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Texas And Florida Are Quietly Reviving The Financial Stability Of The Gold Standard

Two states now let citizens spend metal instead of dollars. It is the closest thing to Hayek’s competing currencies this country has ever attempted — and it arrives just as Congress has quietly conceded his central point.

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On Sept. 1, Texas will begin recognizing gold and silver as legal tender. Last month, Florida’s own legal tender law took effect. Neither state is minting coins with a governor’s face on them. Neither is abolishing the dollar. What they are doing is stranger and more consequential: building a payment rail on which an American can hold metal, swipe a card, and settle a debt in something the Federal Reserve cannot print.

Texas’ law, HB 1056, is the more ambitious of the two. It directs the state comptroller to stand up an electronic system, backed by bullion held in the Texas Bullion Depository, that converts a holder’s metal at the point of sale. Legal tender recognition begins Sept. 1; the transactional system is due no later than May 1, 2027. Florida’s HB 999 took a different route to the same destination — licensed private custodians holding allocated, audited, insured metal, with electronic transfer instead of coins across a counter. Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, and Utah have passed their own versions. Together, those six states produce north of $5 trillion a year, more than Germany and more than Japan.

This is not a coin-collector story, and it is not nostalgia. It is a serious modern attempt by states to give ordinary people a usable alternative to the dollar — and it arrives at a moment when a great many serious people have concluded they need one.

Everyone Else Already Left

Consider what has happened to the thing in your wallet.

The national debt passed $40 trillion this month. Interest on that debt will exceed $1 trillion this fiscal year — more than the federal government spends on national defense and the fastest-growing line in the budget. The dollar has shed roughly one-tenth of its value against major currencies over the past year. Gold trades near $4,530 an ounce, up about 35 percent from a year ago.

Foreign central banks noticed a while ago. They have bought roughly 1,000 tonnes of gold a year for four straight........

© The Federalist