As is common knowledge in the patriot movement in general, the current currency in use by our country is doomed to fail. While there has been a lot of talk about what to do when this happens, I have not seen as much discussion as I would like to see on what to do for a new currency to take its place. I therefore offer the following suggestions for people to take and use as a starting point for this sort of discussion.

   The current currency that we are using basically consists of paper money labeled as "Federal Reserve Notes" and erroneously marked in denominations of "dollars". I am afraid the state of affairs in this country is such that people may have hopelessly confused the terms "dollar" and "Federal Reserve Note" such that whatever new currency is implemented may be hampered more than helped if it is also referred to as a "dollar". I therefore suggest that if a new post collapse currency is to be brought into being, that it should be given a new name. I would further suggest that if one were to look for a new name for a currency to be used in these united States of America by people who are willing to take appropriate actions to defend their God given inalienable rights, one could do a lot worse than to use the name "Burr". Why would I suggest the name of Burr? Simply because Aaron Burr is the person who shot and killed Alexander Hamilton.

   Now, while Alexander Hamilton did do a lot that was good for this country, he also caused a lot of harm as well. He was instrumental in implementing the first bank of the United States, and in doing a lot of other things that tended to undermine our Republican form of government. Therefore, if one wanted to choose a currency that by its very name would indicate how much one disliked central banks and the oppression that they invariably come to impose, then Burr is probably one of the best names that could be selected for such a purpose. For purposes of simplicity in the remainder of this discussion I will use the symbol "$B" to indicate the value of something in Burrs as opposed to the standard "$" sign.

   Now that a name for the new currency has been suggested, the next step is to decide exactly what it shall be composed of. There are many people in the patriot community who feel that paper is not a good thing to use for currency. I tend to agree with that school of thought. While it could work in theory, in practice paper currencies tend to end up being abused in ways that lead to their devaluation. Also, the problem of counterfeiting is particularly acute for paper currencies, and could become a key consideration in a post collapse scenario.

   For example, let us assume that because the city of Ithaca, New York, has been using it's own paper currency for local transactions, called "Ithaca Hours", that they will be less affected by a currency collapse than other parts of the country. As a result, their local economy might survive without too many obnoxious perturbations. The sort of problem that I would worry about might occur down the road. And that is quite simply that the good people of Ithaca can't do anything to their paper "Ithaca Hours" currency that a group with significant resources like the CIA couldn't also do. Thus, in theory, there would be no way to prevent the circulation of counterfeit "Ithaca Hours" in enough volume to successfully undermine that currency if a group like the CIA determined that there was an advantage to be gained by doing so. Given that a lot of the problems that have developed historically can be traced to various different games that have been played with currencies, then this is not something to just brush aside. Because even if you run into somebody who trusts the CIA, they must acknowledge that any currently existing national government would be capable of performing such an operation. And there are many nations out there that might be tempted to do such a thing merely out of spite if for no other reason. Just because such governments might not be that functional doesn't mean that their printing presses and other such facilities disappeared into the twilight zone.

   So, given that paper currency is out, the next logical alternative is to go back to what people did before paper currencies came into vogue. Which is to return to metal coins as the basic units of trade and value. There are going to be a lot of people who are immediately going to want to say that gold and or silver coins are the way to go. However, I am going to be different and argue that isn't necessarily so.

    The main reason is that one of the problems that one can run into with currency, especially a currency that consists of a specific substance, is that there might not be enough of it to go around. A society can experience all sorts of economic problems if they simply don't have enough of their currency in circulation to meet the various different demands for it. This was a problem that many of the thirteen original colonies ran into, and one of the reasons that they occasionally used paper money. There simply weren't enough gold and silver coins available. They had to have the freedom to define their own currencies independent of the Bank of England if they were going to remain economically viable. It is my opinion that any group attempting to restart a state or national currency using either gold and or silver as the basis for their coinage could run into similar problems. Also, the various different banking interests already have a strangle hold on gold production and pretty much have similar control over silver as well. It is possible to play games with metallic coinage currency such that one can cause perturbations in the system, and the easiest one to play is to simply start removing the coinage from circulation, thus ensuring that there won't be enough of it. Granted, it is harder to play games with metallic coinage currencies than with paper money, but that doesn't mean that games can't be played.

   It is therefore my suggestion that the Burr be defined not in terms of gold or silver, but in terms of copper. The main reason is that copper has also been a metal that has been used for currency since coinage has existed, and also that there is scads and scads of it out there. Thus, a lack of copper to make coinage out of should not be a significant problem. There might be those who would argue that a copper currency simply wouldn't be worth that much. There would be so much of it out there that one would need lots of it to do anything with.

   My response to that argument is quite simply, "who cares?" The current currency that we are using is worth even less than that on a per unit basis. The main concerns as I see it with a currency are that it's value is relatively stable and there is enough of it to serve as a reasonable medium of exchange. Exchanges of goods with exceedingly large values can be handled in a wide variety of ways, such that the fact that the base currency has a relatively low value is not a significant problem.

   It may help to get more specific about what we are dealing with here. For purposes of discussion, $B 1.00 will be a 480 grain (1 troy ounce) coin consisting of 456 grains of pure copper and 24 grains of tin and zinc. The size was determined by my idea that a 1 troy ounce coin would probably be the biggest coin that anybody would want to deal with on a regular basis, and the composition was taken from the alloy that was used for pennies from 1959-1962. Smaller denomination coins would be:

$B 0.50 = 240 grain coin, 228 grains pure copper, 12 grains tin and zinc
$B 0.25 = 120 grain coin, 114 grains pure copper, 6 grains tin and zinc
$B 0.10 = 48 grain coin, 45.6 grains copper, 2.4 grains tin and zinc

    Nickels and pennies in this system would be defined by varying the amount of copper and other metals in the alloy while keeping the size of the coins such that they would be reasonable to use. As I am not an expert on that sort of thing, I'll be more than glad to see other people's suggestions on how they should be handled.

    So, let's say that somebody wants to buy a car, and that the agreed sale price is $B 1,000. Well, if the exchange were to take place using $B 1.00 coins, then one would obviously need 1,000 of them, which all told would weigh 68.57 pounds. I can agree that people would probably not want to lug all that weight around in order to be able to make such a transaction. However, here's the beauty of the deal. Just because the monetary system and the basic coins are defined in terms of copper and "Burrs" does not mean that all transactions necessarily have to take place in them. The laws would have to be set up such that one could not be refused if payment for the car were offered in Burrs, but there would be nothing stopping the parties to the sale from deciding that they wanted to use either silver or gold if they thought it was more advantageous to themselves. It's just that the values of silver and gold would not be fixed relative to the value of the Burr. Thus, their value would be subject to fluctuation and would have to be agreed on by the parties to the transaction.

   However, if one were to define the value of their currency in gold and or silver, then one might get into problems at the "bottom" of the scale, where the average person is trying to buy a hamburger at a fast food place or a loaf of bread. It is my humble opinion that if the currency is set up in such a way that the average small value transactions can be handled adequately, the big boys are going to be smart enough to figure out ways to do things such that large transactions can be handled in a reasonable manner. Also, local communities are necessarily going to have to locate enough of the metal used for currency such that they can start coining their own on an as needed basis once the standards for it are defined. While gold or silver might be problematical in that regard, I seriously doubt that any group of people big enough to need to start minting their own coins aren't going to be able to find enough copper to put as many Burrs in circulation as they feel they're going to need.

  So, those are my ideas on what patriots might do for a new currency when it is determined that one is needed. I look forward to hearing comments and suggestions from other people on this subject.