By US Mint Director Ed Moy

Editors Note: Below are two speeches give by US Mint Director Ed Moy concerning the designs on US coinage and his desire to preside over a new period of design excellence at the mint.

On Sept. 19, 2007, Directory Moy gave the following presentation at the FIDEM “Art Of The Medal” conference held in Colorado Springs, Colorado and hosted by the ANA. Below are his comments from that speech.

Thank you, Ken, and good morning everyone. I am delighted to be here and want to begin by congratulating FIDEM, its President Carlos Baptista de Silva, and its Honorary President Lars Lagerquist on the 70th Anniversary of FIDEM and the 30th Anniversary of the FIDEM Art Medal World Congress.

I also want to say thank you to the ANA and its President Barry Stuppler for hosting this event and inviting me to participate. The United States Mint has enjoyed an excellent relationship with the American Numismatic Association for many years and is delighted to take part in the FIDEM Art Medal World Congress. This is my second visit to the ANA museum, and I am looking forward to attending the FIDEM show there and seeing your theme, Passages to Reconstruction, carried out in many beautiful medallic sculptures on display.

As the 38th Director of the United States Mint, I’d like to say “welcome” to all the artists from other nations around the world as well as to our American medallic artists, including Don Everhart and Jim Licaretz of the United States Mint. I also wanted to say a special hello to Don Scarinci, who serves on our Citizens Coin Advisory Commission. I have read Don’s treatise on arts medals and for those who will attend his seminar, you are in for a special treat.

I have been Director for more than a year now and am enjoying every aspect of it.

On a personal level, it has been wonderful to have my father stop complaining about my not going to medical school. Now he can brag to his friends that his son “finally has a job where he makes a lot of money.” And of course, my Chinese friends have renamed me from Moy Goon Fong to “Moy Ca-Ching.” My really hip friends have taken that a step further - “Moy Bling Bling.” (more…)

By Patrick Heller, Market Update

There has been a constant stream of terrible financial news over the past nine months. This news makes investors leery of owing US dollars or dollar-denominated paper assets like stocks or bonds. When investors try to protect themselves by switching to other assets or currencies, the result is a decline in the values of the dollar and American stocks and bonds.

Apparently, the top priorities of the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve is that the US stock market must be supported and the price of gold held down, so as to avoid a massive exit from the dollar and American stocks and bonds. To accomplish this manipulation, the Federal Reserve trades short-term repurchase agreements with 20 approved primary government securities dealers. Among American dealers on this approved list are Bank of America Securities, Bear Stearns, Cantor Fitzgerald, Countrywide Securities, Daiwa Securities America, Goldman Sachs, Greenwich Capital Markets, HSBC Securities (USA), JPMorgan Securities, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch Government Securities, and Morgan Stanley. As long as these companies use the liquidity provided by the repurchase agreements to do the government’s bidding, they will be allowed to make profits from the fees of the transactions.

When significant negative financial news is released, government officials know that this could scare investors into selling their US dollars and stocks and bonds and buying gold and silver with the proceeds. To diminish this effect, the Federal Reserve and Treasury (who know the bad news before its public release) give orders to boost stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) and to knock down the price of gold. Read the Full Numismaster Article Here

In a recent Commentary by Barron’s Editorial Editor THOMAS G. DONLAN, there was a short addendum added to the end of the article which we felt was worth sharing. Below are Mr. Donlan’s comments

“THOMAS GRESHAM WAS NO FOOL. “Bad money drives out the good,” he said in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Canny people have been saying it ever since, and acting accordingly.

In 20th-century America, gold was the first good money to go. First, it was driven out of circulation by a flood of paper; then the government confiscated much of the gold its citizens were hoarding.

Silver dollars were the next driven out, and silver quarters and silver dimes weren’t far behind. In 1965, it cost more than 10 cents worth of silver to make a dime. First, the government made it illegal to melt down coins, then it took the silver out.

Pennies were next. Until 1982, there was enough copper in a penny to pose a temptation to melters and hoarders.

The pennies made after 1982, though intrinsically almost worthless at the time, now contain more than a pennyworth of zinc and copper. And there’s more than five cents worth of copper and nickel in a nickel coin.

Since 2006, it has been illegal to melt down pennies and nickels for their metal; now there are active proposals to substitute baser metals for zinc, copper and nickel.

There is a better alternative: Create good money, and maintain its value.”

Something has happened to our money. And no, not just that the American peso has dropped historically against the euro, making trips to France and Italy half-again more costly than they used to be.

Rather, our $5, $10 and $20 bills and our coins have suffered a severe drop in quality when considered as art.

Yes, money is art, whether it’s the engraving that makes up the bills or the bas-relief sculpture on our coins. There are long histories in both as art mediums, from the intricate lozenge-and-dot portraits of the 17th and 18th centuries and the commemorative medallions struck from the Renaissance on.

But craftsmanship at the mint and at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing has declined precipitously, leaving us with wallets full of bad art. This wouldn’t be so noticeable if the older coins and bills hadn’t been so beautifully made.

“When I compare our money with European money, ours has fallen quite flat in design and execution,” says Dan Mayer, printmaker for Pyracantha Press at Arizona State University.

Look at an old bill, before the anti-counterfeiting “improvements” of the 21st century. Not only are the portraits more lifelike - there’s a personality behind the eyes in Grant’s picture on the $50 bill - the designs also are fuller, more detailed and graceful, full of trailing acanthus and olive leaves.

The vegetative growth and architectural motifs that used to grace our bills announced our national fecundity. We were a waxing moon, a rising tide. The scrollwork and border ornament recalled the inventive bustle of the Renaissance. Read Full Arizona Republic Article

By Larry Edelson

Gold fell from its record-high of $1,038 set on March 17 down to the recent $850 level. But Edelson does not believe this is the end of gold’s bull market based on two possible macroeconomic background scenarios for gold.

The first scenario Edelson outlines is if the Fed’s efforts to save the U.S. economy and financial system succeed and the credit crisis eases.

Under this scenario, the Fed’s recent actions of slashing interest rates and pumping money into the economy are successful — the U.S. economy recovers and global growth resumes.

As a result, the credit crunch eases, and money flows through the pipeline. The big commercial and investment banks finally stop taking massive write-downs on bad mortgage securities, foreclosures shrink, home prices stop hemorrhaging, and home sales pick up. Businesses start hiring and consumers resume spending.

In this scenario, many on Wall Street would say that gold’s bull market would be over. However, if the Fed is successful at turning the U.S. economy and credit crisis around, it will only be because it flooded the system with hundreds of billions of paper dollars, creating wild inflation. If the economy were to pick up on top of that, between inflation and resumed economic growth, global demand for gold would soar.

The argument could then be made that when the economy turns back up, the Fed will head off inflation by aggressively raising interest rates, choking off the bull market in gold. But, from late 2004 to mid-2006, the Fed raised interest rates 17 times, in steady quarter-point increments to 5.25% from a low of 1%. And over that period, gold surged 127%! (more…)