By Franklin Sanders
I read this bill establishing a Texas state precious metals depository a few nights ago and it has everything. I talked to a person involved and learned this bill was also entered two years ago. They’ve learned from their mistakes.
Here’s what I mean by “Everything”:
1. No talk of doom, gloom, and end of the world. Rather, a plan for a step forward into the financial system of the future. Building the future, not complaining about the present. Forget all that, sidestep it and build the future.
2. A guard against confiscation. Oh, you think, that won’t do any good. Think again: it’s Texas. If anybody would stand up to the Feds, it’s Texas.
3. Payment Provision. Account to account transfers. Yes, you can pay gold, silver, platinum, palladium or rhodium into another account holder’s account. Electronically, no doubt.
4. Check writing. Yes, you can write a check against your account to pay metals to the bearer, or, I believe, to pay a yankee dollar equivalent.
5. A statewide network of depository agents. Spread out across the countryside like Western Union. In every dusty hamlet.
6. NO hypothecation. No derivatives, no futures, no delayed delivery, none of that hocus-pocus that New York & London feed off of. Hard metal in hand.
7. Official exchange rates. Requires the comptroller to publish official exchange rates for precious metals transaction into yankee dollars and other currencies, discoverable at all times to all participants.
8. In sum, this establishes a state-wide gold and silver bank for payments and storage.
I’m sure practice will show that something is forgotten, but this is the very best I’ve seen, far better than those pitty-pat Utah-type solutions that say silver and gold coin are legal tender when the constitution and US statute already provide that.
Since at least 1991 I have firmly believed that whenever an electronic payments system could be established using silver & gold, it could supplant fiat currencies worldwide within two years at most, less time given a crisis. Everywhere it has been established, the US government has fought it tooth and nail nationally & internationally, and sought to drag it down by criminal prosecutions and regulations.
Now Texas steps forward to make it stick. And if Texas has the nerve to carry though, it will make Texas a center of world finance to rival New York and London, better than Switzerland because it contains 27,695,284 Texans and all but two of ‘em are armed & serious.
On 26 May the bill passed the senate by a 29-2 vote. It previously passed the House by a vote of 140 – 1. Senate Committee added amendments and recommended it with a 7-0 (2 absent) vote, so it must go back to the house for concurrence. Bill’s introducer Rep Giovanni Capriglione says the amendments are minor and he will occur.
Follow the bill’s progress at http://www.legis.state.tx.us/BillLookup/BillStages.aspx?LegSess=84R&Bill=HB483
Related Reading:
Europe Was First, Now a US State Wants Control Over Its Gold