As trust in the Federal Reserve System and its fiat dollar continues to plummet worldwide, legislation making gold and silver into legal tender was given final approval by Arizona lawmakers on Monday when the Republican-led state House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favor of the bill. With tremendous grassroots support, an earlier version of the precious-metals measure sailed through the GOP-controlled Arizona Senate in late February.
If the legislation is signed by Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, Arizona would become the second state to officially define gold and silver as legal tender. Utah adopted a similar law two years ago, garnering widespread praise among free market-oriented economists and sending shockwaves through the financial community. Since then, as the privately owned Federal Reserve and its wild policies have come under increasingly fierce criticism, the movement to restore sound money has been spreading across America like wildfire. Over a dozen states already have similar efforts underway.
Under the Arizona SB 1439 legislation, precious metals would be treated just like debt-based fiat dollars for taxation and regulation purposes. However, unlike fiat dollars, nobody would be forced to accept gold or silver currency. While the original Senate bill would have allowed citizens to pay state taxes in any form of money, including precious metals, the House added an amendment striking that provision in an effort to ease opposition from the state Department of Revenue.
Republican State Rep. David Livingston, who added the amendment exempting tax authorities from having to accept gold and silver, told reporters that the Department of Revenue had requested the change. “They just didn’t want to have to deal with it right now,” the key lawmaker involved in getting the measure approved told the Associated Press, adding that the amendment was not indicative of problems with the bill. “They wanted to make sure they wouldn’t be required to take gold and silver.”
As a financial advisor in his private life, Rep. Livingston understands better than most lawmakers why the bill is needed. He also predicted that business would embrace the use of precious metals as currency — possibly as a way to beat competitors that cling to increasingly depreciated Federal Reserve notes. “My clients have been buying gold and silver like crazy,” Rep. Livingston explained, echoing similar sentiments expressed in the broader global precious-metals markets as gold saw record demand last year.
In an interview with Bloomberg news, state Sen. Chester Crandell, who sponsored the bill in the Senate, said making gold and silver legal tender is the “logical thing” for Arizona to do. “I think you look at some of the things that are happening and the amount of money printed by the Federal Reserve and who has control of that money, and I think anybody would be concerned,” he noted, presumably referring to the unprecedented measures taken by the U.S. central bank in recent years — conjuring trillions of dollars into existence, bailing out cronies and foreign banks, manipulating markets, and more.
Sen. Crandell acknowledged that all of Arizona, of course, would not immediately start conducting business in precious metals. However, like numerous economists and experts backing the bill have explained, there are more than a few compelling reasons to get the ball rolling and give state citizens the ability to choose among various forms of currency in private exchange without being subjected to additional tax liabilities.
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