About the Nothing Store

As Obama and crew print and borrow more and more money, the U.S. dollar faces an uncertain future.

But three cheers for our Unmighty Dollars -- print as many as you like. They're already worth Nothing, so they can't go down in value.

Comments? Email The Nothing Store team!

The Nothing Store issues new currency weekly.

Counterfeiting Instructions:

Click on a denomination above, print the bills, cut them out, and stuff in an envelope. Send to your congressman or senator marked as a CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION. They'll get the message! For the address of your congressman, click here for senators and here for representatives.

Money, A Little History

Once I lived the life of a millionaire,
Spending all my money, I didn't care.
Taking my friends for a mighty fine time,
Buying bootleg liquor, champagne and wine.

Then I began to fall so low,
Lost all my good friends, had no place to go.
If I ever get my hands on a dollar again,
I'm gonna hold on to it till that eagle grins.

       -From "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" by Jimmie Cox

These are funny times for money. One day politicians loan it to their pals who run the banks, another day they buy failing car companies, the next day they give it to people to buy new cars. All the while they are borrowing it from the Chinese.

Of course they don't actually have any money, so they pass a law to take more of it from your paycheck so that they can give more of it to.....you guessed it.....the bankers and the car buyers and those Chinese holding all those IOUs.

Got that?

Oh, almost forgot, they don't take it from everyone's paycheck. Some folks have figured out that if they give the politicians these things called "votes" or "campaign contributions," they get back things called "subsidies," or "tax breaks," which are sort of like money, only better because you don't have to work for them.

Seems confusing, but they must have it all figured out. After all, they're always talking about it: taxes, spending, budgets. Harvard economist says this...Yale economist says that... Blah, blah, bla....

It makes us dizzy, so we fall back on our maxim: The difference between smart people and dumb people is that dumb people don't know how dumb they are.

We're dumb, but perhaps the lessons of history might be a help.

When Depression-era blues artists first sang Jimmie Cox's lyrics about holding dollars until "the eagle grinned," people imagined a solid shiny coin wrapped tightly in their fists. But not too long after the song became popular, Roosevelt confiscated their coins and made it illegal for citizens to own gold. The punishment was a $10,000 fine and five years in jail. Any why did Roosevelt do this? Simply because those in power at the time wanted to print more paper dollars in order to control the economy. Just like Obama's chief of staff said 75 years later, they didn't want to "waste a crisis." And why did they want to control the economy? Simply because they thought they knew better how people should behave than the people themselves.

This is how elitists always think.

The result? An economic downturn that turned into a depression that lasted a decade and legitimized the government Ponzi scheme to control the economy and direct people's lives.

We have been paying the price ever since.

Then, in 1974, with inflation on the rise, an unusual coalition of fiscal conservatives and liberal Democrats gave Richard Nixon his wish to again make it legal for citizens to hold gold. At the time, you could trade about 40 dollars for one ounce of gold. By 1980, that same ounce could be traded for 800 dollars.

For the next twenty years, beginning with Reagan and even in the Clinton years, there was a return to some fiscal common sense by government. Gold could be traded for fewer dollars. That touch of sanity began to unravel around 1998, with the bailout of the gigantic house of cards called Long Term Capital Management.

Now, in the waning months of 2009, you must trade more than 1,000 dollars to get an ounce of gold. And India just traded nearly seven billion U.S. dollars for 200 tons of the stuff. Yikes. What does that say about their view of our politicians?

Those Indians are a lot smarter than we are, so we think we'll grab a coin or two and hold on until the eagle grins.