Free Republic

The federal government's attempt to stop a group of gold-standard activists from minting an alternative to the greenback is about to face its first legal test. A dozen people around the country filed suit in U.S. District Court in Idaho this week demanding the return of all the copper, silver, gold, and platinum coins — more than seven tons of metal in all — that the FBI and Secret Service seized in November during raids of a mint in Idaho and a strip mall storefront in Indiana. The Justice Department had decided that the coins, many of which bear the...

The U.S. is the new place to go for low-cost manufacturing. As unlikely as it might seem, companies overseas are starting to get that image as they begin sending work to U.S. job shops. “Over the last six months, activity from the U.K. to the U.S. has picked up dramatically. Before that, it was insignificant,” says Mitch Free, owner of Mfg.com, a Web site for sourcing and selling manufacturing services. “We also see work coming back from Canada because the Canadian dollar now has a 28% disadvantage against the U.S. dollar. Canadian manufacturers who get contracts from the U.S. tell...

Only a month ago the dollar slumped to an all-time low against the euro. And it's just five weeks since the greenback hit a 12-year low against the yen. But now, the US currency has started to strengthen - with the markets talking about a "turning point". On Wednesday, the dollar reached a six-week high against the European single currency, closing in on $1.53 - an improvement of more than 5 cents. And on the same day, the greenback climbed to a 10-week peak against the pound. But does the dollar remain in danger? Could "the rope slip" and the...

Brazil has come a long way, baby! Back in the 1980s, it defaulting on its debt and the currency, the real, was a laughingstock. Even in the 1990s, Brazil was still so strapped with debt that no one really considered a bond, stock or currency investment there anything but pure speculation. Roll forward to today and Brazil looks very different. For starters, Warren Buffett owns this currency. When the conservative, long term holder from Omaha owns a currency, you know he sees a great future for a very long time. After all, as he says, he's not a trader and...

The relatively slow currency growth over the last few years appears to be due in part to the recent relative economic and political stability in some nations that previously had been heavy users of U.S. currency...

When the Federal Reserve cuts interest rates for a seventh consecutive time this Wednesday, it will begin to wind down a pernicious campaign that has flooded the market with cheap dollars since last summer. At the same time, the whoosh of air from Europe's deflating credit bubble puts new pressure on the European Central Bank to begin cutting borrowing costs in order to goose growth. The strategy shifts by central banks will drive a greenback comeback against the overpriced euro, turning back the 15% slide that since August has lifted the euro -- to a record $1.60 last week --...

Jean-Claude Juncker, the EU's 'Mr Euro', has given the clearest warning to date that the world authorities may take action to halt the collapse of the dollar and undercut commodity speculation by hedge funds. Momentum traders have blithely ignored last week's accord by the G7 powers, which described "sharp fluctuations in major currencies" as a threat to economic and financial stability. The euro has surged to fresh records this week, touching $1.5982 against the dollar and £0.8098 against sterling yesterday. "I don't have the impression that financial markets and other actors have correctly and entirely understood the message of the...

Soros: euro can't replace dollar Thursday April 17, 12:28 pm ET By Aoife White, AP Business Writer George Soros: Euro cannot replace dollar as world's reserve currency BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- The euro cannot replace the U.S. dollar as the world's anchor currency, billionaire financier George Soros said Thursday, warning that investors are instead fleeing currencies to put their money into real assets. "I don't think that the euro can replace the dollar and a system with two major reserve currencies? Not a stable system," he told a Brussels event organized by the Centre for European Policy Studies think tank....

Thieves are ransacking house after house in search of copper they can sell to scrap dealers for as much as $20,000 a month. The gang descended on the house on Penn Avenue like carrion, ripping open wall board and gutting it of copper. They severed the pipes connected to the gas furnace and water heater, then hit the kitchen sink. Piles of lath lay at the foot of the stairs, the wall torn open to expose the upstairs bathroom. By the time officer Richard Jackson knocked down the door, the gang was gone -- along with most of the home's...

HAVANA (AP) - President Raul Castro has lifted restrictions on consumer goods and hotel stays, but most Cubans get paid in virtually worthless pesos, which can't buy basic items like toilet paper, let alone a DVD player or poolside mojito cocktails at the Hotel Capri. Nearly everything Cubans want or need must be bought with a separate currency created for tourists and foreigners. So, until the regular peso increases in value, Castro's moves will be bittersweet gestures. The new leader's solution, now the talk of the island: merge the two currencies. But this turns out to be much easier said...

by Richard Lawrence Poe Wednesday, April 2, 2008 ArchivesPermanent Link HAVE YOU seen the new five-dollar bill? It looks like someone spilled grape juice on it. A violet stain obscures Abraham Lincoln's face. On the back, an oversized numeral five appears in purple. Enough is enough. We must stop the desecration of our currency. The U.S. Treasury's Bureau of Engraving and Printing claims it is making our banknotes "safer, smarter and more secure". They say the violet stain on Lincoln's face adds "complexity", rendering counterfeiting more difficult. The big purple five on the back supposedly helps vision-impaired people count...

The dollar is taking a pounding. With the US sinking deeper into recession, the greenback recently hit an all-time low against the euro and a 12-year low against the yen. Last week, America's currency fell again - dropping more than 2 per cent in euro terms, to $1.5779. On a trade-weighted basis, the dollar is now south of its late-70s low point and close to its historic nadir of the mid-1990s. The markets sense the US Federal Reserve, having already slashed interest rates by 300 basis points to 2.25 per cent since the credit crunch erupted last summer, will soon...

How is Money Created? By Mike Hewitt The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago used to publish a pamphlet entitled Modern Money Mechanics, which explains M1, M2, and M3. It is a truly fascinating read. That pamphlet is no longer in print, and the Chicago Fed has no plans to re-issue it. However, electronic copies are available (see link).In it, the process by which the Fed creates money "out of thin air" is detailed. Consider the opening paragraph:"Money is such a routine part of everyday living that its existence and acceptance ordinarily are taken for granted. A user may sense...

Time to listen to Texas Congressman Ron Paul, the lone voice of reason in Congress today who’s got to feel like he’s shouting into a field of cotton with his repeated warnings about the dangers of a collapsing dollar, while the administration goes AWOL on the problem. The dollar just hit a record intraday low against the euro on reports that consumer confidence levels have dropped to levels not seen since the post-Watergate era. It is down 7% year to date against the Chinese renminbi, it’s weaker than the Japanese yen and the Canadian loonie. The joke is the greenback...

March 26, 2008 The FBI is now involved in the theft of a car after it was found in Los Lunas with an explosive device and Iraqi currency inside.FBI agents say that they have ruled out terrorism. The car was reported stolen last week. After the theft, the car’s owner was fueling his motorcycle when he spotted his stolen car. “While he was refueling his motorcycle, low and behold, the vehicle that he had reported stolen that belongs to him happened to pull into the gas station area also,” said Los Lunas Police Captain Charles Nuanes. The car’s owner pulled...

Americans are living beyond their means and Asia is currently financing that. But eventually the Asians/Europeans will stop financing the USA and then the bubble will burst. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4n3g5lUgkWk&NR=1

The U.S. dollar's value is dropping so fast against the euro that small currency outlets in Amsterdam are turning away tourists seeking to sell their dollars for local money while on vacation in the Netherlands. "Our dollar is worth maybe zero over here," said Mary Kelly, an American tourist from Indianapolis, Indiana, in front of the Anne Frank house. "It's hard to find a place to exchange. We have to go downtown, to the central station or post office."

Danes have always loved the US as a travel destination. But with the dollar at its lowest point in 30 years, residents are now gobbling up the many discount offers being pitched by the nation's travel companies. Several travel bureaus are reporting increases of up to 140 percent on sales of trips to the states, where Danes can feel like wealthy plantation barons. In the past two years, the dollar has fallen from a value of 6.4 kroner to a shocking 4.8 kroner today - its lowest point since 1977. Weekend trips to New York City have been a hot...

BRUSSELS: Worried Euro Zone policy makers yesterday pressured Washington to do more to limit the dollar's slide after it hit its lowest ever value against Europe's single currency. While finance ministers raised the tone of their complaints, saying exchange rates were no longer in line with economic reality, there was no mention - implicit or explicit - of any direct central bank intervention to influence currency markets. Belgium's representative at the European Central Bank Guy Quaden said: "Things are becoming exaggerated." "It's up to the relevant authorities to assume their responsibilities and particularly for US authorities, who repeat that they...

Shown as "Breaking News" nothing follows.

Oil trading is now nearly always denominated in dollars, the de facto common currency of the petroleum business. When Kuwait sells oil under a futures contract to India, for example, the price is set in dollars. Similarly, Russia's large trade with Western Europe and the former Soviet states in crude oil and natural gas is conducted in dollar-denominated contracts. ... As a result, companies and countries that buy petroleum products are encouraged to hold dollar reserves to pay for their supplies, coincidentally helping the American economy support its trade deficit. Russia would like to change this practice, at least among...

The People's Republic of China, long lauded by America's enemies as the world's next economic power, will be the country that will force the creation of the `North American Union' (NAU). Kofi Annan's former pointman, Canadian Maurice Strong, has been boasting from Chinese soil that China soon would be replacing America as economic king, using the jingo that's the official language at Turtle Bay. The billions of dollars China has invested in the flagging American economy will be worthless. They will have to negotiate the exchange rate to the new amero. This will then force the creation of the North...

Brown banishes 300-year-old tradition by removing Britannia from our 50p coinBy SIMON McGEE and GLEN OWEN - More by this author » Last updated at 21:14pm on 26th January 2008  Gordon Brown's campaign to promote British values was exposed as a sham last night after it was revealed he personally approved a decision to remove Britannia from the 50p coin.   The patriotic symbol - based on a Roman goddess - will no longer be on any British coin for the first time in more than 300 years, as part of a redesign by the Royal Mint. An overhaul of...

Dollar's golden era is ending, warns Soros By Edmund Conway in Davos Last Updated: 8:10pm GMT 23/01/2008 The billionaire investor famous for "breaking" the Bank of England in the 1990s has warned that Britain is heading for a recession. George Soros said that a recession in both the United States and Britain "will be very difficult to avoid". He was speaking on the fringes of the World Economic Forum summit in Davos, Switzerland, where many of the world's top politicians and businessmen are meeting. The billionaire investor expects the dollar to be usurped as the top currency The warning is...

“A global economy requires a global currency.” — Paul Volcker, former Chair of the US Federal Reserve. “I fully support a single global currency.” Flabbergasted, I waiting for an explanation. “That way farmers in Africa get the same pay as farmers in North America, and workers in Asia would receive the same as their counterparts in Europe and elsewhere.” Hmmm…an interesting perspective. I asked the gentleman sitting across the lunch table; “Have you ever seriously studied banking or the historical role of money?” His response to the negative didn’t surprise me; after all, wage equality and production values are not...

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- Venezuela launched a new currency with the new year, lopping off three zeros from denominations in a bid to simplify finances and boost confidence in a money that has been losing value due to high inflation. ... Some Venezuelan critics, meanwhile, have dubbed the new currency the "weak bolivar," noting its predecessor, the bolivar, has seen its purchasing power suffer in an economy where inflation ran roughly 20 percent in 2007 - the highest in Latin America.

The euro has fast gained ground against the dollar in international official foreign exchange reserves in recent months, according to official statistics highlighting the nine-year-old currency’s growing global importance. Reflecting its increasing strength on foreign exchange markets, the euro’s share of known foreign exchange holdings rose to 26.4 per cent in the third quarter of this year, the International Monetary Fund reported late on Friday. That was up from 25.5 per cent in the previous three months and from 24.4 per cent in the third quarter of 2006. The dollar’s share of known official foreign reserves, calculated in dollar terms,...

Euro reaches field that is for ever England The street names commemorate bygone battles fought by British troops: Agincourt Lane, Tobruk Lane, Waterloo Road and Crimea Road. A Union Jack flutters outside the police station and there are roadside bins for pooper-scooped dog droppings – an innovation alien to the rest of Cyprus. Welcome to Dhekelia, a British sovereign military base that strives to be a corner of a foreign field that is forever England. Only the turquoise Mediterranean lapping at Dhekelia’s shore, the blue sky and palm trees prevent this colonial footprint from being a mirror image of Aldershot....

Sterling made the headlines earlier this year by breaking though the $2 mark, but the currency is unlikely to reach such heady levels again in 2008 as the UK economy weakens, a clutch of the City's biggest banks now predicts. The sell-off, which started in foreign-exchange dealing floors last week, saw the pound end at $1.9807 and €1.4411 in a shortened trading day in London on Christmas Eve. According to HSBC the sell-off is just beginning and will see the pound slump to $1.80 by the end of next year. In one of the more bearish outlooks circulating around the...

The plunge in the dollar has turned normally calm voices strident and fearful. A weak currency, they say, spells catastrophe for the U.S. economy. But like much conventional wisdom, this isn't true. Nor is it true that the dollar, to use one favorite recent word, has "collapsed." You wouldn't know it, however, from recent headlines. This week's Economist magazine, known for its cool-headed discussion of economic events, has this on its cover: "The Panic About the Dollar." Others see in the dollar's slump a metaphor for America's future — one of decline and waning influence in the world. To be...

SINCE HE BEGAN his presidential campaign, Republican candidate Mitt Romney has held more than 125 "Ask Mitt Anything" town hall forums, and the people who have shown up for them have done their best to make the events live up to their name. There have been questions about medical marijuana, about abolishing the income tax, about Romney's Mormonism and his potential vice president. Of course, certain topics come up more than others. One is healthcare. Another is Iraq. A third is the North American Union. The North American Union is a supranational organization, modeled on the European Union, that will...

The die is now cast. As the euro brushes $1.50 against the dollar, it is already too late to stop the eurozone hurtling into a full-fledged economic and political crisis. We now have to start asking whether the EU itself will survive in its current form. It takes eighteen months or so for the full effects of currency changes to feed through, so the damage will snowball late next year and beyond into 2009. Although "damage" is a relative term. As Airbus chief Thomas Enders warned in a speech to the Hamburg workers last night, Europe's champion plane-maker - the...

Americans paused at Thanksgiving yesterday for the traditional annual audit of their blessings. If they'd been listening at all closely to the morose lucubrations of their opinion leaders, however, it would have been pretty slim pickings. The pundits have finally run out of bad news to report from Iraq, where, unmolested by the morbid fascination of misery-seeking reporters, the locals actually seem to be belatedly enjoying the first fruits of their liberation. So attention has turned again, as it has tended to do from time to time these past 50 years, to the inevitable collapse of the American economy. The...

Years of ridicule end for many as loony outpaces greenback OGDENSBURG, NY – It’s a brisk November afternoon in this small town perched near the top of New York State, and Pastor William Barth is huddled behind the desk in his modest office at Ogdensburg Presbyterian Church. All four walls are plastered with pictures of Barth’s family, Thomas Kinkade prints, and a bevy of other items that speak to his decades of service as a minister. But one 24- by 36-inch spot of bare wood paneling begs an obvious question. “Yep, that’s where the ‘Canada: America’s Hat’ poster used to...

Frontal Assault on Freedom: FBI Raids Liberty Dollar Posted by BJT on Nov 15, 2007 Read this email closely. I just got it this morning. Those of you who consider the gold standard a quaint anachronism, pay extra close attention. If Ron Paul supporters, gold standard advocates and the Liberty Dollar were nothing but harmless kooks, why would the FBI raid their offices when no crime was ever committed? This is a currency competing with the USD, yes, but they never, but never make the claim that it is legal tender or anything other than what it is: private currency....

Capital flows have become globalization's Achilles heel. Over the past 25 years, devastating currency crises have hit countries across Latin America and Asia, as well as countries just beyond the borders of Western Europe -- most notably Russia and Turkey. The economics profession has failed to offer anything resembling a coherent and compelling response to currency crises. International Monetary Fund (IMF) analysts have, over the past two decades, endorsed a wide variety of national exchange-rate and monetary-policy regimes that have subsequently collapsed in failure. They have fingered numerous culprits, from loose fiscal policy and poor bank regulation to bad industrial...

SHOULD WE BE worried about the U.S. dollar falling to all-time lows vs. foreign currencies? Does it matter to investors? Yes it matters, and yes you should be worried — but not for the reasons that you may think. First, let's get all the wrong reasons out of the way. One reason you hear all the time is that the U.S. is growing slower than the rest of the world, so global investors want to move out of dollars and into the currencies of countries that are growing faster. Fine — China and some other emerging markets are growing faster....

China risks backlash on currency policy: Paulson Thu Nov 8, 6:57 PM ET Beijing's reluctance to adopt a flexible exchange-rate regime is widely considered unfair and puts China at growing risk of a protectionist trade backlash, U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson warned on Thursday. "China is increasingly seen as out of step with international norms and expectations, as evidenced by the growing number of national leaders and multilateral organizations calling for currency appreciation," Paulson said in prepared remarks for delivery to the China Institute in New York. A copy of Paulson's remarks was provided in advance. Paulson, who will travel...

French president warns US it cannot allow currency to collapse as Europe suffers from euro's rise. The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has warned the United States Congress that the US risks triggering "economic war" if it attempts to devalue its way out of trouble by allowing a relentless slide in the dollar. The stunning remarks came as the greenback plunged to a record low of $1.4731 against the euro, causing a chorus of angry protests from industrial leaders in France and Italy. The dollar breached $2.10 against sterling for the first time since the early Thatcher years in 1981. On...

The euro, worth 83 cents in the early George W. Bush years, is at $1.45. The British pound is back up over $2, the highest level since the Carter era. The Canadian dollar, which used to be worth 65 cents, is worth more than the U.S. dollar for the first time in half a century. Oil is over $90 a barrel. Gold, down to $260 an ounce not so long ago, has hit $800. Have gold, silver, oil, the euro, the pound and the Canadian dollar all suddenly soared in value in just a few years? Nope. The dollar has...

Not so fast. That was the message the US Federal Reserve sent financial markets with its interest-rate decision yesterday. As expected, the US central bank cut its key Fed Funds target rate, the overnight rate at which banks lend to one another, by a quarter of a percentage point, to 4.5 per cent. That followed the Fed’s surprisingly aggressive half-point reduction in September. The central bank’s decision then, and the tone of its accompanying statement, seemed to signal to markets that the Fed would cut long and deep over the next few months to avert a serious economic crisis. Since...

ZIMBABWE's currency has fallen to record levels, with one million Zimbabwean dollars buying a single US dollar ($1.12) and inflation reaching 8000 per cent. The data was announced as people in the capital, Harare, struggled to cope without electricity for the third day. "We closed our business today (Saturday)," said a woman who helps to run a major petrol supplier. "We just can't operate like this." The National Blood Transfusion Service said it had been unable to test blood since Tuesday. At independence in 1980, the Zimbabwean dollar held parity with the US dollar but has suffered from the economic...

<p>Could the US dollar be destined to join the D-Mark and the franc in the graveyard of defunct national currencies? Vicente Fox, former Mexican president, told CNN this week that he had talked to US president George W. Bush about the possibility of a regional currency for the Americas.</p>

In an interview last night on CNN's "Larry King Live," the former president of Mexico, Vicente Fox, confirmed the existence of a government plan to create the amero as a new regional currency to replace the U.S. dollar, the Canadian dollar and the Mexican Peso. It possibly was the first time a leader of Mexico, Canada or the U.S. openly confirmed a plan to create a regional currency. Fox explained the current regional trade agreement is intended to evolve into other previously hidden aspects of integration.

BankIntroductions.com, a Canadian company that specializes in global banking strategies and currency consulting, is advising clients that the amero may be the currency of North America within the next 10 years. "The amero would compete against other regional currency blocks," BankIntroductions.com says. "At present, with the Canadian dollar approaching par, more talk for an amero currency unit will become popular in Canada."

...In April, daily turnover in currency markets rose to $3.2 trillion, the bank said yesterday. That's more in value than the annual economic output of Germany or China, changing hands in currency markets every day around the world. It's also up 71% from the BIS's last survey in 2004, the largest jump in volume since the institution began conducting its benchmark survey in 1989. The currency market is "the world's biggest fruit and vegetable stall," says Jim O'Neill, global head of economic research at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. "There are so many participants in it, and it adjusts very quickly...

September 16, 2007 Japanese Housewives Sweat in Secret as Markets Reel By MARTIN FACKLER TOKYO, Sept. 15 — Since the credit crisis started shaking the world financial markets this summer, many professional traders have taken big losses. Another, less likely group of investors has, too: middle-class Japanese homemakers who moonlight as amateur currency speculators. Ms. Itoh is one of them. Ms. Itoh, a homemaker in the central city of Nagoya, did not want her full name used because her husband still does not know. After cleaning the dinner dishes, she would spend her evenings buying and selling British pounds and...

I knew it. This headline draws attention these days. As the world wakes up to the fact that all currencies are created out of thin air by a simple entry into the electronic ledgers of the world's central banks investors begin to look for investments whose safety does not depend on an agency rating. This chart from the World Gold Council may help your investment decisions. GRAPH: This chart is a very graphic description what happens once nations abolish the gold standard in favor of unbacked fiat currencies. Remember: No fiat currency has existed longer than a human's lifespan and...

NEW YORK (AP) -- The dollar plunged to its lowest point ever against the euro Wednesday amid speculation that the Federal Reserve will soon cut interest rates and on a warning from the U.S. treasury secretary that turbulence in financial markets may linger. The 13-nation euro rose as high as $1.3914 in New York trading -- topping its previous record of $1.3852 reached July 24. It later fell back to $1.3908, still up from $1.3832 in New York late Tuesday. The euro surged after Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, speaking to officials from some of the biggest financial firms in the...

Iran considers knocking three zeros off currency Sep 11, 2007 TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran is examining a proposal to knock three zeros off its national currency to increase economic confidence and reduce the number of banknotes, the central bank governor said on Tuesday. However new central bank chief Tahmasb Mazaheri said the suggested revaluation would need to be carefully studied before it could be implemented. "This is at the suggestion phase," Mazaheri said, according to the IRNA news agency. "In carrying out the preliminary studies we have to accurately evaluate the uses of this work and necessary measures taken for...