With last week’s second 75 basis-point rate hike, the Federal Reserve now claims it has achieved a “neutral” monetary policy stance. That would mean, in theory, that interest rates are neither stimulating nor restraining the economy.

It’s campaign season, and that means non-stop media coverage of candidate polls, quips, gaffes, tweets, emails, controversies, lies, and scandals. It all makes for a good soap opera. Unfortunately, it’s almost all irrelevant in the big picture.
The media prefer to focus on the sideshow rather than the 800-pound gorilla in the room: the looming debt crisis.

According to the most recent polling data, the American public’s approval of Congress stands at a dismal 21 percent. Almost four times as many people disapprove of the job it’s doing. That’s par for the course in recent decades. It’s the major reason the Washington sausage grinder earns so little praise. To be fair, though, let’s review an occasion when lawmakers got something right.

Last month was the 89th anniversary of one of America’s biggest blunders on her descent from honest, sound money into weaponized political money: Executive Order 6102. Signed on April 5, 1933, U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt required all persons holding more than five ounces of gold to deliver their “gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates, now owned by them to a Federal Reserve Bank, branch or agency, or to any member bank of the Federal Reserve System.”

With Governor Kay Ivey’s signature on sound money legislation today, Alabama has become the second state this year to expand its sales tax exemption involving gold and silver. Alabama Senate Bill 13, championed by Sen. Tim Melson and Rep. Jamie Kiel, passed with unanimous support out of the Alabama Senate and then passed unanimously through the Alabama House before making it to the Governor’s desk.

(Richmond, Virginia – April 12, 2022) – By signing sound money legislation last night, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin has ended Virginia’s discriminatory practice of assessing sales taxes on smaller purchases of gold, silver, platinum, and palladium bullion and coins.

Sound Money Defense League Policy Director Jp Cortez joins Phil Kennedy of Kennedy Financial to discuss sound money on the state and federal level, and the harms of inflation.

Sound money is a key to a free and prosperous society. That principle was clearly reflected in the monetary system that the Constitution established when it called the federal government into existence.
Our ancestors didn’t trust government officials with power. They believed that the greatest threat to their own freedom and well-being lay not with some foreign regime but rather with their own government.

Washington, DC (May 8, 2019) – U.S. Representative Alex Mooney (R-WV) introduced legislation this week to provide for the first audit of United States gold reserves since the Eisenhower Administration.
The Gold Reserve Transparency Act (H.R. 2559) – backed by the Sound Money Defense League and government accountability advocates – directs the Comptroller of the United States to conduct a “full assay, inventory, and audit of all gold reserves, including any gold in ‘deep storage,’ of the United States at the place or places where such reserves are kept.”

Washington has been quite the circus lately. Bret Kavanaugh’s appearance in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee prompted dozens of interruptions from Democrats and numerous protests from leftists. During Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s testimony to the House Commerce Committee, journalist Laura Loomer demanded to be verified on the social media platform, and Representative Billy Long (R-MO) held an auction.

The sound money movement reemerged on the national political scene a decade ago. In 2008, the financial crisis brought in a fresh wave of U.S. gold and silver investors.
Ron Paul and the Tea Party advocated for limiting government and ending the Federal Reserve system. Sound money advocates made real inroads in recruiting Americans to their cause based on evidence that the nation is headed for bankruptcy.

Cheyenne, Wyoming (March 14, 2018) – Sound money activists rejoiced as the Wyoming Legal Tender Act became law today. The bill restores constitutional, sound money in Wyoming. Backed by the Sound Money Defense League, Campaign for Liberty, Money Metals Exchange, and in-state grassroots activists, HB 103 removes all forms of state taxation on gold and silver coins and bullion and reaffirms their status as money in Wyoming, in keeping with Article 1, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution.