by David Wolman
On the one-world money front, there are scattered dreamers out there, outfits like the Single Global Currency Association, and supporters of something called the Terra TRC (for Trade Reference Currency). In the 1940s, the legendary John Maynard Keynes conceived of a supranational currency that he called the Bancor.17 The idea can be likened to the constructed language of Esperanto—one common tongue for all humankind. Why not one money for one world? Supporters of Esperanto believe it could someday reduce miscommunication and, by extension, promote world peace. Backers of a single Earth currency envision a great smoothing of transactions, an end to damaging currency speculation, and less economic turmoil, which could mean greater prosperity for all.18
While Esperanto struggles for credibility, some economists seriously consider how a one-world currency might happen, albeit in a highly theoretical future.19 One idea is for this new currency to be an expanded version of something that already exists: Special Drawing Rights. SDR is really a crossbreed of four of the world’s most significant currencies, and it’s used for particular kinds of settlements at the IMF. Perhaps the SDR is the embryo of a new global currency. Not that this would be a geopolitical walk in the park. “No global government . . . means no global central bank, which means no global currency. Full stop,” says UC Berkeley economist Barry Eichengreen .20 And a world government, lest we forget, is an apocalyptic prospect to a hell of a lot of people.
At the same time, however, many Americans’ image of the future incorporates this idea of a global currency—one Tolkienesque coin to rule them all. According to a Pew Research Center survey, 31 percent of Americans think an asteroid will smack into Earth by 2050, but 41 percent of them said they expect to see a shift to a global currency. We have it in our minds that dramatic change is on the horizon, even if the variable currencies and colorful cash we currently trade in and travel with seems like a permanent aspect of modern life.
MY LAST DAY IN REYKJAVIK, I make my way to a sparkling new twenty-story office tower by the waterfront. Friends had told me about it: an outsized eyesore from Iceland’s meltdown. It’s now virtually empty. I pass two construction workers in the lobby, but neither pays me any attention as I walk to the elevator. When the doors open onto the top floor, I walk into an empty gray-carpeted suite with windows looking down on the mini city and across the water to bluffs in the distance. In front of one window, four metal chairs are aligned side by side facing out to the Reykjavik harbor.
Visiting a place like Iceland and thinking about money is different than doing so in a megalopolis like New York or London. There, everything is money. Not necessarily in the “greed is good” sense, but in the way that a cityscape is entirely manmade. Virtually every square inch of it involves economic activity, and in each office, apartment, restaurant, gallery, and bar, commerce is king. In a place like Reykjavik, though, you can look right past the city onto inhospitable wilderness. Gazing out at the stark volcanic landscapes, the social forces that give money its value come into focus. Among the untouched rocks and snow, banknotes can’t buy you jack.
After leaving the ghostly office tower, I meet coin expert Anton Holt in the lobby of the Central Bank of Iceland. A broad, mustachioed white-haired man of fifty-five years who reminds me of Captain Kangaroo, Holt is the curator of the Numismatic Museum at the bank, as well as the curator of the nation’s coin collection, so long as the government doesn’t sell it off to raise a little dough.
We’re the only people here today who are interested in old forms of money; meanwhile, a steady flow of stern-looking men in suits files in and out of the bank, talking into cellphones as they steam purposefully past. “The IMF guys,” says Holt. “These are the save-our-bacon meetings.”
Holt leads me through a currency tour beginning with dried fish and swatches of wool used as money back in the day, currencies of Iceland’s original sagas. The first coins were silfur arriving via trade with the rest of Europe, but they were always in short supply and were less practical than commodities like ewes, wool swatches, and fish. It wasn’t until 1874 that the Danish monarchy finally granted Icelanders the right to have a bank and issue their own currency.
Soon we are on to banknotes, first supplied by a private bank and backed by gold, and then later print runs, emergency issuances, the inflation years of World War II, and, finally, Thorkelsdottir’s designs. “All of this tells you the story of Icelandic independence,” says Holt. “You only need to delve in a bit to see that with most countries, the money is the country and the country is the money.” The word króna, he reminds me, comes from the Danish word for crown, as in the sovereign. The same word has been used for centuries in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland. In 2000, when the government of Denmark held a referendum about whether to adopt the euro, opponents asserted that abandoning the króna would be an insult to the queen. How persuasive this royalist line of reasoning was is anyone’s guess, but the Danes said no to the euro.
“Most countries don’t give it much thought, but these notes and coins, they speak to national identity,” says Holt. Yet when I ask if joining the euro and no longer having an Icelandic currency will be a blow to that sense of nationhood, Holt, like Thorkelsdottir, expresses little interest in nostalgia. “I hear people at work talk about ‘when the króna bounces back.’ I am like: ‘Are you crazy?’ It’s not bouncing back.” As a coin collector, though, surely a part of him will mourn the loss of Iceland’s sovereign currency, right? “Oh forget that! Are the French any less French because they use the euro? The currency was never, and should never, be an ego thing. It’s only a tool. The króna as a source of pride—this is only something people bring up now because we might lose it.”
Couldn’t the same be said about cash?
CHAPTER 6
The Traitor
No, they cannot touch me for coining; I am the king himself.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, KING LEAR
On a sunny October morning, Bernard von NotHaus shoots west out of Honolulu in a beige Toyota Camry. He has a habit of seeking eye contact, which right now means looking over at me as he rambles through his wandering monologue. With each head-turn the car swerves, but von NotHaus always manages to return his attention to the highway just fast enough to jerk the car back into line.
He may be an enemy of safe driving, but von NotHaus hardly looks like the domestic terrorist federal prosecutors say he is. He wears a black-and-vanilla Hawaiian shirt tucked into light pleated pants with a thin black belt. His delicate wire-rim glasses frame a narrow, almost gaunt face, and his hair curls up in a wave of gray and silver that he pulls into a tiny ponytail. Aside from some arthritis, the sixty-seven-year-old man who calls himself the Monetary Architect makes a point of mentioning his good health, in light of the decades of motorcycling, freewheeling romantic exploits, and bountiful drug consumption, all of which he recalls often and fondly. “I never expected to live this long. Really. I mean, we once drove a truck into the lobby of a hotel!”
After von NotHaus finally accepts the idea that I’m not an undercover FBI agent, which takes a while, he is smiley and magnanimous. His speech, although saturated with shouting and f-bombs, also contains a hearty dose of self-deprecation and Hawaii-isms—mellow, cool, mahalo —giving an overall impression of a dude impervious to stress. Which is remarkable, considering that he’s facing criminal charges for conspiracy, counterfeiting, mail fraud, and—get this—“one count of uttering, passing, and attempting to utter and pass, silver coins in resemblance of genuine U.S. coins in denominations of five dollars or greater.” He has lost, or temporarily lost, possession of hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of other peoples’ money, including his own mother’s, and one of his sidekicks has been in jail for more than a year. Two months before I meet him, von NotHaus himself was incarcerated for five nights after violating the terms of bail that allow him to hunker down in Hawaii while awaiting trial.
Past Pearl Harbor we turn north toward the town of Waipahu. We pass a Chinese food restaurant calle
d the Golden Coin before entering a small industrial park. Von NotHaus pulls into a space next to a tan-and-blue building that is part factory, part warehouse. Yellow hibiscus blossoms intermingle with a chain-link fence across the street. Inside, we greet the owner of Pacific Mills, Inc., Bud Gregory, who mills precious metals into wire and sheet material used for making jewelry.
The machining shop is filled with rolling dies, presses, and an oily smell. What we’ve come to see is the gray six-foot-tall machine set in the corner, which looks like a three-ton hourglass. This is the tool of von NotHaus’s chosen trade and life passion: minting. “It looks fantastic! Oh, I could just kiss this baby,” he says, and then he does, wrapping his arms around one of the press’s thick columns. According to FBI agents and federal prosecutors, this coin press is also a mechanical accomplice to von NotHaus’s crimes.
Because the press was recently refurbished, it isn’t quite ready to mint coins again; a few parts still need to be put back in place, and it has to be moved off of the temporary blocks of wood it’s sitting on. As soon as that happens, though, Gregory, who leases the manufacturing arm of von NotHaus’s minting business, can get back to filling orders. But not von NotHaus. “I’m not allowed to mint anything,” he explains, holding his hands together as if cuffed. This sanction is another term of his bail, as are unannounced visits from a parole officer.
Coins have always been a part of von NotHaus’s life. Growing up outside of Kansas City, he inherited a modest collection from his grandfather, and his mother instilled in him a respect for the value of silver, giving him silver coins as gifts and lecturing him about the metal’s penchant for appreciation. “I saved every one of those real silver quarters,” he says, referring to U.S. Mint quarters that, before 1965, contained 90 percent real silver. (At press time, with silver at $39 an ounce, one of those quarters has a melt value of more than $7.)
For more than thirty-five years, von NotHaus and his girlfriend, Telle Presley, have run a business called the Royal Hawaiian Mint Company, using this press to make coins for a variety of customers. In the mid-1970s, von NotHaus ordered the press, nicknamed Hammer, and had it shipped from California. He and Presley tried to run the mint business on the Big Island, where, according to von NotHaus, they lived next to a treasure trove of hallucinogenic mushrooms. But the operation proved difficult; merely finding reliable electricity for the powerful press was problematic. So in 1983, just in time to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of Hawaii’s statehood, they moved the business and family—sons Random and Xtra—to Honolulu, where the Royal Hawaiian Mint has been located ever since.
Von NotHaus and Presley joined the small club of custom minters that exist all over the world, producing merchandise for war veterans, country clubs, historical societies, academic institutions, and anyone else willing to pay for specialized coins or medallions. None of this is illegal. Over the years, von NotHaus’s business has produced coins celebrating Hawaii’s statehood, commemorating icons of Hawaiian history like Captain James Cook and King Kamehameha, saluting winners of the Hawaii State Numismatic Association Medal, and marking the fiftieth and seventieth anniversaries of the attack on Pearl Harbor, a coin commissioned by the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association. The association wants him to do the seventy-fifth anniversary commemorative as well. If he’s not in jail, he will.
The minting business was the perfect way to blend his love of Hawaii and his infatuation with precious metals. Coins sell themselves, in a way, but von NotHaus has a knack for marketing the combined benefits of metallic value and artistry. When he isn’t on a tirade about sovereign currency and inflation, and merely holding forth on the minting process and the craft of coin design, he speaks with unencumbered glee. In the blue-carpeted showroom at his store, von NotHaus shows me a white plaster mold, about a foot in diameter, featuring the head of Hawaii’s Queen Liliuokalani, which became the image on one of his coin issues. “Look at the flowing hair. I mean, the hair is one of those elements that often comes out looking shitty. But this is just exquisite!” For decades, von NotHaus has worked with a reclusive sculptor in New York who develops the cast that, after substantial editing demands from von NotHaus, eventually becomes the master die for punching out a coin series. “Look here, on Liliuokalani’s necklace. See what we’ve done with the pendant? Look at that. Beautiful.”
Back at Pacific Mills, I ask if I can see some of the coins—the Hawaii Dala in particular. The Dala is one of the coins that got von NotHaus in trouble, although I don’t recommend using the word coin in front of him. “DO NOT CALL THEM COINS! Coins are made and issued by the government. Do I look like the government to you? The whole idea of this private voluntary barter real-value currency is that it is not the government! Never call them coins!” I am permitted, however, to call them pieces, specie, silvers, or Liberty Dollars. The diction gymnastics are ridiculous because, obviously, they’re coins. Yet von NotHaus’s unusual legal case rests partly on parsing such terminology, not to mention use of the symbol “$” and minuscule numerals pressed into coins. For charges that include uttering prohibited utterances about coinage, no detail is too arcane.
A moment later, Gregory returns from his office with a small box containing a dozen plastic cases, each housing a single coin. He hands me one. The picture is of Hawaii’s revered King Kamehameha, standing proudly in a warrior headdress, left arm raised as if he’s about to address his loyal subjects. Turning it over to inspect the other side, I read HAWAII DALA across the top. Hawaii’s state seal floats in the middle of the image, with the words Liberty Dollar on the left, and $20 on the right. Below the seal: “Twenty Dollars: one ounce .999 silver minted in USA,” with a tiny RHM trademark symbol.
“This was minted on this press—on Hammer, right?” I ask. Von NotHaus nods.
Because Gregory is the one often punching out coins for the mint, I ask why he’s not in trouble with the Feds. If the government says these so-called pieces are possibly counterfeit and infringe on the U.S. Treasury’s exclusive right to mint coinage, isn’t Gregory an accomplice to von NotHaus’s crime?
“The reverse,” both men reply in stereo, referring to the other side of the coin. Gregory hands me another one. King Kamehameha again, and the coin is the same size, weight, and composition. But turning it over reveals an image of a traditional Polynesian boat and the state motto in large capital letters: UA MAU KE EA O KA AINA I KA PONO (The life of the land is perpetuated by righteousness). This coin also has “1 oz .999 silver RHM,” but—and here’s the crux—no denomination, no “$” symbol, and no declaration of a dollar value. Gregory never minted the suspect Hawaiian Dalas, Liberty Dollars, or Tea Party Dollars. He only produced what he calls collectibles, like this one with the boat.
I hold the two silver pieces in the palm of each hand, as if their heft might offer some clue as to their variable consequence. Then I place the two side by side on the table, alleged counterfeit on the left, knickknack on the right.
“That is what they’re pissing over!” yells von NotHaus. “I mean: Do I look like a counterfeiter to you?”
WHAT IS IT THAT MAKES private currencies sound somewhere between unscrupulous and ridiculous? Reflexive patriotism, perhaps, or possibly willful ignorance about the difference between money, currency, and national currency. You may have heard the term legal tender before, but many people often misinterpret it to mean that government-issued money is irrefutable always and everywhere. But you’re not legally bound to use coin of the realm, as those cashless airline cabins make clear. You’re only required to accept it as payment for obligations already denominated in dollars. Yet when I show people the Liberty Dollar, they bounce it a few times in their hands before saying something like: “Yeah, but is it real?” Have we latched so tightly onto central bank-issued currency, in electronic or tactile form, that it’s now the only kind of currency we can conceive of as being legitimate?
What we can legally do with, or to, U.S. currency is rather confusing. Overt satire is usually fine. On th
e streets of Washington, D.C., you can buy spoof greenbacks, bills with Bill Clinton’s picture on the “sex dollar” ($6) note or a smiling Ronald Reagan on the $10,000,000 bill. These slips usually only have (bad) art on one side, and they clearly aren’t intended to defraud. U.S. Secret Service says: you’re good to go.
Not always, though. In the early 1970s, a novelty manufacturer in Massachusetts decided to start selling a coffee mug festooned with a caricature of President Nixon on a $3 bill. The Secret Service seized the merchandise from retailers and confiscated 2,000 mugs at a warehouse in California. Despite the dubious legal grounds for this crackdown, the company didn’t challenge the seizure, citing the economic might of its opponent as rationale for backing down.1
Are you allowed to light legal tender on fire? In 1994 two British artists torched £1 million in a remote corner of northwest Scotland. The event received significant media attention, but the authorities were apparently unmoved; no laws were being violated. Public reaction was mixed, with locals expressing more of a sense of incredulousness than anything that might resemble admiration for creativity, or praise for a grandiose gesture meant to kindle discussion.2
On this side of the Atlantic, burning banknotes would violate the section of Title 18 of the U.S. Code prohibiting “mutilation of national bank obligations.” You may be able to marshal a free-speech defense, but in light of von NotHaus’s offense of illegal utterances, I wouldn’t be so sure. The situation is analogous to the flag-burning debate, although the economic implications of a flag-burning epidemic probably wouldn’t be as serious.k