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"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it." ~~Abraham Lincoln
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Is a non-POM form of money Constitutional?
In regard to the U.S. Constitution, in the Article 1, Section 8 - the Powers
of Congress it States:
"Congress shall have Power… To coin Money,…"
Later in Section 10 of Article 1 it States:
"No State shall… coin money,…"
Therefore, the Constitution clearly assigns the power to determine the nature
of the nation's money to Congress and not the individual States.
Point two is that the framers of the U.S. Constitution never imagined (so
far as we know) that there could be a money which had no physical representation
and which was non-transferable. Therefore they could not have attempted to
ban such a money. They could not have had the intent to make such a money impossible
for the United States.
The third point is that the Constitution speaks of "To coin Money" and
of "foreign Coin" and otherwise refers to specie or monetary coins.
It does not refer to paper money nor to money in computer accounts. Yet Congress of these United States every year passes laws that regulate and allocate
and disperse these non-coin forms of our current physical object money. Therefore,
it is clear that Congress does have the authority to create a money that is
not in the form of coins.
The fourth point is that many years ago Congress created money that was not
backed by any metal, neither gold nor silver. The money we use today is a "fiat" money,
money that is money just because Congress says it is money. Therefore,
the fact that the proposed money does not represent a physical object cannot
be
a valid objection since our current money does not really represent a physical
object either.
The fifth point is that these powers "to coin Money" do not have
to be exercised. There is no provision that Congress must coin money.
The conclusion is that the new form of money is quite Constitutional and in
no way violates the spirit or the letter of the Constitution.
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"We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution." ~~Abraham Lincoln
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