Counteracting counterfeiting? False money as a multidimensional justice issue in 16th and 17th century monetary analysis

False money appeared as the general common issue in monetary debates that occured in European countries in the 16th and 17th centuries. It first refered to sovereignty, in a time of state-building, as well as to a serious economic problem. Beyond sovereignty and economy, justice and, then, the public faith, were endangered by those who devoted themselves to produce false coins. The thesis of this communication is that one cannot understand clearly the general topic of false money by reading texts of the time with today's general definition of false money. We propose, then, to identify the multiple dimensions of false money : counterfeiting (by individuals), degradations of coins (by individuals and officers of the Mint) and debasement and enhancement (by princes). These dimensions appeared in monetary discourses like Bodin's, Mariana's and Locke's ones, with sometimes a lack of clarity. Then, a general claim to counteract counterfeiting may conceal a claim to suppress any possibility of debasing currency. Making clearer monetary discourses on that topic and establishing a hierarchy between the three dimensions of false money helps to understand why the false money issue was firstly a matter of monetary justice by the prince himself. In order to do so, we pay special attention to Bodin, Mariana and Locke.History of monetary thought; monetary history; modern times; counterfeiting; debasement

The Maze of Medieval Mint Metrology in Flanders, France and England: Determining the Weight of the Marc de Troyes and the Tower Pound from the Economics of Counterfeiting, 1388 - 1469

In 1795, the French Revolutionary government, in establishing our modern metric system, also established the metric values for the historic European mint weights of the ancien re,gime era. If those mint-weights are undoubtedly valid for the 18th century, can we be certain that all had remained unchanged over the centuries; and in particular that these metric values, and thus the mathematical relationships between the various mint weights, are valid for the later Middle Ages? That is important if we are to measure with confidence the coinage outputs and relative coin values of various medieval European principalities, and thus their relative price movements. Furthermore, were the marcs de Troyes used in both France and the Low Countries the same mint weight? This question is still hotly contended because there are no surviving mint weights or coin dies for the medieval Low Countries, and none in France dated before 1483; and surviving coins do not provide unbiased random samples. In this paper, I seek to vindicate the modern metric equivalents by resorting to the mint accounts of 14th- and 15th- century Flanders and England, and in particular Flemish data on minting gold nobles that were coined as counterfeits of the widely-circulating English gold nobles; I have also used various ordinances that describe the weights of the nobles in terms of both the English Tower Pound and the Flemish marc de Troyes. With mathematical examples, I demonstrate that only if the modern metric equivalents of these mint weights were precisely valid for this period (1388-1469) would the Flemish mints have been successful, i.e. in gaining the substantial seigniorage profits so recorded: and successful in minting a noble close enough in weight and fineness to the English to "pass" undetected, except by those using well-calibrated scales, yet inferior enough in gold content to allow merchants selling gold bullion for these counterfeits to gain a profit (and compensate for their higher risks and transaction costs). Such evidence also proves that the Flemish and French marcs de Troyes had to be identical in this era. Indirectly, this paper also challenges some recent publications about the nature of medieval moneys and of the operation of Gresham's Law in this era.

Northern Entrepreneur\u27s Counterfeiting of Confederate Currency and The Impact It Had On Inflation

This thesis, Northern Entrepreneur\u27s Counterfeiting of Confederate Currency and The Impact It Had On Inflation takes an in depth look at the history of counterfeiting the currency of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War by entrepreneurs who saw the introduction of a new currency as an opportunity to profit. The thesis begins by providing background information on several major counterfeiters and their actions before and during the Civil War, as well as other sources of counterfeit bills not normally considered by scholars. The thesis also looks at the effects that this illegitimate increase in the money supply may have had on inflation in the South during the Civil War as well as the legal ramifications that the counterfeiter’s actions had in the North

Finding Weighted Graphs by Combinatorial Search

We consider the problem of finding edges of a hidden weighted graph using a certain type of queries. Let $G$ be a weighted graph with $n$ vertices. In the most general setting, the $n$ vertices are known and no other information about $G$ is given. The problem is finding all edges of $G$ and their weights using additive queries, where, for an additive query, one chooses a set of vertices and asks the sum of the weights of edges with both ends in the set. This model has been extensively used in bioinformatics including genom sequencing. Extending recent results of Bshouty and Mazzawi, and Choi and Kim, we present a polynomial time randomized algorithm to find the hidden weighted graph $G$ when the number of edges in $G$ is known to be at most $m\geq 2$ and the weight $w(e)$ of each edge $e$ satisfies \ga \leq |w(e)|\leq \gb for fixed constants \ga, \gb>0. The query complexity of the algorithm is $O(\frac{m \log n}{\log m})$, which is optimal up to a constant factor

The Evolution of Financial Instruments and the Legal Protection Against Counterfeiting: A Look at Coin, Paper, and Virtual Currencies

This essay discusses the requirements for the long-term acceptance of virtual currency as a financial medium of exchange by examination of fundamental criteria associated with the historical development of common tender and selected virtual currencies. The relatively recent appearance of Internet-based transactions have necessitated developing virtual forms of payment such as virtual currencies. According to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”) of the United States Treasury,5 virtual currencies are subject to regulation if that virtual currency has a substitutive purpose for facilitating the exchange of goods and services. Although governments can place stipulations on currencies, users of common tender, including virtual currencies, expect at least three basic privileges for a virtual currency to evolve from conception to realization. First, a virtual currency must be considered intangible personal property similar to trademarks, copyrights, and patents. Second, ownership disputes must be subject to a system such as a judicial proceeding or binding arbitration to resolve property as well as interest conflicts. Finally, a virtual currency must be subject to similar regulation as other financial instruments (e.g., legal tender, scrip, and credit cards) used in facilitating transactions. One of the most common and critical aspects of safeguarding currency is protection against illegitimate representations of assets—that is, primarily against counterfeiting. We discuss the regulatory authority and/or lack of authority, of the sovereign States of the United States to regulate the counterfeiting of financial instruments used as currency, including virtual currency. Moreover, federal and foreign (non-U.S.) currencies are explicitly examined, but some virtual currencies are not regulated or authorized specifically by any government. Can a currency without formal codification from a government be regulated by a sovereign State? As financial transactions have shifted historically from various governments’ legal tender to combinations of government and private issuances and from the hard currency of coins and paper to electronic transactions, many States’ counterfeiting statutes are unclear or fail to consider that technological changes can impact legal and common tender. The rise of transactions facilitated by virtual currencies and regulations protecting states from virtual counterfeiting is examined and discussed