How the Assignat worked

Watch the whole 19-minute interview at http://www.goldmoney.com/pierre-jovanovic. Pierre Jovanovic (jovanovic.com) talks to the GoldMoney Foundation about the Assignat and how the revolutionary government confiscated all church property. He explains that the Assignats were supposed to be unallocated titles backed by those church properties and supposedly redeemable by said lands, real estate, etc. Assignats even behaved partially like government debt because they paid interest during the first years. He also talks about how cities followed the central government’s example and issued their own token and paper money. However, because commerce soon started rejecting these worthless “trust money” laws were passed to force its acceptance and ban the use of gold and silver as money.