skip to main content
Hide All The Ads With a Yearly Membership Subscribe ▶

H.R. 5404 (115th): To define the dollar as a fixed weight of gold.

Compare this bill to another bill:

React to this bill with an emoji

(About Ads | Hide These Ads)

The text of the bill below is as of Mar 22, 2018 (Introduced). The bill was not enacted into law.

Summary of this bill

Context

Since the earliest days of America until 1971, the country had used the “gold standard” for money. Under this system, U.S. currency was backed by physical gold, much of which kept in a heavily guarded location in Fort Knox, Kentucky. This was intended to keep the price of money relatively standard and prevent runaway inflation, i.e. one dollar equals _x _grams of gold.

With a few exceptions, proponents say the system generally worked. Although the value of a U.S. dollar fluctuated a bit — since preventing that entirely would have been impossible — for the most part those fluctuations were far less than they would be after 1971, …

I

115th CONGRESS

2d Session

H. R. 5404

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

March 22, 2018

introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Financial Services

A BILL

To define the dollar as a fixed weight of gold.

1.

Findings

Congress finds the following:

(1)

The United States dollar has lost 30 percent of its purchasing power since 2000, and 96 percent of its purchasing power since the end of the gold standard in 1913.

(2)

Under the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent inflation objective, the dollar loses half of its purchasing power every generation, or 35 years.

(3)

American families need long-term price stability to meet their household spending needs, save money, and plan for retirement.

(4)

The Federal Reserve policy of long-term inflation has made American manufacturing uncompetitive, raising the cost of United States manufactured goods by more than 40 percent since 2000, compared to less than 20 percent in Germany and France.

(5)

Between 2000 and 2010, United States manufacturing employment shrunk by one-third after holding steady for 30 years at nearly 20,000,000 jobs.

(6)

The American economy needs a stable dollar, fixed exchange rates, and money supply controlled by the market not the government.

(7)

The gold standard puts control of the money supply with the market instead of the Federal Reserve.

(8)

The gold standard means legal tender defined by and convertible into a certain quantity of gold.

(9)

Under the gold standard through 1913 the United States economy grew at an annual average of four percent, one-third larger than the growth rate since then and twice the level since 2000.

(10)

The international gold exchange standard from 1914 to 1971 did not provide for a United States dollar convertible into gold, and therefore helped cause the Great Depression and stagflation.

(11)

The Federal Reserve’s trickle down policy of expanding the money supply with no demand for it has enriched the owners of financial assets but endangered the jobs, wages, and savings of blue collar workers.

(12)

Restoring American middle-class prosperity requires change in monetary policy authorized to Congress in Article I, Section 8, Clause 5 of the Constitution.

2.

Define the dollar in terms of gold

Effective 30 months after the date of enactment of this Act—

(1)

the Secretary of the Treasury (in this Act referred to as the Secretary) shall define the dollar in terms of a fixed weight of gold, based on that day’s closing market price of gold; and

(2)

Federal Reserve Banks shall make Federal Reserve notes exchangeable with gold at the statutory gold definition of the dollar.

3.

Disclosure of holding

During the 30-month period following the date of enactment of this Act, the United States Government shall take timely and reasonable steps to disclose all of its holdings of gold, together with a contemporaneous report of any United States governmental purchases or sales, thus enhancing the ability of the market and of market participants to arrive at the fixed dollar-gold parity in an orderly fashion.