From the desk of LNC Chair Steven Nekhaila

The dollar’s position as the world’s reserve currency depended on trust and restraint. It endured because the United States was expected to preserve the integrity of its money. That expectation has been undermined by chronic deficits, perpetual monetary expansion, and the political use of currency itself.

Over the decades that followed, Congress abused the dollar, allowing budget deficits that are mathematically impossible to cover. The United States began exporting its debt, globally socializing inflation rather than incurring it entirely at home. This abuse, combined with economic warfare and shifting alliances, has led many countries to seek alternatives to the dollar and U.S. Treasuries.

A multipolar world is now forming. History shows that multipolar systems are temporary phases. They are often marked by war, economic crisis, and the rebalancing of power before the emergence of a new unipolar order. The empires of the Dutch, the British, and now the Americans illustrate this historic cycle.

It began in 1910, when a group of powerful bankers, operating under code names, met in secret with Rhode Island Senator Nelson Aldrich at Jekyll Island, Georgia. There they drafted the framework for what would later become the Federal Reserve Act. In 1913, that framework was enacted into law under President Woodrow Wilson, establishing the United States’ third central bank. 

Despite its name, the Federal Reserve is a private institution, governed by political appointees, structured to operate beyond meaningful constitutional accountability, and designed to cartelize the banking system by granting member banks privileged access to money creation, institutional protection from failure, and profits underwritten by the public through inflation and debt.

Today, the Federal Reserve creates new money on behalf of Congress through the issuance and purchase of government bonds. This allows money to be created from nothing and injected into the banking system. Through credit expansion and fractional reserve lending, that money is multiplied into an ever-expanding supply of debt and currency, driving inflation and steadily debasing the dollar.

This system sits at the center of the roughly 99 percent decline in the dollar’s value since 1913. It explains why asset prices continue to climb, why savings are consumed by inflation, and why Congress is able to live far beyond its means. It finances war abroad, expands the welfare state at home, and postpones accountability by shifting the cost to future generations through inflation and debt.

Throughout history, fiat currencies follow the same path. Through expansion of the money supply, they inflate, distort economies, and ultimately collapse through default or hyperinflation. 

No fiat currency has been exempt from this morbid roll call.

Gold and silver reflect this reality. Their rise signals a repricing of trust. They are not increasing in value, the dollar is declining, and the world is beginning to recognize it.

The Libertarian Party calls for the abolition of the Federal Reserve, a return to sound money, and the repeal of legal tender laws so that free people may once again choose their medium of exchange. A free market cannot exist atop unlimited debt.