Jasper County Democrat, Volume 11, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 May 1908 — ASSET CURRENCY. [ARTICLE]

ASSET CURRENCY.

The Record-Herald in a Washington dispatch assumes that asset currency is a thing of the near future, that is, a currency based on the assets of the National Banks and nothing else. Of course these assets is all there is behind the banks deposits, and in fact is practically all there is behind all the obligations of the bank. And now the republicans propose to allow these same banks to re-pledge these assets, they alone forming a basis for an emergency currency—a panic currency, if you please. If we do not need “honest dollars” during republican panics, we can get along without them between times. The bankers are in favor of this measure, it is reported, because it will make available a large supply of loan money, at a time when of all times they need available funds most, funds made out of wind, costing nothing but the printers’ bill and a small annual tax. Shades of Mark Hanna! What now comes of the unearthly howls set up in 1896, by the republicans, against fiat, 16 to 1, “dishonest dollars?” Was the millions, poured into the hands of Mark Hanna and George B. Cortelyou by the Trusts, Captains of Industry, railroads, insurance companies, banks and “business men” generally to save the country In the Bound money campaigns of 1896, 1900 and 1904—t0 save it from a free silver craze, the 16 to 1 fiat money craze—spent in vain? God forbid. Since 1863 there has been hundreds of millions of dollars of flat money in circulation, and there are now 1346,000,000 of these fiat dollars remaining in circulation. This money is based on the credit of the entire people, and if an emergency currency is to be issued, the entire property of the people is a safer basis against which to issue money than the property of the National Banks, or all other banks put together, for that matter. Banks should be put in a position

where they will haves to keep out of politics and be restricted to legitimate banking business. In the past they have had entirely too much influence in dictating financial legislation, and it to now time for them to step aside—and if they will not do so voluntarily, compel them to—-and let the people have a chance to dictate a little. It is not possible for them to do worse than has been done, and they may do a great deal better.