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2011-04-09 17:07:48
Greenspan Endorsed Gold Standard... Before it Was Abolished
The following is an excerpt from this article written by Alan Greenspan in
1967--four years before the end of the gold standard (by Richard Nixon).
Recently, Greenspan told Ron Paul he still stands by every word of this.
A fully free banking system and fully consistent gold standard have not as yet
been achieved. But prior to World War I, the banking system in the United
States (and in most of the world) was based on gold and even though governments
intervened occasionally, banking was more free than controlled. Periodically,
as a result of overly rapid credit expansion, banks became loaned up to the
limit of their gold reserves, interest rates rose sharply, new credit was cut
off, and the economy went into a sharp, but short-lived recession. (Compared
with the depressions of 1920 and 1932, the pre-World War I business declines
were mild indeed.) It was limited gold reserves that stopped the unbalanced
expansions of business activity, before they could develop into the post-World
War I type of disaster. The readjustment periods were short and the economies
quickly reestablished a sound basis to resume expansion.
But the process of cure was misdiagnosed as the disease: if shortage of bank
reserves was causing a business decline argued economic interventionists
why not find a way of supplying increased reserves to the banks so they never
need be short! If banks can continue to loan money indefinitely it was
claimed there need never be any slumps in business. And so the Federal
Reserve System was organized in 1913.
...
Stripped of its academic jargon, the welfare state is nothing more than a
mechanism by which governments confiscate the wealth of the productive members
of a society to support a wide variety of welfare schemes. A substantial part
of the confiscation is effected by taxation. But the welfare statists were
quick to recognize that if they wished to retain political power, the amount of
taxation had to be limited and they had to resort to programs of massive
deficit spending, i.e., they had to borrow money, by issuing government bonds,
to finance welfare expenditures on a large scale.
...
In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from
confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were,
the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case
of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to
silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as
payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and
government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The
financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the
owners of wealth to protect themselves.
This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold.
Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands
in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property
rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the
statists' antagonism toward the gold standard.
http://www.conservativeusa.org/vieir100.htm
by
Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr.
President
National Alliance for Constitutional Money
presented to the Board of Trustees of
The Conservative Caucus Foundation
at its Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.
on January 13, 1997
DR. EDWIN VIEIRA: We're coming, in this topic I guess, down to the bottom line.
What makes the gears of government turn is the grease, money. And given that it
has become more and more difficult to differentiate the government from a
criminal family, I will quote from Don Corleone who asked the question: "What's
in it for my family?".
Well, we have a mechanism in this country that has been set up to answer that
question for certain groups that are in a privileged position, and that
mechanism is known as the Federal Reserve System.
The major cross that I have to bear is dealing with the Federal Reserve System
and attempting to explain the major problems that it poses with respect to
Constitutional law, economics, and the fundamental moral climate of the
country.
THE FED IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL
The bottom line of my presentation is very simple. The Federal Reserve System
is unconstitutional. You start there and you know everything else that there is
to know about it.
The Constitution established commodity monies, specifically, silver and gold
coinage as the money of the United States.
REVOLUTIONARY INFLATION AND DEPRESSION LED TO REJECTION OF PAPER MONEY IN 1787
If you go back historically, in 1787 the founding fathers were considering
structure of government at the Constitutional level. Who were these people?
Well, as a practical matter, they were eyewitnesses to one of the worst
economic situations that the country had ever faced a raging inflation, a
massive depression that had followed the emission of bills of credit and other
forms of paper currency by both the Continental Congress in which they served,
and many of the state legislatures in which they served, during the War of
Independence.
So these were not people who were unacquainted with the economic problems of
money. They were also not people who could foist off those problems, at least
in terms of cause and effect, on somebody else. They had been responsible for
putting these paper monies into circulation. What did they do? Well, they
drafted the monetary powers of the Constitution to prevent repetition of that
calamity by outlawing what James Madison in the Federalist papers denounced as
"the fallacious medium and improper and wicked project of paper money".
U.S. CONSTITUTION ESTABLISHES A BIMETALLIC STANDARD
Very, very simple is the language of the Constitution, but it is quite profound
in its economic and political consequences. In Article I, Section 8, Clause 5
and Article I, Section 10, Clause 1, the Constitution adopts silver and gold
coin exclusively as the money of the United States.
Now the standard in this system is the dollar, and, if you know nothing else
about the monetary system of the United States constitutionally, learn what a
dollar is. A dollar is a silver coin containing 371-1/4 grains of silver. That
word is mentioned twice in the Constitution: in Article I, Section 9 and in the
Seventh Amendment, guaranteeing the right to jury trial.
In the system that the founding fathers devised, the legal value of all the
silver coinage must be proportional to the weight of silver they contain, and
the legal value of all the gold coinage must be proportional to the weight of
gold that the coins contain in relationship to the exchange value between
silver and gold at the prevailing free market exchange rate.
All silver and gold coins may be legal tender for the values of silver and gold
they actually contain, and Congress has the authority to, as the Constitution
says, regulate the value according to these principles.
FIAT MONEY PROHIBITED
In Article I, Section 8, Clause 2 and Article I, Section 10, Clause 1, the
Constitution prohibits explicitly or implicitly the emission of any form of
what was called in those days "bills of credit". Today we would call that paper
money.
Properly construed these provisions preclude any government at any level from
granting special legal privileges to the notes, deposits, or currencies of
private banks as well, or allowing private banks to use governmental debt as
so-called reserves for the emission of bank notes.
GOLD AND SILVER COIN ONLY AS LEGAL TENDER
Article I, Section 10, Clause 1 also disables the states from imposing on
unwilling creditors anything but gold and silver coin as a tender in payment of
debts which, of course, reflects the inherent disability of Congress to
declare anything other than gold and silver coin a legal tender.
And Article I, Section 8, Clauses 1, 2, and 5; Section 10, Clause 1; and the
Fifth, Ninth, Tenth, and Fourteenth Amendments, if properly construed, would
deny Congress and the states any power to seize people's gold or silver, except
through taxation, or to prevent specific performance of private contracts
payable in silver, gold, or any monetary medium which, of course, was what
happened in the 1930s when Roosevelt came in.
FREE MARKET IN MONEY AND BANKING IS GUARANTEED
And Article I, Section 8, Clause 3; Article IV, Section 2, and the Fifth,
Ninth, Tenth, and Fourteenth Amendments would guarantee individuals free entry
into private banking, ensure that private banks might issue their own
non-fraudulent notes and securities, and deal in deposits of silver, gold,
foreign currencies, or any other monetary medium in other words, grant a
complete free market to money.
Now, that is an important point, because the proposition that I would lay
before you today is the Constitution really has two prongs or an obverse and
a reverse. One I call the integration of market and state. Only commodity money
by weight is constitutionally recognized.
The Constitution defined money and banking system that relies on and embodies
free market principles. It adopted the type of money the world had historically
favored, that is: commodity money money capable of being coin gold and
silver. It adopted as money the very commodities that the international markets
had historically recognized.
It adopted the very unit of money that the American market at that time was
using the silver dollar and it left the ultimate supply of money to the
market too, by implicitly incorporating the system of free coinage that had
been used throughout Anglo-American law and, in fact, it first occurs in the
first Coinage Act of 1792.
SEPARATION OF BANK AND STATE
So, it is fairly clear from that history that the Constitution integrated
market and state with respect to official money silver and gold coinage and
it separated bank and state with respect to everything else. The government is
not to be a player with respect to the private market in terms of privileging
banks or other financial institutions.
Well, what's happened since then?
LINCOLN'S WARTIME POLICIES UNDERMINED INDEPENDENCE OF PRIVATE ECONOMY
The government has radically diverged from these principles, starting with the
Civil War, which was one of the those great divides in Constitutional theory,
again because of a crisis situation. Interestingly enough, crisis situations
also seem to have driven this country always in one direction, and not the
other.
The Civil War was the beginning of the degeneration or the devolution of the
American Constitutional monetary system. In 1862, the Congress submits the
first legal tender paper currency, the greenbacks, and it maintained those as
an irredeemable currency until the 1870s.
Of course, the Supreme Court was there to give all sorts of fallacious reasons
as to why that was justifiable. Always be sure the Supreme Court will be there
to give reasons when the cogs turn in one direction, but never to give reasons
when the cogs turn in the other direction (and I have spent 25 years futzing
around with the Supreme Court, so I speak from experience).
THE FED WAS CREATED TO DELINK CONTROL OF MONEY FROM CONSTITUTIONAL
ACCOUNTABILITY
Now we come to 1913, which is another one of those wonderful years we had the
income tax and we had the Federal Reserve System put in.
The Federal Reserve System is a quasi-public, largely private cartel that
asserts the kind of political independence from supervision by Congress, the
President, the courts, and, especially, the electorate. The Federal Reserve is
privileged to emit its own paper currency, Federal Reserve Notes.
FED HAS POWER TO DETERMINE THE AMOUNT OF DEBT OBLIGATIONS U.S. TAXPAYERS MUST
GUARANTEE
Now what is interesting about those notes is they have been declared, or were
from the beginning, declared to be obligations of the United States and to be
redeemed in lawful money, and yet nevertheless, in complete disregard of
Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 of the Constitution, Congress has never enacted
a single statute authorizing the dollar amount of obligations that the Federal
Reserve can generate out of nothing, and from which the treasury of the United
States, and ultimately the taxpayers, are somehow liable as guarantors or
sureties. Fantastic situation.
How much have they generated? Federal Reserve notes alone total $370 some
billion now. There is not a single statute giving them authority to issue one
dollar's worth.
IN 1933, ASSURANCE OF REDEEMABILITY IN GOLD WAS ENDED
In 1933, of course, another wonderful year, Congress declared Federal Reserve
Notes legal tender for all debts, public and private, and rescinded the
requirement that those notes be redeemable in gold coin.
In 1933 and 1934, Roosevelt, and then Congress licensing Roosevelt, seized all
the gold coin in circulation and nullified all public and private contracts
that called for payment in gold.
SILVER COINAGE TERMINATED IN 1965, REDEEMABILITY IN 1968
In 1965, Congress terminated coinage of Constitutional, that is silver,
dollars, and authorized the so-called clad coinage, that is, slugs.
In 1968, Congress terminated redemption of any form of United States currency
in silver coin and, in 1971, [President Richard M.] Nixon and [Treasury
Secretary John B.] Connally repudiated the redemption of Federal Reserve Notes
internationally.
So 1971 is actually the year: the first time in American history that we had
what amounts to a fiat currency "fiat" from the Latin "let it be" money,
because otherwise it wouldn't be money. No one would treat it as money.
In 1973 and 1977, interestingly enough, there was some backsliding, in that
Congress permitted Americans to own gold and to make private contracts payable
in gold, although continuing to refuse to redeem any obligations of the
government in gold.
The reason that was given for that was "Well it doesn't matter. Gold has been
demonetized. This will not cause anything bad to happen." And you know they
were right. Nothing "bad" happened which is an interesting contrast between
then and 1862.
In 1862, the greenbacks come out, they were irredeemable, immediately everybody
and his brother starts making so-called "gold clause" contracts, demanding to
be paid in gold instead of in greenbacks, one of the classic examples being
Benjamin Butler, the corrupt senator from Massachusetts who later went down as
the military governor of New Orleans. Go to New Orleans and talk to people
about Benjamin Butler even today and they will tell you about that individual.
He voted for the greenbacks and he would turn around and make gold clause
contracts.
One of the most famous gold clause contract cases in the Supreme Court was the
Butler case in which he was defending his own gold clause contract. So he was
the man who knew. He really knew. It wasn't a matter of should have known,
might have known he knew. He knew just what he was doing.
In 1985, Congress authorized the minting of new silver and gold coins (Ron Paul
had something to do with that, as I recall), but, once again, although they are
there, they do not function as a circulating medium because their nominal
values are completely out of line with their market values and Gresham's law
takes hold. The real money is kept in the pocket and the bad money is tossed
out into the marketplace.
OUR PRESENT MONETARY SYSTEM IS COMPREHENSIVELY UNCONSTITUTIONAL
So since 1968, the commonly circulating currency of the United States has
consisted solely of paper chits and slugs Federal Reserve Notes, and these
so-called "clad coins".
Clad coins contain no silver at all. Silver and gold coins have been withdrawn
as the basis of the monetary system. Federal Reserve Notes are irredeemable,
and the Federal Reserve System, which is composed of thousands of private
banks, ultimately controls the supply and quality of America's money, and none
of this has any Constitutional justification whatsoever.
There are economic and political consequences. Economic harm occurs both in the
public and in the private sectors. Go to the private sector first.
In a free market, interest rates fall because people's time preferences change
whether or not there is a change in the supply of money. Interest rates reflect
the idea that an apple is worth more to me today than 100 years from now. It is
a very simple concept. I live in time. I am concerned about values over time.
It has nothing to do with Alan Greenspan or the Congress of the United States
or anything else.
LOW INTEREST YIELDS RISE IN REAL INCOME
Now, when interest rates fall, people consume less, and they invest more. The
prices of consumer goods fall. The price of capital goods increase. More
resources flow into production, less into consumption. As increased investments
and capital goods result in increased production, real incomes rise, everyone
is better off.
And, if the supply of money has not increased while all that is going on, the
purchasing power of the money unit increases, people become wealthier and their
money becomes more valuable than before, and for people who are on salaries
(wage earners, for instance) that's a very consequential matter.
And you will find that, at the turn of the century, people such as Samuel
Gompers, the old AFL (American Federation of Labor) president, was very, very
concerned about inflation and how it cheated the working man.
Go to your average union leader today and talk to him about inflation and he
will give you some kind of blank stare and tell you that the Federal Reserve is
something that creates jobs. He has never read Keynes's book that said
"inflation was a way to lower real wage rates and therefore defeat the power of
trade unions."
Okay, we live in an era of massive illiteracy, but that's the way it is.
What about under a regime of inflation that is induced by banks or governments?
Things are completely different then.
FRACTIONAL RESERVE BANKING RESULTS IN BOOM-BUST DISRUPTIONS
Assume private banks expand the supply of fiat paper currency through
fractional reserve techniques. That's the example, the way they do it today.
The expanded supply of money enables the banks to offer loans to businesses at
lower rates of interest than before.
Theoretically, they can drive the rate of interest down to zero. They just keep
pushing it out. Eventually, somebody will take it. They just keep lowering that
price.
The sudden availability of this low-cost credit induces businessmen to believe
that there are real resources out there that are now available for projects
that in the past weren't available. So they have been deceived by the action of
the banks. They then begin to take those loans and invest in capital goods as
if there had been a change in society's ratio of investment to consumption.
Even though there has been no decrease in the level of consumption in society.
This is all a paper trick that's being promulgated by the banks.
The businessmen use this newly borrowed money to purchase capital goods and
labor. Prices of those goods and that labor goes up. Resources are diverted
from other areas of production.
Eventually, however, this money percolates down into the hands of the ordinary
consumer, and the ordinary consumer spends it according to his own preferences
between investment and consumption.
At that point, reality hits the fan, economically speaking. Now this takes
years to occur, but it does occur. It has an inexorability about it.
This reasserts the original free market rate of interest, or at least it
creates attention in the system between the bank's rate of interest and the
actual rate of interest.
It causes the prices of consumer goods to rise, the prices of capital goods to
fall, and, at that point, the investment in these new capital goods the
investment with these new fictional loans is recognized as over-investment,
as mal-investment, which is unprofitable or maybe even completely wasted. And,
at that point, you have what is called the bust, the depression, the recession,
stagflation we have all sorts of words for it but it is the rug being
pulled out from under the economy.
EVEN STAGES OF BOOM AND BUST
Now this boom or bust, or the business cycle (I like to call it the fractional
reserve banking cycle) has a number of stages.
The first stage is the inflation (money supply increases because the banks
generate paper currency). The second stage is the expansion (the banks loan the
new money to business). The third stage is the boom (the businessmen
over-invest in capital goods). Everyone is feeling good about things.
Then there is the reaction, as consumption increases in accordance with
original investment consumption ratios. Then there is the crisis (when the
businessmen realize what is happening). Then there is the bust at which point
businessmen and workers lose money as the mal-investments have to be written
off in some way. And the seventh, and the last stage, which is always the most
important one: the political hysteria.
THE PROBLEM IS SEEN AS THE SOLUTION
At that point, people who have been hurt by the contraction, the system, the
recession, the depression, the stagflation, or whatever you are going to call
it, they come forward demanding what? Not that fractional reserve banking be
limited, not that we go back to the Constitutional system, but that the
government take action to get the country moving again. Right? John Kennedy is
resurrected or whatever happens get the country moving again through
government action.
LOWERING OF INTEREST RATES BY INFLATION IS ILLUSORY AND TEMPORARY
So the short answer is that inflation can lower the rate of interest
temporarily, but, in the long run, the market controls.
MOST PEOPLE LOSE MONEY, BUT BANKERS AND THEIR FRIENDS PROFIT
And the only lasting effects of all of this churning of the system is:
1) a decrease in the purchasing power of the unit of money (Federal Reserve
Notes lost 90 percent of their purchasing power since World War II),
2) losses from over-investments and mal-investments in projects that have
proven uneconomic,
3) transfer of wealth (I mean people do make money, banks make money, some
businessmen make money. There is always money to be made by the churning of
fractional reserve banking, but, in general, society loses. Overall, society
loses.),
4) and then, that final bottom line, the political bottom line: agitation for
new governmental intervention.
As Mises was wont to say "as each intervention proves catastrophic, the next
step is to have some more and more catastrophic governmental intervention". So
we never learn anything, except that we know that no one ever learns anything
from this.
Now, during the boom, what people call "inflation" may not necessarily occur,
because there can be countervailing forces, such as increase in the supply of
goods or services or the demand for money.
So right now, we could very well be suffering a catastrophic inflation in the
sense of what is happening under the surface in this system, even though you do
not see more than a 3 or 4 percent price rise. And, recall a 4 percent, 4
percent, price rise was what induced Nixon in 1971 to call for wage and price
controls. He considered that catastrophic. Right now we live with it, no
problem. Pretty soon we will have 20 percent, then Argentinean rates. These
things have that kind of momentum behind them.
Booms can continue, putting off the day of reckoning, if the banks expand the
money supply, and these, as it were, extraneous factors do not appear, so that
people don't realize what's happening. That's the beauty of this whole system.
It is surreptitious. It is deceptive. It is kind of "stealth economics", if you
will. It comes up off the radar screen in many instances.
A SHELL GAME WITHOUT A PEA
Now, let's take a look at the economic consequences on the public side. What
goes on when the Federal Reserve, as they say in the trade, "monetizes public
debt", that is, generates money on the security of public debt in order to give
the money to the government to spend for whatever, entitlement projects, or
whatever?
FOUR ROADS TO RUIN
What's going on there is that the board of governors of the Federal Reserve
System is lending the public credit, on the security of the public credit. This
is the ultimate of the shell game where's the pea? Except there is no pea in
this game at all.
I want to give you an example of this. Assume the government wants to expend
$100 billion on new programs. Let's assume they are even Constitutional
programs. That's a shock, but let's assume that.
How can it do this? Well, it essentially has four choices:
(1) PAY AS YOU GO BY HIGHER TAXES
First, it can tax $100 billion from the public, and spend the tax receipts.
That's a redistribution of $100 billion from the taxpayers to the tax
recipients and the bureaucrats in the middle, who do the collecting and the
expending.
But no new money has been created. No one has received any interest payments,
and the advantages of the system are that the present generation pays for its
own expenditures, its own programs (which one would think is only fair), and
that tends to limit those programs to what the present generation will accept,
and the public tends to know who receives the benefits, who pays for them, what
they cost, and so on. So it's all on the table.
I suppose the disadvantage is that, of course, these schemes of taxation are
all devised by bureaucrats and, therefore, economically they always tend to be
harmful, but, in this imperfect world, where government is going to be spending
something, that probably is the bottom line of harm the direct "tax and
spend" situation.
(2) BORROW AS YOU GO WITH INTEREST PAID TO
PRIVATE CREDITORS BY FUTURE TAXPAYERS
Well, the next level is the government can borrow $100 billion at what, let's
say 10 percent interest, from the public not the banks but from the public,
and spend the loan receipts.
Now, of course, the government must collect $110 billion from the taxpayers
sometime in the future to pay that off, so there is a redistribution of $110
billion instead of $100 billion, but, again, no new money has been created.
Some taxpayers will eventually pay that extra $10 billion for the privilege of
other taxpayers having had taxes deferred for the lifetime of the bonds.
Now the disadvantage of the system over the first alternative (that is direct
taxation) is that the present generation may tend to overspend, hoping that it
can push the burden onto a future generation.
(3) INFLATE AND SPEND DEPRECIATION OF DOLLAR VALUE
What's a third route? Well, here we come into the greenback route. This is the
sequence that was followed actually in our history taxation, borrowing, and,
when they find themselves in a hole, they turn to the greenback route. The
government simply emits $100 billion in irredeemable interest-free treasury
notes, and spend these things directly into circulation, requiring you as a
government creditor to take them, and then giving them legal tender power so
that they will circulate.
Justice Field, who dissented in one of the famous legal tender cases, Juilliard
v. Greenman, asked, "If Congress has the power to make treasury notes a legal
tender and to pass as money, why should not a sufficient amount be issued to
pay the bonds to the United States as they mature?".
Why not pay interest on the millions of dollars of bonds now due, when Congress
can, in one day, make the money to pay the principal? And why should there be
any restraint upon unlimited appropriations by the government for all imaginary
schemes of public improvement if the printing press can furnish the money that
is needed for them? Well, why indeed? I mean that is a very good question. Why,
indeed?
And under the theories that have been put forward by the Supreme Court in the
legal tender cases, even the gold clause cases, following through, the
borrowing power of the country is really supererogatory. The government can
simply print this money. Never have to borrow it. Why? Why borrow? Why tax? Why
borrow?
And an economic crisis recourse to that expedient may become politically
compelling. I might point out that, in the Agricultural Adjustment Act of May
of 1933, Roosevelt was given the authority to do exactly that to expand the
greenback base under the law of 1862. He didn't do it, but he had it. So people
have been thinking this way.
But you notice at this stage we still haven't come to banks. There were no
banks involved in this at all.
Now I don't say that printing of money is Constitutional, but the Supreme Court
said that. So it is lurking there in the background.
(4) BORROW AND INFLATE AS YOU GO WITH INTEREST PAID TO THE FED
BY FUTURE TAXPAYERS AND INFLATION SUFFERED BY YOU
Now we come to Number Four and this is the scheme whereby the government sells
its $100 billion of bonds and again paying 10 percent interest to the member
banks of the Federal Reserve System, which creates $100 billion in new demand
deposits, so-called "money" created out of nothing, because they paid for those
things simply with a checking account that they create and the government can
now spend on its programs.
Well now, how does this occur? Say the commercial banks don't have $100
billion. This is not the case in Number Two, where you go and borrow from
people who actually have the money. They don't have it.
The Federal Reserve goes into the marketplace and it buys say $25 billion worth
of old government bonds. Now I am assuming that it has a reserve ratio of one
to five. It does this simply by creating $25 billion out of nothing. It just
goes and it buys $25 billion in bonds.
FRACTIONAL RESERVE BANKING MAGNIFIES FED'S INSIDIOUS INFLUENCE
The securities dealers who sold these bonds take the $25 billion back to their
banks, that is now deposited, and, miraculously, through the system of
fractional reserve banking, lo and behold, $125 billion in new money is
generated on the basis of those notes.
And, in fact, they could do a lot more. I have a calculation down here in the
notes that shows if it were done directly by the Federal Reserve regional banks
they could generate $500 billion from $25 billion. So, there is a lot of
leverage, as they say, in this system.
And then if the commercial banks needs Federal Reserve notes, they go to the
Federal Reserve regional banks with these government bonds and say monetize
these, give us the notes if we need actually to pay and the Board of Governors
can do that for them.
FED BANKS ARE PAID INTEREST ON THE "MONEY" THEY CREATE
Notice what happens here though. The government ends up paying $110 billion.
$10 billion in unnecessary interest to whom? to the banks. Interest for what?
not for having saved any money, not for having reduced consumption as in case
Number Two, but for having exercised the privilege of creating money which was
given to the bank by the government. They paid the banks for the exercise or
the privilege that was given to those banks by the government.
U.S. GOVERNMENT BUYS "PROTECTION" FROM THE BANKERS
YOU AND YOUR POSTERITY PAY THE BILL
Well, this has to be the most obviously crooked scheme of all. And yet everyone
looks at this and says, "Well now, this is obviously also the way to go." As
Don Corleone would say, "What's in it for my family?".
Now what's the political harm of this. Well, the political harm is that,
contrary to the Alan Greenspans of this world, there is no such thing as
"politically neutral" or "politically independent" money.
Money is a medium for storing and exchanging wealth. It is a form of property
and a means of implementing contracts that transfer property from one party to
another.
So, even if you have a free market economy with a limited government, money has
a political character, inasmuch as the degree to which the government protects
the money system from private fraud and public looting, reflects the degree to
which the government respects and protects private property.
AN IMMORAL MONEY SYSTEM PRODUCES POLITICAL AND CULTURAL IMMORALITY
So if you have a free market economy you will have one form of money. If you
have a mixed or fascist economy, which is what we have, you have another form
of money. If you have a socialist economy, you have a third form of money. But
the money is really reflective, in the way suggested a moment before, as is the
legal system and the moral system, of the underlying type of government that
you are going to have.
WHEN THE FED TALKS "INDEPENDENCE" THEY MEAN
THEY WILL BE INDEPENDENT OF ACCOUNTABILITY TO CONGRESS AND TO YOU
So, if you look at the debate that sometimes you hear about the degree to which
the Federal Reserve System must be politically independent, that is really a
misdirected debate.
IT'S THE MONEY THAT SHOULD BE INDEPENDENT OF POLITICAL CONTROL AND MANIPULATION
The Constitution made money independent of electoral politics by fixing gold
and silver as the basis of the system. And, of course, the Constitution is a
political document. So rather than making money politically independent or
politically neutral, the Constitution settled on one very specific political
formula for money.
Creating the Federal Reserve in 1913 did not change that concept. It did not
make money politically independent or politically neutral. It changed the
political character of the money system.
IF THE "MONEY" IS CONTROLLED, THE MARKETS ARE NOT FREE
Now a small unelected group of experts, the board of governors, and the people
that meet with them, the Federal Open Market Committee and the Federal Advisory
Committee, and the Secretary of Treasury's agents and so forth, are able to
control the supply of money, interest rates, all the other monetary and banking
phenomenon.
HOW CAN MONEY BE A "STORE OF VALUE" IF IT'S VALUE IS SUBJECT TO MANIPULATION?
So, as contrasted with the Constitutional system, the Federal Reserve System
actually politicized money, because now the politicians, administrators, and
bankers have a much greater degree of influence some people would even say
control over the entire direction of the monetary system, and, therefore, the
direction of the economy as a whole.
What is interesting today is that, although what I have said I should hope
would be rather obvious, politically speaking nobody talks about the Federal
Reserve System. There is no major political movement that is advocating
disestablishment of the Federal Reserve, or reinstitution of Constitutional
money.
Nobody attacks fractional reserve banking and all the economic problems it has.
Nobody denounces the relationship between the banking system and the
government. Nobody looks at the power of private parties here to regulate the
economy and impose really one aspect of this whole police state that is being
set up the banking surveillance of everyone that goes on talk about medical
records. Think about what they do with banking records. Read the Bank Privacy
Act of 1980 (or whenever) a good example of precisely how that moves forward.
HOW HAS DEBATE OVER THE SUBSTANTIVE BEEN SUPPLANTED
WITH FOCUS ON THE TRIVIAL?
What that tends to tell me is that the people behind this system must be one of
the most politically powerful, if not the most politically powerful group in
the entire country, because they have been able to suppress discussion of an
issue that was of great political significance just at the turn of the century.
Let's leave aside Jefferson. Let's leave aside Jackson. Let's leave aside the
greenback debate. Let's leave aside the question in the 1870s about return to
specie payments. You just look at what happened at the turn of the century in
this country.
William Jennings Bryan, everyone in this room remembers, if not the "Cross of
Gold" speech, at least that there was such a speech, and he gave it and it had
something to do with money. That was a major plank in a major political
platform.
And then, of course, even before the Federal Reserve came in there was a major
debate in the Wilson-Roosevelt-Taft election over the direction the country
would or would not go in terms of central banking. So, as late as 1916, this
country was seriously debating matters of banking and money.
WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
This brings you now in a sense to Lenin's question, or it brings me in a sense
to Lenin's question, "What is to be done?".
Well, we first have to realize what we have. We have essentially a fascistic
banking cartel running this country. This is really nothing different from what
Mussolini would have set up, except maybe the uniforms are not as nice and the
parades are not as big, because they want to keep the level of public
understanding down. But fundamentally this is the fascist system, and I use
that word in the technical economic sense, without any pejoratives at all.
A SYSTEM OUT OF CONTROL
Now, it also is not simply a monetary control mechanism. It is one of the two
most important mechanisms, (the other being, I think, the tax system and the
graduated income tax) for economic regulation that has been set up in this
country since the turn of the century. And that really explains why it demands
political independence, because, if you do not have political independence, you
are not in a position to regulate a free market system as well as you would if
you were subject to electoral supervision by the people.
And that extreme political independence that they demand, and the fact that
they have, tends to show precisely how far away they have gotten from any kind
of control by the American people.
TYRANNY IMPOSES A HIGH COST ON ITS VICTORY
So, where are we? We have seven major consequences that I like to point to with
the Federal Reserve System.
1. Our money lacks any intrinsic value, and, by intrinsic value, I mean it is
not tied back into the commodity system or the market, so there is no
rationality to it in an economic sense.
2. Because it has no intrinsic value, because it does not have an economic
connection, the purchasing power is subject to political manipulation. It could
go up, but politically speaking, you know it is always going to go down.
THE FED IMPOSES HIDDEN "TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION"
3. So that allows the system to be used as a mechanism of hidden taxation,
taxation without representation. It's worse than taxation without
representation. I mean most people don't even know about this. Not a question
of they don't get a vote in it they know, but they don't vote. They don't
even know about it. It is completely hidden from them.
FRACTIONAL RESERVE SYSTEM LETS BANKERS BESTOW
MONETARY FAVORS ON THEIR POLITICAL ALLIES
4. The effect of that is redistribution of the nation's wealth, not simply at
the political level, by hidden taxation in the sense of governmental use,
governmental monetization, but a lot of monetization is going on in the private
sector as well with those groups that are particularly favored by the banks,
using the method of fractional reserve banking to redistribute wealth to
themselves from other segments of the society.
POLITICIANS WITH BANKER FRIENDS CAN GET THE MONEY THEY NEED
5. Well, what does this effectively do politically? It systematically corrupts
the electoral process. The electoral process is now entirely dependent on these
banks. You cannot find anyone who will question these banks because they know
perfectly well that the whole superstructure of entitlements depends upon the
ability of that banking system to bail them out, or to bail out Mexico, or to
bail out whomever it is...
HOWARD PHILLIPS: Or, in the case of Bill Clinton's election, for the Worthen
Bank to give him a timely $2 or $3 million loan so that he could win in 1992.
DR. EDWIN VIEIRA: That's right. At whatever level of corruption, from the
lowest to the highest.
CONTROL OVER THE MONEY SUPPLY IS ARBITRARY
6. Well, that enables them ultimately to loot the public treasury. That's why I
was so insistent upon pointing out that there has never been a statute
indicating how much the board of governors should or should not generate in
Federal Reserve Notes. These people have complete discretion to generate as
much paper money as they want, or as they dare, I should say.
CENTRAL ECONOMIC PLANNING IS ANTI-FREE MARKET
7. And then the seventh point is, of course, the Federal Reserve System is
functionally a key element in a mechanism of central economic planning. That's
really what fascism is the kind of central economic planning where the
businessmen do the planning, as opposed to socialism and communism where the
petit intelligentsia does the planning. Right.
So fascism at least works for a longer period of time than socialism does, but
that's what this thing is there to do.
FED FACILITATES REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH FROM THE PEOPLE
TO THE FAVORED ELITES
Fundamentally, it is there to redistribute wealth so that the big business
segment of society will be able to find capital when it needs and wants
capital, and the payoff to the politicians is to say we will do the same for
you. We will provide a mechanism of looting that will pay off your polit-ical
constituents as long as you let us use this mechanism of looting to maintain
capital flows to us.
Really very simple: What's in it for my family? What's in it for your family?
Okay. Those are the seven points.
Well what we have to understand is that this is not a permanently viable
policy. It may have a longer life than socialism and Communism, and, remember,
they lasted 70 years.
Socialism is incapable of economic calculation. This system is capable to a
certain degree of economic calculation. It just has a tremendous level of
irrationality built into it. But it is not permanently viable.
HOW LONG WILL OTHER NATIONS AGREE TO SUSTAIN OUR DEBT?
It is not permanently viable domestically, and it's certainly not permanently
viable internationally because you have a system of international competition
among currencies.
And it is not necessarily true that the Germans and the Japanese, and maybe
even the Chinese or the Indonesians, will continue to support the level of debt
that this country is willing to assert or assess upon itself in order to
maintain the fiction that we are richer than we probably are.
IS HYPERINFLATION IN THE OFFING?
Eventually, the chickens are going to come home to roost. My own guess in this
is, they are going to come home to roost through a massive inflation, because
politicians understand that a depression is the most politically destabilizing
of all events, and so they will try to keep that off as long as possible and
the only way to do that is to keep pumping in money and credit, and you cannot
keep the lid on prices indefinitely, so you are probably going to see a very,
very large inflation over the years.
Very, very large I am not talking big numbers. I am not talking 1,000
percent. I am not talking 1923. I am talking 20 percent, 30 percent, 40 percent
inflation, and then there will be reaction, and then another one, and reaction,
swing back and forth and up and down.
WILL FEDERAL RESERVE NOTES LOSE THEIR LEGITIMACY?
The interesting thing about this is, as the purchasing power of the currency
falls, the social demand for the currency will fall, prices will start to rise
faster than the rise of the supply of money and credit, and the thing begins to
get a life of its own.
And this is what eventually happened in such countries as Germany in 1923. They
could not print the money fast enough for the price rises. Prices were not
rising because money was being printed. Money was being printed because prices
were rising. People just simply started walking away from the currency into
something else, anything else, and the system broke down.
So it gets out of control. And this system will get out of control with Alan
Greenspan or whoever is in there. It will, at a certain stage, get out of
control. And, in a sense, maybe that's the solution. You let nature take its
course.
If the politicians, the bankers, and those who fatten off this system refuse to
respond to the problems, refuse to return to some level of rationality and
Constitutionality in this system, then let the system implode. Let the people
walk away from the system, because they will.
Everywhere in world history a system of this kind has been set up, it has
either destroyed the country in the course of a war, I mean it breaks down, or,
if the system has lasted long enough, people have walked away from it,
economically speaking, and the system has imploded.
Hyperinflation: the end of, as Jackson said, the Establishment's rag money.
CONSTITUTIONAL RESTORATION IS THE ONLY WAY TO FORESTALL CERTAIN CHAOS
That may be the only real solution. I don't think it is the preferable solution
because I think we understand what would happen politically if that were to
occur. The demands would immediately be for even stricter and stricter
governmental control over the system.
UNFAMILIARITY WITH COMMODITY MONEY MAKES CRISIS MORE LIKELY
So that leaves me with the question at our level of what is to be done. The
real problem here is that we do not have an alternative that is, at the present
time, functioning.
If you look at the Jacksonian period when they walked away from the Second Bank
of the United States, if you look even at the period from the Civil War to the
resumption of specie payments in 1879, people were, in fact, using gold and
silver as currency.
During the period of the irredeemable greenbacks, they were not paying it out
unless they had gold clause contracts, but there was a gold and silver price
structure. In fact, there were parallel price structures at that time between
the paper price and the gold and silver price. So people understood the use of
gold and silver as an alternative currency. That does not exist today.
TO AVOID CHAOS, PARALLEL PRICE STRUCTURE NEEDED
So your first step in this process, which economically is to have essentially a
parallel price structure, is not there.
Now that leaves me to conclude that maybe the only solution, if we had control
of the government, would be for the government, slowly but surely to begin a
phase over. I am talking about the necessity of developing these economic
institutions, where you begin to demand payment or to give people the option of
making payment in silver and gold, make gold and silver legal tender for public
transactions, monetize foreign silver and gold coins as it did at the turn of
the 19th century, so that this price structure would begin to develop, and that
a competition would occur in the marketplace between the Federal Reserve System
(which at that point would be disestablished, in the sense that the Federal
Reserve System would be given no privileged position), and the gold and silver
price structure.
GOOD MONEY WILL DRIVE OUT BAD
And I am convinced that, if that were to occur, the banks would be driven very,
very quickly into moving towards a redeemable currency, or at least they would
have to offer a redeemable currency as one of the options, and the banking
system would have to clean up its own mess.
THE REAL COST OF THE UNCONSTITUTIONAL WELFARE STATE WILL BECOME EVIDENT
The grave difficulty is that, as soon as you begin to make a step in that
direction, all the special interests come out of the woodwork, and begin to
say, "Well, wait a minute, you are not only not going to be able to finance the
expansion of our programs, but the continuation of our programs, because the
taxpayer at that point will not accept paying taxes in gold and silver for
these programs. I mean the real cost of the thing is going to be laid on the
table.
And, at that stage, they say, and I have heard this over and over again from
so-called free market economists, until you get the fiscal situation under
control, you can never get the monetary situation under control, because they
will always pervert the monetary situation to provide them with the resources
to keep the fiscal situation above water.
I look at it the other way around. Until you get the monetary situation under
control, you are always giving them the lever or the spigot or whatever it is
to continue to fund, and, therefore, not to have to face the tax problem with
respect to the entitlement programs.
INCREMENTALISM WAS REJECTED BY AMERICA'S FOUNDERS
And the interesting thing about the founding fathers of this country, they did
not sit back and say, "Well, wait a minute, we have a tremendous inflation and
a recession, depression, and all these other things. First, we have to get our
fiscal house in order before we do any of these other things." They did not say
that. They enacted the Constitution so we can do it all at once. Here it is.
Here is the Constitutional monetary system. Live with it for the government.
One always has to remember that. The Constitutional monetary system only
controls the government's use of money.
GOLD AND SILVER WOULD FLOW INTO AMERICA
And I think if you had a President who was willing to execute the laws, if you
had a Congress that would not impeach him for doing that...and you simply came
up with a reform package that put the government back on the gold and silver
system, with just a little bit of time, as they say in Russia (was it
"perediska", a breathing space?), if we just have a little breathing space to
maneuver in, you would have the biggest influx of capital into this country the
world has ever seen because all the gold and silver of the world that is now
sitting idle in hoards because it cannot earn interest, would suddenly find a
marketplace, which would be the United States, because, at a minimum, that gold
and silver could be used to pay taxes into this system.
And, as soon as that happened, and that real capital appeared, jobs,
productivity, investment, everybody would be better off at that point. Then you
could turn around and say, "Well, you see what we did?" This is step Number
One. You did not believe it, but here is step Number One.
RIDICULE YIELDS SILENCE
The difficulty I think is the psychology. People today, when you talk about
gold and silver, they look at you as if, not as if you were someone from the
19th century. "This is extremism". If you question the Federal Reserve System
and central banking, they start asking whether you are questioning the
influence of the Rothschilds that's the next thing you hear out of them.
They have generated in this country, on the one hand, a conspiracy of silence,
and, on the other hand, they have generated a kind of conspiracy of ridicule
that makes it extraordinarily difficult for anyone to put these kinds of ideas
on the table without being laughed away or attacked by the ADL, if you know
what I mean.
Anything else can be put on the table no matter how ridiculous, but talk about
reforming the monetary system, use that dirty four letter word "gold", imagine
using "silver", it is even worse, then you become a "bimetalist", you become an
"inflationist", you become William Jennings Bryan, people think of "Inherit the
Wind". It is unbelievable what you see when this stuff comes out.
RE-EDUCATION OF THE ECONOMIC POPULARIZERS IS NEEDED
And there is our big problem. And I think that is not a problem that can be
solved by going to people at the lowest level initially because nobody
understands this. Absolutely nobody understands this.
SOUND MONEY IS GOOD FOR WORKERS
I think what has to be done is some middle-level in the intelligentsia has to
be re-educated, and then has to pass this on to those institutions that will
find out that it is in their interest (what's in it for my family?). I mean
look at the unions. The unions are the classic example in my mind of an
institution that ought to be screaming for monetary reform screaming for
monetary reform not simply because economically it is to their advantage, but
also because politically it is to their advantage. They are going downhill.
They are being extinguished.
And that would be a way to revitalize that movement politically. And,
historically, they can look back at years, and years, and years of the greatest
leaders, if you will, of the labor movement being solidly behind sound money.
SOUND MONEY IS GOOD FOR THE ELDERLY
If a group of intellectuals could reach the retired people in this country who
are being looted by this system, if a group of intellectuals could reach the
blacks in this country who cannot get jobs because meaningful investment is all
going to the Chinese, and God knows where else, if a group of intellectuals
could reach young people who could understand that after 40 or 50 years of work
they are going to end up with nothing, because this system is designed
systematically to loot them, what percentage of the voters would you have in
this country? Sixty percent?
"CONSERVATIVE" THINK TANKS HAVE DUCKED THE ISSUES
But that middle-level intelligentsia, as far as I can tell, is not there. Now I
am not going to name names of think tanks here in Washington that we all know
that are right-wing or conservative or whatever.
I'll give you a Krugerrand but let me be patriotic I'll give you an
American Eagle gold coin for each symposium or meeting of those groups that
you can bring me in the last ten years that dealt with money. And you can't
include the one I had at the Heritage Foundation through the Mises Institute
because I did give a talk many years ago, and I was never invited to speak
there again. So I consider that to be a negative one. I'm not paying for that
one.
Any other they don't do it. Cato Institute is the only one that holds, as far
as I know, a yearly monetary conference and they all sit around talking up the
benefits of the Federal Reserve and monetary this and monetary that. This kind
of stuff never gets in front of them.
So I think that is our major problem is somehow translating this material or
putting this material in a form that a middle-level intellectual group, the
scribblers what was Hayek's phrase for them? "the second-hand dealers in
ideas". The second-hand dealers in ideas can begin to market to those
institutions that have an economic stake in this matter.
HOWARD PHILLIPS: History is the history of elites, and we now have a corrupt,
ignorant elite. We have to build a new elite to replace it.
DR. EDWIN VIEIRA: [President Andrew] Jackson could give his campaign at the
lowest level because people if you read the newspapers from that period, it
is incredible what the average person would read in them. It is incredible what
they were talking about. They understood fractional reserve banks and they
understood the difference between commodity money and paper money. It is
absolutely incredible. Today, zero. Zilch.
BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT IS A THREAT TO CONSTITUTIONAL RESTORATION
HOWARD PHILLIPS: What are the implications for our long-range success if the
Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA), in a form similar to that in which it was
proposed last time, were to be added to the Constitution?
Let me say my concern is that it might limit our ability to rely on the plain
text of the 1787 Constitution as presently amended, and that the Balanced
Budget Amendment might implicitly provide a rationale, not simply for a
Presidential role in the legislative process, but for the legitimatization of
our present financial arrangements everything from OMB to the Fed. What do
you think?
DR. EDWIN VIEIRA: I agree with that. I am totally against the Balanced Budget
Amendment.
EVOLUTION OF EURO COULD MAKE FRNs EXTINCT
HOWARD PHILLIPS: What implications do you believe there will be for our economy
and for the dollar if, and when, the Euro comes on line as the common currency
of the European Union?
DR. EDWIN VIEIRA: Well, the Federal Reserve Note, not the dollar, is now the
premier world reserve currency as a result of the hangover from the Bretton
Wood's agreement. But, to a great extent, it is supported in its value by the
Germans and the Japanese buying United States bonds. We are holding them
hostage in a sense.
What happens when another currency that is superior to the Federal Reserve Note
appears and can now be substituted as a reserve?
Well, the value of the Federal Reserve Note, its purchasing power, depends upon
its uses. If one of its major uses is eliminated or seriously curtailed, its
purchasing power will go down. To the extent that it stops being, or is less
of, a world reserve currency, its purchasing power will go down. Those Federal
Reserve Notes then will not be used overseas. They won't be held overseas. They
will come back here, and there will be a terrific price increase.
We export inflation. We don't see the inflation here because the purchasing
power and Federal Reserve Note-denominated debt is overseas and that is
circulating around overseas. It is circulating around overseas because it is
useful. So we can expect that to happen, and that "exported inflation" will now
become "imported inflation".
HOWARD PHILLIPS: So in other words, we have been insulated from our own
profligacy by the status of the dollar, or the Federal Reserve Note, as the
reserve currency of the world.
DR. EDWIN VIEIRA: That's right.
HOWARD PHILLIPS: Foolishly, our government has been pushing the European
nations to adopt a common currency which is going to have the effect of
leveling the U.S. economy. It is going to increase price inflation in the
United States. It is going to cost us jobs. It is going to hasten the day of
reckoning. Maybe that's good, but a lot of people are going to suffer as this
artificially high dollar sinks, and that is going to happen in the next several
years. It could have a profound effect on the election of the year 2000. It
could be the predicate for a hyper-inflationary depression. All kinds of things
could happen.
DR. EDWIN VIEIRA: The great difficulty is all economic analysis is based upon
the principle, all other things being equal. If you do A, all other things
being equal, B will follow.
Unfortunately, in the real world all of the things are not equal. It is
impossible to analyze at the present time. All you can look at is the rate of
increase of the money supply the M1s, the M2s, the M3s, and then you ask
yourself, well why is it that you only have 4 percent price increases. Well, is
that because actually the economy is expanding in production?
If the economy is becoming more efficient, prices should go down. If that's
happening at the same time that the banks are expanding the money supply,
prices will not go up as fast as they otherwise would.
Now that's all well and good except prices should, in fact, be going down. The
redistribution of wealth is still occurring, but you have to do the arithmetic
a slightly different way.
In terms of these being the highest interest rates in history, well, no, I
imagine we must have had much higher interest rates real interest rates
around the Civil War period. They were asking 20 percent.
DR. JANE ORIENT: I have heard the argument that actually prices should be going
down rather dramatically because of improvements in technology and that that
has been shielding us from seeing the effect of inflation.
DR. EDWIN VIEIRA: Well, you see that in electronics. They have gone down
terrifically, but they should have gone down much more.
If you look at the non-constitutional gold standard that they had at the turn
of the century, from 1879 to 1907, what happened with prices then, there was a
gradual lowering of prices. At the same time, there was a tremendous economic
boom, huge influx of immigrants, and so forth, and so on.
And that was because productivity was increasing, efficiency was increasing,
jobs were going up, and you had no real equivalent increase in the money
supply. So the purchasing power of money kept increasing, prices kept going
down, and that's what you would expect in a free market economy purchasing
power of the money would go up, prices of goods and services would go down, the
lower level of society would become increasingly wealthy.
In a sense, it would be a slow transfer of wealth from the top to the bottom,
but, of course, the top would be making it up through entrepreneurial profits
so we are not talking about redistribution in that sense. And that is why I
have not been able to understand why since World War II all the unions have
been so quiet about this. It is something that is just so simple, and yet there
they are, saying nothing about it.
MAN FROM AUDIENCE: What is going to be the effect when the ECU comes into
effect, how do you see that affecting the trade balance and the exchange rates
if they have the European currency come into effect, and suppose there is a,
perhaps, better value as far as the oil nations are concerned as far as using
ECU, or possibly even the Yen, instead of the dollar?
DR. EDWIN VIEIRA: Well, to the extent that they move their reserves from one to
the other, the purchasing power of the Federal Reserve Note has to go down.
MAN FROM AUDIENCE: Do you see that as a possibility?
HOWARD PHILLIPS: Sure, all of these things go together. One of the reasons the
dollar is the reserve currency is because America is the military leader of the
world. But, as we emasculate our military, as we turn over more power to the
United Nations, expand the U.N. police forces, as our own economy declines
relative to other economies, there is less incentive for other countries to
look to the United States for their reserve currency. And, if they can get a
better deal in Deutschmarks, or Yen, or in the Euro, they will go to that.
History is full of examples of nations losing power and their currency ceasing
to be the reserve, whether it was the Spanish currency, the French currency, or
the British pound sterling.
The dollar has reigned, but, as God punishes us for our sins, and as we commit
economic suicide, the dollar will pass, unless we turn around, and if the
dollar sinks, our economic standard of living is going to go into the tank.
About Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr.
Dr. Edwin Vieira, President of the National Alliance for Constitutional Money,
is a 1964 graduate of Harvard College who received an M.A. degree in 1966 from
Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and a PhD in 1969 from the same
institution. In 1973, he was awarded a degree by the Harvard Law School, from
which he graduated cum laude.
A member of the bars of Maryland, D.C., Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court, and
the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Third, Fourth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and
Eleventh Circuits. Dr. Vieira is an attorney in private practice specializing
in constitutional and labor law, and legal economic analysis.
He has served as a member of the Board of Fellows of the Public Service
Research Council, a consultant to the U.S. Department of Labor, and a research
staff member and speech writer in the 1972 U.S. Senate campaign of John Chafee
(R-R.I.).
Dr. Vieira has also been an assistant professor of law at Wake Forest
University School of Law, and Research Director of Wake Forest's Institute for
Labor Policy Analysis. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Citizens for
a Sound Economy, and has been a consultant to the National Right to Work
Committee and the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.
His published works include Pieces of Eight: The Monetary Powers and
Disabilities of the United States Constitution: a Study in Constitutional Law,
Old Greenwich, Connecticut: Devin-Adair Publishing Company, 1983.