Let it be done. That's what it means, as best I can tell. The government says that this is legal tender, but you accept that a certain amount of tender is worth a certain amount of goods or services. If you don't accept that, no commerce is possible and the economy breaks down into barter.
The ForEx market is huge - large fractions of the US GDP are exchanged on a daily basis. I think the actual barrier is that taxes have to be paid in the fiat currency, which involves an extra step if the transaction is completed in a foreign currency. There's a fee every time currency is converted, unless you're an institutional player in the ForEx market, trading deposits denominated in a given currency. Even so, there are still transaction costs involved with acquiring that currency.
Besides which, printing unlimited amounts of X leads to a situation in which X is worthless. Post-Versailles Germany or current day Zimbabwe are the examples that spring to mind most readily - central banks have a lot of power, but markets have even more power.
I can't think of a single reason to accept gold as a currency if I won't accept paper - at least you can burn paper for fuel. Gold is just shiny and very stable, it has far less intrinsic value than people seem to believe it does. |
