US to introduce new dollar gold standard? Bill HR5404

HR5404 bill introduced to congress

HR 5404 A bill to define the dollar as a fixed weight of gold was introduced to the Committee on Financial Services on 22nd March 2018 by congressman Alex Mooney.
Mooney is a republican and seemingly a Trump supporter. You can find out more about him here:
https://mooney.house.gov/

More info on the bill

Here are some noteable quotes from the bill:

• “Under the Federal Reserve's 2 percent inflation objective, the dollar loses half of its purchasing power every generation, or 35 years.”
• “American families need long-term price stability to meet their household spending needs, save money, and plan for retirement.”
• “The gold standard puts control of the money supply with the market instead of the Federal Reserve.”
• “Under the gold standard through 1913 the United States economy grew at an annual average of four percent.”
• “Effective 30 months after the date of enactment of this Act – (1) the secretary of the Treasury 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 the Federal Reserve notes exchangeable with gold at the statutory gold definition for the dollar.”

HR5404 can be read here:
https://www.congress.gov/115/bills/hr5404/BILLS-115hr5404ih.pdf

Thoughts

Currently the bill is in summary progress so it has a number of hoops to jump through before it would be signed into law. It would need to pass the house, pass the senate and be agreed by the president before becoming law. However, I think it demonstrates that there are some congressmen in power who still respect the value of honest money and understand the damage that inflation has done to the middle class.

Supposing HR5404 gets signed into law in 6 months, that would mean that the US would need to transfer to a gold standard by Spring 2021. The mere passing of this bill would send gold rocketing over the next few years and, assuming the US gold stocks are intact, it would neutralise the national debt. While there is no mention of the national debt in the bill, this is clearly a major benefit of a gold standard to the US administration. However, as the gold price rises against federal reserve notes, so does everything else, which means the public worldwide would suffer crippling inflation if they hold FRN dollars and other fiat currencies.

HR5404 is certainly worth keeping an eye on to see how far it gets.

Sources

Image source: Pixabay
Thank you to evolutionary energy arts on YouTube for bringing this to my attention. You can find his channel here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd1BwLPKKXBgReBnimOX6JA