The WaPo story on Liberty Dollars ("the only thing Liberty Dollars buy in these parts is a jail term") is either very incomplete or just wrong.

Privately issued money is entirely legal in the US, provided a few technical requirement are met to prevent it from being confused with actual US currency. Moreover there are a bunch of private monies in use out there, and have been for a long time. (Check out Ithaca Hours)

The Fed even has a publication explaining them, in case you want to start your own, from which...

"Private money is not prohibited if it complies with certain government regulations. It must be smaller in size than US currency and issued in denominations of a minimum of $1...."

The WaPo story gives the strong impression that using a private money like Liberty Dollars can "buy users a prison term" because it is "phony money". But that's just not so.

The fact that private money isn't legal tender does not make it illegal -- it only means people must agree to its use voluntarily, nobody can be compelled to accept it.. If they do agree to accept it in exchange or as payment of a debt, no problem, that's a contractual agreement just like agreeing to accept euros or yen or a gold watch or a used car or whatever else in an exchange or as payment of a debt. And there's nothing illegal about asking merchants to do so.

If there is anything illegal about the use of Liberty Dollars it would be that some users are trying to palm them off on merchants by confusing them with US currency, so somebody feels compelled to accept them. But the WaPo story also reports that the issuer has taken pains to avoid just such confusion....

"Norfed Executive Director Michael Johnson says the group isn't aiming to overthrow the American monetary system. 'We're not locking horns with the Fed. I mean, that's crazy,' he said... Norfed struck the first gold- and silver-backed coins -- which, to avoid charges of making its own money it calls 'rounds' -- in 1998 ...."

If that's the case -- that Liberty Dollars aren't being confused with US currency -- then the WaPo story hasn't revealed anything illegal that's going on here. Simply getting the claimed 2,500 merchants to accept them certainly isn't illegal. The Fed itself says so. So what is?

Thursday's editorial, "Doubting Inhofe," seems a bit defensive about Republican Sen. James Inhofe's recent scathing criticism of the credulous media coverage of global warming -- perhaps because Inhofe cites the Times' history of bad coverage of the issue, including the paper's  mid-70s warnings of "global cooling," now as passe as the Pet Rock.

"In a recent speech in the Senate, James Inhofe of Oklahoma called himself 'the senator who has spent more time educating about the actual facts about global warming.' Too bad he is not the senator who has spent more time educating himself.

"His speech, one in a series on global warming, was a brisk survey of the way the news media have covered climatic predictions over the past century. Cooling, warming -- we never get it right. Naturally, Mr. Inhofe dismisses what he calls media 'hysteria,' which is also a way of dismissing not just Al Gore but the consensus among mainstream scientists and the governments of nearly every industrialized nation concerning manmade climate change."

Strangely, the editorial doesn't offer much in the way of a rebuttal, simply assumes that Inhofe is wrong. Implicitly concedes some media faults:

"We do not expect Mr. Inhofe to see the light -- or feel the heat -- any time soon. He and his staff are serious collectors of opposition research. But the essence of his strategy is to seize upon a mistaken or overblown story to try to undermine the broad consensus. If that fails, he can always question his opponents’ politics and motives, as with his insinuations that environmentalists dreamed the whole thing up to scare people and raise money."

Inhofe, using research collected by the MRC's Business & Media Institute, noted one of three dire headlines that appeared in the media:

"A headline in the New York Times reads: 'Climate Changes Endanger World's Food Output.'"  

After reading all the headlines, Inhofe delivers the punch line: "All of this sounds very ominous. That is, until you realize that the three quotes I just read were from articles in 1975 editions of Newsweek Magazine and The New York Times, and Time Magazine in 1974....A December 29, 1974 New York Times article on global cooling reported that climatologists believed 'the facts of the present climate change are such that the most optimistic experts would assign near certainty to major crop failure in a decade.'"

Oops.

Inhofe has already responded to this morning's editorial in a press release: "My recent speeches detailing the embarrassing 100 year history of the media's relentless climate hype and its flip flopping between global cooling and warming scares must have struck a nerve in the old gray lady of the New York Times....A significant portion of my 50 minute Senate floor speech on September 25th was devoted to the New York Times history of swinging between promoting fears of a coming ice age to promoting fears of global warming....Now, fast forward to August 19, 2000, the New York Times was so eager to promote fears of the Arctic melting that it cheapened itself with a comical article declaring 'The North Pole is Melting.' The Times reporter, John Noble Wilford, noted that tourists visiting the North Pole saw open water and declared that 'The last time scientists can be certain the pole was awash in water, was more than 50 million years ago.' Wow. Pretty convincing stuff -- that is until the Times was forced to retract the story 10 days later and admit nothing unusual had occurred at the pole. No wonder today's Times editorial felt compelled to accuse me of 'a hysteria of doubt,' it was no doubt a clumsy attempt to distract from their climate reporting legacy of hysteria."

The New York Times ran a story looking at Nobel Laureates in medicine. According to the Times, “In the last 10 years, for instance, 12 Nobel Prizes in medicine have gone to American-born scientists working in the United States, 3 have gone to foreign-born scientists working in the United States, and just 7 have gone to researchers working outside the country.”

Pretty impressive, we’d say.

Moreover, of the “six most important medical innovations of the last 25 years,” four of them “were developed in American hospitals or by American companies,” and one other was “improved” in the U.S. The Times goes on to say, “Even when the initial research is done overseas, the American system leads in converting new ideas into workable commercial technologies.”

If there were more women on the top rungs of the corporate ladder, it might be easier to overlook the fact that the Hewlett-Packard board has booted two of them in 20 months. But there aren't -- the number of female CEOs at Fortune 500 companies can be counted on two hands. So you have to wonder: does gender have something to do with it?

Thanks to Tom Blumer for the link.

Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 10:57 AM | link