when Congress realized it could found a bank to pull the same rip-off...
Federal Reserve Notes only gained acceptance because, initially, they were convertible. Legal tender laws aren't necessary for 'honest money'.
When you confiscate gold and force people to take depreciating paper instead (depreciating because you keep printing it), then you need legal tender laws, and laws to forbid contracts in gold, as was eventually done...
$100 used to represent the work it took to find, mine, and process a particular weight of gold. As the foundation of exchange it represented trading work (gold) for work (some other good or service). Now we're stuck using Federal Reserve Notes that have no relation to work performed. They can be and are created at the whim of banking cabal that impoverishes everyone else through inflation. Until we end this monstrosity (again!), they will continue to rob the workers and the savers.
You don't need to stand in front of the gas pump or grocery store checkout and wonder what is happening.
They already told us what they're doing:
"Today an ounce of gold sells for $300, more or less. Now suppose that a modern alchemist solves his subject's oldest problem by finding a way to produce unlimited amounts of new gold at essentially no cost. Moreover, his invention is widely publicized and scientifically verified, and he announces his intention to begin massive production of gold within days. What would happen to the price of gold? Presumably, the potentially unlimited supply of cheap gold would cause the market price of gold to plummet. Indeed, if the market for gold is to any degree efficient, the price of gold would collapse immediately after the announcement of the invention, before the alchemist had produced and marketed a single ounce of yellow metal.
What has this got to do with monetary policy? Like gold, U.S. dollars have value only to the extent that they are strictly limited in supply. But the U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost. By increasing the number of U.S. dollars in circulation, or even by credibly threatening to do so, the U.S. government can also reduce the value of a dollar in terms of goods and services, which is equivalent to raising the prices in dollars of those goods and services." -Benjamin Bernanke, 2002