Big news today

What a way to kick off the new blog. Which, by the way, I created to give my own take on developments surrounding the American Liberty Dollar, or ALD for short. I'll be publishing the monthly newsletters, and giving my own analysis, as well as commenting on important issues as they arise. On that note, on to the newsletter...

NORFED is dead, gone, and buried. What's left? A lot. For starters, the business hasn't folded, it's just changed names. This happens fairly often in business, and they were having trouble with their bank, so all in all I'm not surprised. I expect business to carry on as usual. The rounds and notes are still there, as is the next planned cross-over to $50 (when the 30 day moving average stays above $16 for 45 consecutive days). eLDs are still around, and still convertible. The vault with all the silver and gold is still there, and still being regularly audited.

So what's gone? All the political rhetoric. I'm happy as hell that Bernard threw off the political baggage. It tends to draw out the, shall we say, 'unconventional' among us. We can now bring in real economists for the heavy lifting problems, without them politely declining because they don't want to deal with the tinfoil-hat-wearing, Bible-toting, tax-evading, OMG-the-gubbmint-is-stealing-my-civil-rights crowd. For those of you who read the Yahoo! group, you know who I'm talking about. With the ALD now squarely aimed at solving monetary issues, I'm sure the group of activists will solidify around a focused core.

What's new? Convertibility into United States Dollars (USD)! I've heard stories of merchants complaining that they can't convert their customers' ALDs back into USD to deposit at the bank. This has been a thorn in their side for a long time now, and with convertibility, that problem goes away. This move will add traction to merchant acceptance.

There's a problem, however. LibSrv is planning to buy back ALD at whatever the going discount rate is. That's fine, but Merchants aren't going to want to take ALD at face value then buy back USD at the kind of discounts LibSrv is offering (upwards of 10%). In order to stay competitive with credit cards, LibSrv will have to buy back ALD at no less than 95% of face, or only a 5% discount, or the Merchants will complain that it's too expensive to redeem ALD for USD. Also, the Merchant Discount will have to be pegged to face, or Merchants will complain that it's too hard to plan projected earnings with any certainty. This is especially important to smaller Merchants, who need to know whether they'll be able to pay for electricity next month.

What's to come? Only time will tell, but I'm enthusiastic about this change. More work needs to be done, but Bernard has taken the Liberty Dollar a step in the right direction.