Promise her anything...

Perry E. Metzger pmetzger at lehman.com
Tue Mar 22 12:32:35 PST 1994



Peter Hendrickson says:
> The IRS made bearer bonds illegal about ten years ago.  It seems
> people were using them to evade income tax.  I believe they are
> forbidden within the United States and U.S. citizens are forbidden to
> own them at all anywhere.

Not really true -- much of US debt is still in the form of bearer
bonds, although new bearer bonds are not being produced. I don't think
they were made illegal per se -- I forget what was used to prevent
them from being issued.

In any case, bearer instruments in the generic sense are perfectly
legal. Write a check to "CASH" and what you have is a bearer
instrument.

People wanting to learn about this should get a book on commercial
paper, which is the subset of the law we are discussing.

Perry






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