From the smithsonian, a $100,000 bill
The reason they outlawed these things is because after narcotics prohibition & the war on drugs took effect, drug dealers would conduct large transactions using these because they were lightweight and represented a lot of money. $100 bills became the de-facto currency as a result.
And also because this represents $100,000 in gold and the US government has zero interest in tying their currency to a physical commodity.
HOLY CRAP. It just hit me - and that fact either makes me really smart or really stupid - but I found another reason we need sound money (in addition to all the normal reasons):
If the government has to tie our money to a physical commodity (gold, corn, rice, gypsy tears, whatever), then they have to impose limits on their own growth, or they’ll implode and go bankrupt and collapse.
It’s like this: If an illegal war costs 5 apples, and you only have 3 apples in total available currency value, out of which you run the government and all other functions of the nation, then you can’t very well go off and fight your dirty war. It’s physically impossible.
However, if you can just snap your fingers (or a printing press) and make paper apples with no real value, but trick / coerce people into accepting them, then you can do whatever you want… until people try getting their value from you, at which point the paper apples become so worthless you’re better off using them as toilet paper.
So the government doesn’t want to use physical value-backed money, because they want all the power they can grab… and a government paid for by physical value-backed money is self-limiting.^ I came to this realization while reading End the Fed. This is why Ron Paul says it’s no coincidence that the century of total war took place in the same century that welcomed central banking.
