Memo to Paul fans: Don’t make your own currency.

The Carpetbagger Report:

It doesn’t matter how loyal some of Ron Paul’s fans are — if they start making their own money, and then put it into circulation, some nice federal agents are going to pay them a visit.


Federal agents on Thursday raided the Evansville, Ind., headquarters of the National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve Act and Internal Revenue Code (Norfed), an organization of “sound money” advocates that for the past decade has been selling a private currency it calls “Liberty Dollars.” The company says it has put into circulation more than $20 million in Liberty Dollars, coins and paper certificates it contends are backed by silver and gold stored in Idaho, are far more reliable than a U.S. dollar and are accepted for use by a nationwide underground economy.


Norfed officials said yesterday that the six-hour raid occurred just as its six employees were mailing out the first batch of 60,000 “Ron Paul Dollars,” copper coins sold for $1 to honor the candidate, who is a longtime advocate of abolishing the Federal Reserve. The group says it has shipped out about 10,000 silver Ron Paul Dollars that sold for $20 and about 3,500 of the copper $1 coins. But it said the agents seized more than 50,000 of the copper coins — more than two tons’ worth — plus smaller amounts of the silver coins and gold and platinum Ron Paul Dollars, which sell for $1,000 and $2,000.


“They took everything, all of the computers, everything but the desks and chairs,” the company’s founder and head, Bernard von NotHaus, said in a telephone interview from his home in Miami. “The federal government really is afraid.”


That last quote actually speaks to the predictable reaction — that the feds’ raid is part of some kind of conspiracy. Indeed, the WaPo noted that reports of the raid offered Paul supporters “a new source of outrage and motivation.”