From the June 2003 Idaho Observer:

The money devil is in the (omitted) details

Many political, social and scientific beliefs held by contemporary Americans are the result of deceptions that have been woven into their philosophical fabric over time. The process, whether deliberate or by accident, seems to have been extremely successful. Most Americans currently believe the Constitution authorizes the president to declare war and the federal government to control thousands of acres of state lands; Americans unquestioningly accept a tax on their wages, the authority of a private bank to lend “money” into existence at interest and the federal government having constitutional authority to invent hundreds of agencies to employ legions of agents that monitor and regulate our most personal and private affairs. This simply is not true. If Americans would take the time to learn what words meant at the time they were used to create policy rather than interpret them within the context of modern usage, they may better understand how they are being deceived on numerous issues of critical importance.

by James Ewart

It may help for Americans to better understand our monetary terms. Here's an overview of the most important ones, and their etymologically-precise meanings.

Money is a coin, made in a mint out of an alloy of gold or silver, to be a medium (or media) of exchange. Money is also a payments system. There is no such thing as “paper money” because “paper” and “money” are mutually exclusive terms.

Dollar, historically, is a unit of weight, like ton, ounce, gram, or carat. Carat is a weight unit used exclusively for precious stones like diamonds and rubies, and it is equivalent to about 1/52 of a troy ounce. Dollar is the weight unit for the gold or silver involved in monetary transactions in the United States and several other countries, and it is equivalent to about 72/100 of a troy ounce of silver. Dollar is also the formal name for a U.S. coin that contains 72/100 of a troy ounce of pure silver. This weight, dollar, is defined in the Act of April 2, 1792, as 371.25 grains of pure silver.

Currency is mainly “that which facilitates trade” in a region. Today, currency has two meanings. The coins and “paper money” that facilitates trade is currency, but banks use the word currency in a different way. A current asset, one that can be converted to cash in a year or less, is what dollar-bills were prior to 1963. That's why today's paper currency, although it only resembles real dollar-bills, are listed on bank deposit slips in an area labeled “currency.” The “currency” area has been on bank deposit slips for more than a century.

Pay stems from the Latin word pax, meaning peace. Peace in financial affairs occurs when transactions are complete. A transaction is complete when a debtor pays a creditor.

Pay involves the transfer of wealth. If you work for me for one day, I should give you something you and I agree is equivalent to one day of work. Before 1963, that payment would be an amount of silver weighed in dollar units. After 1963, we simply pretend to pay one another the agreed-upon amount because today's coins contain no silver and our paper currency is not redeemable. We can exchange the paper currency and the coins for silver but the amount of silver we might get in that exchange is never certain.

Prior to 1963, the amount of silver, its weight, was certain. Today we use dishonest (monetary) weights and measures. Finance and banking are the only fields of modern society that use dishonest, arbitrary, subjective units of measure. All other professions, globally, use units of measure traceable to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (formerly the National Bureau of Standards), or its counterpart organization in Paris, France.

A note is a legal document that has these four elements: A maker who promises to pay a payee person a specific amount (weight) of precious metal on a certain date. A ten-dollar bill in the form of a 1950 Federal Reserve Note is immediately redeemable by its bearer at the U.S. Treasury or any Federal Reserve Bank for about 7.2 troy ounces of pure silver. Today's bogus paper currency is not notes because two of the four required elements are gone. No due date and no bearer are identified. Also, the paper currency is not redeemable.

Today's bogus paper currency, and today's bogus coins, are, respectively, paper and metal tokens. Today's U.S. paper currency is Federal Reserve Tokens (FRTs), pronounced “furts.” FRTs are fiat currency.

A bill, in financial terms, is a writing that a creditor issues to a debtor. If I owe you some money, you may send me a bill, meaning you bill me for the money. If I give you a note saying I will pay you a certain amount of money on a certain date, I have given you a bill that you can present to me for payment on that date. Bills must be paid. A U.S. dollar-bill from 1950 or earlier was paid on demand in silver or gold at the U.S. Treasury or at any Federal Reserve Bank. Today's bogus paper currency merely resembles the real dollar bills used prior to 1963.

Tender means to put in motion. If I tender my rent to my apartment manager, I don't just tell him, “I'll pay you later.” In tendering my rent payment, I hold it in my hand and present it to him. If my rent were 10 pounds of sugar, I would tender my rent payment by holding the bag or box of sugar in my hands and extend my reach toward the manager. Conversely, if I tell the manager I will give him 10 pounds of sugar tomorrow, I have offered the sugar but I have not tendered it.

An example of a legal tender would be when I hold perhaps 10 pounds of sugar out to a local teenager and say to him, “I'll give you this 10 pounds of sugar if you'll wash my car.”

I would make an illegal tender if I held the 10 pounds of sugar out to the teen and said, “I'll give you this 10 pounds of sugar if you will set my neighbor's car on fire.”

Setting cars on fire is arson, a crime, an illegal act. Legal tenders are upheld in the courts. Illegal tenders are not upheld in the courts.

There is no compelled acceptance of today's or any other paper currency or coin. There never has been. This point is one of several important but widely misunderstood aspects of monetary law. Let's say you and I agree on 10 pounds of sugar as payment to you for washing my car. Let's also say that you wash the car but I fail to pay you the sugar, offering you instead my old digital watch. If you refuse the watch and demand the sugar, the courts will uphold your claim and order me to give you the sugar. However, if you refuse the sugar and demand something else, and if I refuse to give you anything but the sugar, the court will uphold my position -- and you will be barred from collecting interest on the 10 pounds of sugar in the time after you refused my legal tender to you of that sugar.

Courts will support every legal tender, whether the thing tendered (used in the tender) is fish, a new or old French franc coin, genuine dollar bills, sugar, old U.S. silver coin, or old tires. I can “pay” my personal taxes using wheat and the courts will uphold my action. However, the courts will also require that I “pay” more wheat than I might want to pay, to cover the revenue department's overhead in dealing with the hassle of accepting the wheat.

Courts will accept payments of anything because if one has no money, for example, the law does not compel impossibilities. Courts will also not support illegal tenders, even if they involve silver or gold coins.

Usury is the old term for interest. If a little boy loans his favorite rock to a chum, and the chum later returns the rock, and gives the first boy a dead bird as payment for the loan, the dead bird is the usury.

Interest, or usury, when agreed to by the parties, is no one else's business. If I were to rent a truck from you and pay you a rental fee that is more than our neighbors think is “fair,” our neighbors would be readily identified as sticking their noses into something that is none of their business.

But, if I were to borrow enough money from you to buy a truck, and then paid you interest on the loan in an amount equal to what I would otherwise pay you as a truck rental fee, our neighbors can take YOU to court -- and maybe even put you in jail -- for violation of the state's usury statute.

Usury statutes, now the law in all 50 states, are silent testimony to the depths to which American morals and scholarship have plummeted.

Inflation is the crime of destroying the purchasing power of the media of exchange (and/or credit) of a country.

The people who commit inflation do it by manipulating the supply of “money and credit.” They commit inflation after they have all or most of their assets invested in instruments that will be harmed less than the instruments in which everyone else is invested.

By increasing the supply of “money and credit,” the purchasing power of each current unit of “money and credit” is diluted. This is what happens when the federal government goes deeper into debt, or when banks resort to the use of fractional-reserve (sic) banking practices, or when “interest rates go down.”

Inflation is like arson. Arson is the crime of destroying (by fire) the property of another. Inflation is the crime of destroying the relative purchasing power of others. Arson and inflation are crimes committed by individuals who may be prosecuted in the courts.

Inflation is the key symptom of economic warfare.

Economic warfare is being waged by a few very wealthy Insiders. Their objective is socialist government in all countries because they, the Insiders, can use their wealth to control socialist governments. The Insiders have been refining their techniques since the 1800s. They are taking over the world.