Not Worth a Continental

I am no expert on this stuff, but I have read about it from time to time. I am working from memory here, and we all know how reliable that is. Wiki has tons of information about this subject, and you guys can probably find it quicker than I can, so don't take my word for it.

The gold standard that we went off of around 1970 was only in force from about 1900, so the '49ers wouldn't have been dealing with it. Before that, there were several different economic systems operating at different times. The Federal Reserve System started sometime in the 19teens, and there was another national banking system that was tried about a century before that, which only lasted a few years. Other than that, banks operated independently and pretty much made their own rules. They printed their own paper money, called "banknotes", which were supposed to be backed by gold or silver. Occasionally a bank would overextend itself and go bankrupt, leaving anybody who held their notes high and dry.

The U.S. government printed paper money too, mostly during wartime, and also issued gold and silver coins. The first issue of paper money was during the American Revolution. The U.S. government hadn't been invented yet, so the paper money was called "continental currency". The plan was to redeem the paper after the war, I suppose with gold and silver coins. If the British had won the war, the holders of continental currency would have been shit out of luck, just like the holders of confederate currency were after the Civil War, so accepting the paper was somewhat of a gamble. Speculators traded it back and forth, based on their expectations about the outcome of the war. At one point, when it didn't look good for our side, the phrase "Not worth a continental" came into use. Continental currency was eventually redeemed at full face value. Some people made money and
some people lost money on that deal.

I think it was during the Depression that the U.S. stopped issuing gold coins. People were supposed to turn them in for paper money because they would no longer be legal tender after a certain date. Of course everybody didn't turn in their gold coins, and any of them that are still in existence today would fetch a pretty penny from a coin collector. I understand that the government still makes limited editions of gold or silver coins on occasion. They are supposed to be legal tender, but they never make it intro circulation because collectors and speculators immediately buy them up for more than face value.  

Under the gold standard, they didn't raise and lower the price of gold in a capricious manner. I don't know how often they changed the price of gold, but I don't think it was very often. They probably did it to control inflation and deflation when either of them got out of hand. The policy nowadays is to maintain an inflation rate of around three percent because they don't want it to get out of control like it did in the 70s. They don't want to see deflation happen either because deflation is harder to control than inflation.

Some of my ilk, and former ilk, are into gold, but I have never been. The gold hawkers try to sell you gold based on the premise that, when the shit hits the fan, it will be the only medium of exchange that will retain any value at all. If they really believe that, then why are they so anxious to trade their valuable gold for my soon to be worthless money? 

According to Wiki, there are people in Brazil working on developing mass production methods for terra preta as we speak, so I don't see any point in me experimenting with the stuff. I don't have time anyway, too busy cutting firewood for next winter. I pump carbon into the air for six months of the year, and the trees and other plants that grow wild on my property spend the next six months sucking it back out. Since the trees are growing faster than I can cut them down, I'm pretty sure that my lifestyle is better than carbon neutral. If they ever do pass that carbon tax, they should end up owing me money.