LPC 2021 Platform Committee Initial Report
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Revise: V.8 Money and Banking

Recommended by a vote of 9 to 1 with 1 abstention
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Summary

The existing plank on this subject is repetitive and unnecessarily wordy. It also doesn't mention cryptocurrency or the way government makes use of banks to track people, which have become important issues in recent years. This replacement simplifies the language, gives equal treatment to cryptocurrency and gold as alternative kinds of money, specifically addresses requirements for reporting of transactions, and drops one obsolete point, while still addressing all of the remaining important points mentioned in the current plank.

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We call for the repeal of all legal tender laws and reaffirm the right to private ownership of, and contracts for, gold. We favor abolition of government fiat money and compulsory government unit of account. We favor the use of a free-market commodity standard, such as gold coins denominated by units of weight. We favor deregulation of financial institutions and other businesses by ending the following:

A. Requiring the chartering of banks.

B. State usury laws.

C. The limiting of branch banking.

D. The governmental definition of different classes of financial institutions.

E. The proscription of types of business which financial institutions are allowed to conduct including the underwriting and sale of insurance.

F. The prohibition of branches of out-of-state banks.

G. All laws or regulations controlling, regulating, or prohibiting the raising of funds or the sale of securities by an individual, partnership or corporation for any legal business purpose.

H. The Equal Credit Opportunity Act, the Community Reinvestment Act and other measures that force banks and mortgage companies to fulfill quotas in making mortgage loans, and the federally sponsored lending code drawn up by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that seeks to impose such quotas under the guise of voluntary social responsibility. Such measures enforce governmental group preferences and will artificially channel scarce capital into unproductive projects.

Because money is so important and the government has a historical tendency to abuse it, we call for ending government definition of and control over money. Individuals and businesses should be free to use gold, cryptocurrencies, or any other medium of exchange, store of value, or unit of account as they choose, without being subject to additional taxation or reporting requirements.

We favor deregulation of the financial industry by ending the following:

A. Restrictions on banks providing other services or on other entities providing services traditionally provided by banks, or government definition and chartering of different classes of banks.

B. Requirements that transactions be reported to the government.

C. Regulation or manipulation of interest rates.

D. Policies that require lenders to meet quotas for making loans to demographic groups or geographic areas, or to make loans to borrowers who do not meet their standards of creditworthiness.

E. Laws and regulations controlling or prohibiting the raising of funds or the sale of securities, or "protecting" ordinary people from buying them.