Texas and the gold bugs: Is the Lone Star State preparing to secede at last?

Whether you call them visionaries or call them chuckleheads--or anything in between--you should tip your hat to the Texas legislature and Gov. The Texas Gold Depository will position itself as an alternative to the U.S. government’s Fort Knox and the vault beneath the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. “When people in multiple states actually start using gold and silver instead of Federal Reserve Notes, it would effectively nullify the Federal Reserve and end the federal government’s monopoly on money,” the right-wing, Alabama-based Mises Institute wrote on its website Monday, heralding the possible launch of “a system of gold and silver ‘certificates’ that could be traded as a type of money.” Others “go further in blowing the secessionist dog whistle,” observes Brian Murphy of New York’s Baruch College, writing at Talking Points Memo. Among them is Geoffrey Pike of Wealth Daily, who writes that the Texas depository “is symbolic in retaining some liberty, similar to gun ownership in this country.” To be sure, Pike isn’t advising his followers to dump their gold into the Texas vault quite as yet--after all, he writes, Texas is a government too, not entirely to be trusted. Despite Abbott’s assertion that the depository law will “repatriate $1 billion of gold bullion from the Federal Reserve in New York to Texas,” the state doesn’t appear to own $1 billion in physical gold, and what it does own isn’t at the Federal Reserve.