Better Money™

Wang Wei-shao redux?

Sometime in 2001, in the course of working out the logic for a Global Clearing House1, I came across a 1999 paper by Benjamin Friedman, The Future of Monetary Policy: The Central Bank as an Army with only a Signal Corps? that made a lasting impression on me. The exploration... Read more →

Collective Wisdom and the Gordian Knot

This is a rewrite and update of my e-gold blog post of 12/10/2007, "Set It and Forget It - Harnessing Collective Wisdom to Achieve Monetary Stability". Vera Smith, in her landmark 1936 essay "The Rationale of Central Banking", concluded: "How to discover a banking system which will not be the... Read more →

The role of Currency Exchange in Better Money, part 4 - Primary Dealers

In this concluding post of my 4 part introduction to Currency exchange in the Better Money System, I'll examine the Role of Primary Dealers. This will expand on my previous reference to Primary Dealers in the Core of Better Money, in which I also outlined the transaction combinations that comprise... Read more →

The Role of Currency exchange in Better Money, part 3 - Financial Institutions

Beginning in 2000, I and the other e-gold founders launched and then fostered a (second) new global industry – of independent businesses competing to provide Currency exchange services between privately issued alternative Currencies and conventional (government-issued) brands of money. A dramatic learning curve ensued. It was a textbook example of... Read more →

The role of Currency exchange in Better Money, part 2 - The business of Currency exchange

As I described in my introduction to this series, a grasp of the principles of Currency exchange is crucial for understanding many of the subtleties of Better Money. In this post I'll describe basic principles and provide an illustration of why such principles matter with respect to how a monetary... Read more →

The role of Currency exchange in Better Money, part 1 - Introduction

When the euro was introduced in the late 1990’s, the process by which it was distributed into circulation—and the various Currencies it replaced were withdrawn from circulation—was a cost center for banks. In a sense the process was that of currency exchange; paper cash/coins as well as bank deposits denominated... Read more →

The Core of Better Money

The core of the Better Money plan is to implement a system for the Issuance, Distribution, circulation, Redemption and De-Issuance of digital Base Money that is backed by a 100% reserve of physical gold. Like e-gold®, which pioneered this concept nearly twenty years ago, this system mobilizes the value of... Read more →

Base Money and Broad Money

Base Money means Monetary Liabilities of an Issuer serving as the medium in which like-denominated Broad Money is payable. Read more →

Legal Tender (vs. specific performance)

Legal Tender declarations are typically enacted when the State has taken actions to degrade its money to the detriment of creditors. Read more →

Currency

The word "currency" has at least three conventional meanings. This often leads to confusion and imprecision. 31 CFR § 1010.100(m) explicitly limits the definition to refer to "coin and paper money". As I will use the term, a Currency means a brand of money. Read more →