The Liberty Lamp: Libertarian News & Editorials

The on-line payment system eGold has been brought to court by a federal Grand Jury and the Secret Service. The company has posted a press release defending itself:

"Dr. Douglas Jackson, Chairman and Founder of e-gold, speaking on behalf of his fellow Directors and both companies vigorously denies the charges, taking particular exception to the allegations that either company ever turned a blind eye to payments for child pornography or for the sale of stolen identity and credit card information.

Dr. Jackson states, "With regard to child pornography, the government knows full well that their allegations are false, yet they highlight these irresponsible and purposely damaging statements in order to demonize e-gold in the eyes of the public. During the Inquisition, accusations of witchcraft and heresy were used to sanctify torture and seizures of property. In post 9-11 America, child porn and terrorism serve as the denunciations of choice. e-gold, however, as a matter of incontrovertible fact, is the most effective of all online payment systems in detecting and interdicting abuse of its system for child pornography related payments. e-gold Ltd. is a founding member of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's (NCMEC) Financial Coalition to Eliminate Child Pornography. e-gold is the only member institution to demonstrate with hard, auditable data a dramatic reduction of such payments to virtually zero, while billions of child porn dollars continue to flow through other (heavily regulated) payment systems. [Most members, that is, all the banks and credit card associations are utterly unable to even provide an estimate of the volume of such payments processed by their systems. eBay's PayPal subsidiary, who may have the ability to make such a determination, has refused to do so and has indicated they destroy payment records after two years.] What is worse, until August 2005 when NCMEC courageously broke ranks with US law enforcement agencies and began directly notifying e-gold of criminal sites via the CyberTipline, component agencies of the US Department of Justice purposely concealed their knowledge of child pornography abuses from e-gold's investigators, subordinating actual crime fighting to a policy agenda designed to dirty up e-gold."

A Series of Lawsuits

This legal attack on eGold is only the first of a series. As The Liberty Lamp reported last year, The Liberty Dollar suffered what amounted to a campaign of fear, instigated by the US Treasury Department, alleging that the private company's product was somehow a fraud. The Liberty Dollar responded by filing a lawsuit, which aims to force the federal courts to reaffirm previous statements by various federal agencies that attested to the legitimacy of this alternative currency. Both eGold and the Liberty Dollar have long histories of customer satisfaction, and the ability and desire to investigate crime far surpassing that of US law enforcement. The founders of eGold have run a very tight ship, so tight, that some privacy seeking customers have begun to look for other free market competition, such as the Panama based ePay. ePay accepts eGold as a funding method, so those who wish to can transfer out of eGold and to this new on-line payment system.

It's the Economy, Stupid!

The timing of these lawsuits and government intimidation campaigns comes at an interesting, if not somewhat suspicious time. According to the Free Market News Network (FMNN), The US Dollar isn't doing so well these days. Who'd have thought, right? In an unbacked, fiat currency system, the only way to keep individuals from switching to more useful alternatives is to force them to take the inferior "paper" money through threat of violence, whether it be death, imprisonment, or fine. With the US Dollar on its increased rate of decline due, in large part to the Iraq War and the "War on Terror" in general. All this spending is paid for by running deficits, though many Democrats allegedly would like it to be otherwise. The result? Increased inflation, as high as 8-10% by some estimates (see FMNN for info on this). It is the subtle, hidden tax that no one can get away from!

...Or can they? It is possible to avoid this hidden tax if you have gold. Goldcentral.com has f ree shipping with your first gold order.

Labels: federal government, liberty dollar, online currency, precious metals