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Comparing the dollar to a kilogram is a silly analogy since the value of any currency never remains the same since the economy it is used in constantly changes. Arbitrary valuations such as those selected at monetary conferences among monetary authorities represent some compromise arrived at at a particular moment in history. These never reflect economic realities but merely political power. Hence, at the end of WWII the fixed exchange rates were determined by the fact that the US was supreme politically throughout the Western World.

A fixed exchange rate might be realistic and workable if the world's economy was fixed and never changed but under capitalism it is dynamic, unpredictable and subject to weather, natural catastrophes and governmental idiocy on a massive scale. There is no way a political decision on exchange rates could hold up over the long term much less the short. Who would you trust more to arrive at a correct rate or system of rates? The international monetary markets or some government bureaucrats?

Fiat money ALWAYS leads to poverty for the masses, and enrichment for elite power brokers and market manipulators!
The founding Fathers knew this, as did all honest men of the time.
Corrupted Congress, in 1916 created the private bank knows as The Federal reserve, and forfeited its obligation to coin and regulate the value of money thereof!
Yes treason and corruption go way back my fellow citizens!
Now we shall pay the price by being stomped back to the status of a third world country of hopelessly incompetent and unprepared serfs!

“What was special about Susette Kelo is that her property was taken for private use. ....That is a bedrock principle of American constitutionalism. “

Bedrock, schmedrock. The Supreme Court had only to allow the English language to float. “Private Use” floated to “Public Use”, and before you could say “Justice Kennedy”, we had “Public Purpose”. At any given time, The Constitution and rule of law in general only have as much integrity as our culture.

For all those who think that the source of our current economic problems is the “paper” fiat money dollar, question: we used the same dollar in the 1990’s and had prosperity, so how is it that the fiat money worked great then ?

Oh, please just say “default answer” if your answer includes anything like “things go in cycles”, or if you think the answer is cyclical in any way.

You could give a quick response, “response a” if you want to indicate that the 1990 success had anything to do with the Federal reserve, or some evil cabal (even though it seems contradictory to answer that an evil cabal caused a booming decade perhaps just to lull the entire world population into a false sense of security or something, I’m sure some may want to use “response a”).

Thanks for participating !

(Article)

.....at the time he was assigned to the District of Columbia Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals, the salary of a federal appeals judge—$83,200—was worth 258 ounces of gold. Since then, the value of the pay of a judge of one of the Appeals circuits—$184,500—has been diminished to 139 ounces of gold.

The low figure represents a gold price of $322/oz which was under active suppression by the Federal Reserve, the EU central bank, the Bank of England, Bank of Japan, and Swiss, Australian, and other central banks. That figure does not represent a realistic value for gold in secular terms. Likewise, the higher quote is north of $1300/oz., which may represent an overrunning or overbid of the realistic value of gold, speculative excess, depreciation of the dollar by the Fed, or a combination of all three. In other words, what is fair compensation for a federal judge, expressed in terms of gold? The writer bears the undischarged burden of saying what that figure ought to be, or of arguing that capriciousness in federal pay is a virtue, as between a judge confirmed on Monday, and another confirmed just before Friday's closing bell.

........while I believe the justices have been wronged by Congress, I hope they lose on the question of whether a suspension in the automatic pay adjustment is unconstitutional. That should get them angry enough to come back and look legal tender in the face.

Now justice relies on judges becoming passionate partisans in a case? This guy has been hanging around the ACLU too long.

They could force Congress to pay them in the gold or silver equivalent of a federal judge’s salary at the time they were appointed to the bench. It would move judges closer to the kinds of salaries the lawyers before them are receiving.

If the pay of private attorneys is the standard, then the writer should explain why salaries bloated by generations of barratry and contingency fees ranging up to 40% of recoveries should be the standard of comparison for federal judicial salaries. Likewise, the author might explain why the low end of the attorneys' compensation range -- zero, for starving lawyers -- shouldn't be averaged in as well.