[music]
Narrator] Some of the most beautiful towns
in Massachusetts are tucked away in the Berkshire mountains.
Dan Kosinski's produce farm almost
went under last year in the depth of the recession.
He used to depend on local banks
to give him a yearly loan to see him
through the winter until last year.
Cash was very hard to come by.
So someone just wildly said "Well, why not print your own?".
[Narrator] Dan and his wife Martha printed
their own farm notes and asked their customers
to become investors.
It says "In farms we trust."
[Martha] In farms we trust.
We've replaced George Washington
with a head of cabbage there.
I really think we have a more dependable
form of currency than the feds are issuing.
[Interviewer] Your farm notes?
Our farm notes because people know now
that we're going to be here.
And that we will back those notes up.
But you're backing them up
with potatoes and strawberries - You can eat those.
Can you eat what Washington is giving you?
They're giving you rhetoric.
I mean, can you eat that?
[laughs]
[sheep bleating]
[tense music]
We've forgotten about the possibility
of local currencies but we never lost
the ability to issue our own currencies.
We don't really remember this power.
One of our programs is Berkshares.
It's a currency that can only be spent in this area.
Each one has a local hero on the front.
So this is a Stockbridge Mohican.
Herman Melville's on the twenty
and he wrote Moby Dick while
he was living in the Berkshires.
We had local currencies around this country
for over 100 years, really.
[Teller] There is 10, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.
[Alice] Local banks would issue local currencies.
But it's just been more convenient
to have a national currency.
We share a lot of the same philosophy
as people who are interested in gold.
But we think that instead of having
a currency backed by gold,
we should have a currency backed by local products.
[music]
My name is Bernard von Nothaus.
I'm the monetary architect who designed
and developed the Liberty Dollar.
[music]
We needed a solution to the evil fiat empire money
that has infected our country's monetary system.
So I developed the Liberty Dollar.
We never used it as current money
and we always told people it wasn't a coin.
I saw it as a barter piece that
people could take this if they wanted to.
If not, we gave them US dollars.
We gave them a choice.
What was the date, Telle, when I was arrested?
It was June 4th, June 4th.
They charged me with counterfeiting,
fraud, ringleader.
That was a special charge they hit you with
when you were there, ringleader
of a criminal organization like Liberty Dollar.
[Interviewer] Bernard von Nothaus, the government is saying
that you are trying to compete with our own currency,
that you are trying to fool people into thinking
that this is US currency.
And quite honestly, if I looked at that,
can we show that again?
If I looked at that, with the Statue of Liberty,
and it says liberty and USA on the bottom,
and then "Trust in God", not "In God we trust",
it does look like a US minted coin.
No sir, we're not trying to fool people
into thinking this is US currency at all.
We have built our whole marketing campaign
on the simple fact that it is not government currency.
We weren't doing anything illegal.
We don't wanna do anything illegal (mumbles).
Who's so brain dead they're gonna do
something illegal like this, in public,
I mean, ludicrous.
♪ Johnny wants a pair of skis, ♪
♪ Suzy wants a sled, ♪
♪ Nelly wants a picture book, ♪
♪ Yellow, blue and red. ♪
♪ Now I think I'll leave to you what to give the rest, ♪
♪ Choose for me dear Santa Claus, ♪
♪ You will know the best. ♪
[Alice] We have about 138,000 Bershares in circulation.
We have 400 businesses now that take Berkshares
and we launched with about 95 businesses.
There's still a lot of work to be done.
Because it's not in our general consciousness,
everybody is used to using the dollar.
I'm glad you take Berkshares.
Yeah.
We are proud to say that there has been
one incident of counterfeiting
and we think that's good because
it means that they're worth something,
if somebody wants to counterfeit them.
[Anchor] The Liberty Dollar store
on Evansville's east side
was the target of an apparent federal raid.
The company makes and sells alternate currencies
and the US mint has warned using the money is illegal.
[Bernard] The search warrants included
not only the gold and silver and everything else,
but they also included
all the minting equipment, all the presses.
Anything that was associated with
minting Liberty Dollar was to be confiscated.
I think it was about seven million dollars.
So f***ing limp d***.
This is FBI now, you know the people who investigated 9/11.
Same guys, quality, patriot.
The learning channel video that they had
of me using Liberty Dollars,
that was the coup d'etat.
Washington district of criminals, okay.
Now I have the paper money
but I have a new silver 10 dollar piece.
- Oh really, it's good. -Yeah.
What do you think, looking pretty good?
- Okay, I take that. -Okay
- Okay, thank you very much. - Thank you so much.
- You're welcome. - You have a nice day.
Oh absolutely.
Are you going to jail?
Tell us about the trial itself.
I think I'm going to jail, I don't know.
The sentences could range from zero to fifteen years.
Wall Street Journal says this has always been legal
but if they can find juries, I mean what next?
Is having a ham sandwich gonna be punishable in 15 years?
Hi, I'd like to have two turkey and Swiss
and one ham and Swiss.
I have a 10 dollar silver.
[Cashier] What is this?
It's the new 10 dollar silver piece.
[Cashier] Oh come John, see what this thing is.
Just like that.
Well that is... that is against the law.
You're not allowed to mint your own coins.
But you can issue your own paper currency.
That might have been because our founding fathers
didn't think paper currency was worth that much
so they didn't outlaw it in the Constitution.
Gold backing to me, it doesn't make sense
because it doesn't have inherent value,
you can't eat it, you can't wear it.
The government... [laughs]
they didn't like the Liberty Dollar.
We were way too successful, we were way too vocal.
Your s*** stinks, so does your money.
And they didn't like that.
That's why Trump The Government sounds so good.
[music]