{Editor’s Note: This is the 4th installment of a series of articles attempting to address the 32 questions posed by Ron Paul in his recent farewell speech given in front of Congress. Check out the previous installment, "Why Can't Americans Manufacture Rope and Other Products From Hemp?"}"The Congress shall have power...To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;" - U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 5"No State shall ...make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts" - U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 10, Clause 1For almost 100 years of it's history the United States, along with much of the rest of the world,  used a currency system based on the gold standard.  The "Classical Gold Standard" as Murray Rothbard referred to it, lasted from 1815 until around the time of the creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913.  It is no coincidence that this time frame saw unprecedented economic growth both in the United States as well as most of the civilized world.  Having a single, stable currency that could be relied upon from place to place, day by day was essential in fueling the economic growth and innovation of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.This all began to change in 1913 with the passage of the Federal Reserve Act, when the U.S. Congress created the private central banking monopoly known as the Federal Reserve System.  The Act was passed with little resistance from Congress, despite the fact that it was in clear violation of the Constitutional mandate that Congress would coin money.   Around this time many countries that were entering World War I went off of the gold standard in order to pay for the war.  Governments created so much money they could no longer keep their pledges to redeem their currencies for gold.  Other nations would follow suit, and a period of unstable monetary conditions throughout the world would follow.  Only the United States, which entered the war late and did not inflate the currency as much as other countries remained on the gold standard, only managed by the Federal Reserve System.In response to the the stagnating economy in the early 1930's that would come to be known as the "Great Depression", the United States finally went off the gold standard completely in 1933 so that it could have greater power to create more money and pay for the many social programs promised in FDR's "New Deal".  At the same time, FDR ordered the confiscation of gold from American citizens, forced them to take $20/oz for their gold before immediately revaluing gold at $35/oz.  Essentially the entire population of the United States was immediately defrauded 57% of the value of their money.  In the 1960's, physical silver was also removed from the coins in circulation.  This was a preview of the final step towards a permanent inflationary economy that took place in 1971, when President Nixon temporarily permanently decoupled the dollar from gold  in order to pay for the "guns and butter" of the coinciding Vietnam War and welfare programs in the 1960's. Why Are Americans Not Allowed To Use Gold and Silver As Legal Tender?While it is again legal for Americans to own gold, only Federal Reserve notes may be used as legal tender.  And the reason is the same as it was when  the Federal Reserve was first created in 1913: in order to enable the government to spend money at will without having to directly tax the citizenry, who would surely not put up with the tax rates it would take to "pay as we go" for the countless government bureaucracies, liabilities, and wars.This is why Americans are not allowed to use gold and silver as currency.  If gold and silver were legal tender, nobody would use Federal Reserve notes and the government would be unable to keep up it's charade of continuously creating new money out of thin air to finance the welfare state and the warfare state. In the end, we all pay for it with a devalued currency.Only when society as a whole begins to embrace sound currency as a vital issue can we hope to restrain the ever growing tentacles of government. There is hope, and thanks largely to the work of Ron Paul and the liberty movement, the idea of gold and silver as currency are once again becoming mainstream.Receive access to ALL of our EXCLUSIVE bonus audio content – including “Conspiracy Corner”, “Degenerate Gamblers” and the “League of Liberty Podcast” by joining the Lions of Liberty Pride and supporting us on Patreon!