Monetary reform describes any movement or theory that proposes a different system of supplying money and financing the economy from the current system.
Monetary reformers may advocate any of the following, among other proposals:
- A return to the gold standard (or silver standard or bimetallism).
- The issuance of interest-free credit from a government-controlled and fully owned central bank. These interest free but repayable loans would be used for public infrastructure and productive private investment. This proposal seeks to overcome the charge that debt-free money would cause inflation.
- The issuance of social credit - "debt-free" money issued directly from the Treasury - rather than the sourcing of fresh money from a central bank in the form of interest-bearing bonds. These direct cash payments would be made to "replenish" or compensate the populace for the net losses some monetary reformers believe the populace suffers in a fractional reserve-based monetary system.
- The enforcement of full reserve banking for the privately owned banking system.
Famous quotes containing the words monetary and/or reform:
“In our time, the curse is monetary illiteracy, just as inability to read plain print was the curse of earlier centuries.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“Both of us felt more anxiety about the South—about the colored people especially—than about anything else sinister in the result. My hope of a sound currency will somehow be realized; civil service reform will be delayed; but the great injury is in the South. There the Amendments will be nullified, disorder will continue, prosperity to both whites and colored people will be pushed off for years.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)