t byfield wrote:
> No Deposit, Less Return
> by Declan McCullagh (declan at well.com)
>
> 3:00 a.m. 27.Oct.99.PDT
> WASHINGTON -- US currency should
> include tracking devices that let the
> government tax private possession of
> dollar bills, a Federal Reserve official says.
>
> The longer you hold currency without
> depositing it in a bank account, the less
> that cash will be worth, according to a
> proposal from Marvin Goodfriend, a senior
> vice president at the Federal Reserve
> Bank of Richmond.
This is indeed curious -- for the proposal is very close to a key proposal in Ezra Pound's "economics." I don't remember whether he got this from Gesell or Douglas or someone else. His proposal, however, was that bill's simply depreciate in value. So a dollar bill held longer than (say) 6 months would only have .90 value, etc. I think in one version of it the bill carries coupons which get removed at stated intervals (like the sell before date on milk).
Pound, of course, thought the Federal Reserve Bank was a conspiracy.
Carrol