But it has argued that there were no violations of law and no default or failure to perform or deliver precious metals, according to the filing.
The suit was filed by Selwyn Silberblatt, on behalf of himself and others, who bought precious metals -- gold, silver, platinum and palladium in bullion bar or coins -- from Morgan Stanley DW Inc. and its predecessors and paid fees for their storage, according to the filing.
The suit covers investors who did so between Feb. 19, 1986, through Jan. 10, 2007.
Silberblatt, a resident of Maine at the time of the complaint, bought silver bars from Morgan Stanley during the period.
There is a word for anybody who “invests” in precious metals that some other party promises to store for them:
SUCKER.
The advantage of putting a suggested equivalence rate on the round is that it makes it simple to use in day-to-day exchanges. You don't have to reprogram your multi-currency cash registers (which 99.9% of American businesses don't even have) as the price of silver fluctuates, you just tally up the silver with the rest of your cash when you close out the till.
It also makes it simple to give out as change to willing customers, most of whom are products of the American public schools and can't calculate breaking a five in their heads, let alone the spot price of silver plus some percentage. "Do you want this $10 bill or this half-ounce of silver as your change?"
Unless, you desire to become a legal martyr for the cause.
Hold onto your junk silver, your rounds, your gold coins, their day will come, after the dollar goes the way of the French Assignat and the Weimar Republic Mark.
Holy smack - $1.5 million in cash settlement plus $2.9 in miscellaneous crap for a 20-year fraud perpetrated by a $54.3 billion company?
$1.5 million for MS is a rounding error. Unbelieveable.
Not even a knuckle rap. How can they honestly punish a part of the plunge protection team, part of the unholy triad (with interchangeable leaders) of the major investment banks, the Fed, adn the US Treasury?
It was obviously efficacious, since they went from a three thousand warehoused ounces of silver in 1998 to 158,000 ounces of warehoused silver in July 2007, and hundreds of thousands more ounces of gold and silver minted and in the hands of people across the nation talking about the problems of fiat currency and the value of intrinsic value.
And now to jail, and they made nary a ripple on the fiat regime.
I’ll just hold my PMs until the fiat dollar collapses on its own.
http://www.classbrain.com/artteenst/publish/article_131.shtml
Sec. 9. And be it further enacted, That there shall be from time to time struck and coined at the said mint, coins of gold, silver, and copper, of the following denominations, values and descriptions, viz. Eagles--each to be of the value of ten dollars or units, and to contain two hundred and forty-seven grains and four eighths of a grain of pure, or two hundred and seventy grains of standard gold. Half Eagles--each to be of the value of five dollars, and to contain one hundred and twenty-three grains and six eighths of a grain of pure, or one hundred and thirty-five grains of standard gold. Quarter Eagles--each to be of the value of two dollars and a half dollar, and to contain sixty-one grains and seven eighths of a grain of pure, or sixty-seven grains and four eighths of a grain of standard gold. Dollars or Units--each to be of the value of a Spanish milled dollar as the same is now current, and to contain three hundred and seventy-one grains and four sixteenth parts of a grain of pure, or four hundred and sixteen grains of standard silver.
I have a friend who owns a shop in a down south. She has told me stories of people who occasionally come in and try to spend private currency, only to be told that the shop doesn’t take it. She says it has happened a few times a year some years. Not really very often, but often enough that they’ve had to train their summer employees not to take it.
She said that people can get quite argumentative and nasty about them not taking it and that sometimes they simply won’t leave after being told that they’ll have to spend US dollars or use a credit card and want to argue about why they won’t take it.
I have no idea why the FBI is interested in this currency or the company, but can tell you that some merchants out there have very bad feelings about it.
Ripples can take many forms. Hundreds of thousands of people across the country and around the world have learned from NORFED and Liberty Dollars what the term “fiat currency” really means and how it affects their lives and the lives of their families.
You can find jerks everywhere, even among private currency advocates.
Now, next year, if the price of silver soars beyond $20FRN/ounce, then the smart merchant will grab all of these coins at $20 they can get their hands on.
The point being, the value of any one ounce silver coin, is ONE OUNCE OF SILVER, at whatever rate silver is trading at in $FRNs on that day.
I hope that’s so, we all wish for that.
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