Giacinto Auriti (10 October 1923 – 11 August 2006) was an Italian lawyer, essayist, and politician. He became famous for his monetary theory on seigniorage, which sees money from a different view - one that is of the jurisprudence. His idea theorized why currency has value and why it must be issued by governments and not banks. This ideal led to many public initiatives such as reform of the private banking system and the Bank of Italy. Biography Giacinto Auriti was born on 10 October 1923. He graduated in Rome, where he also became an academic, teaching Maritime, International, Private, and Comparative Law. Auriti was among the founding teachers and was the dean of the faculty of law at the University of Teramo, established in 1993. He was the author of several texts on the subject of Maritime Law. In the last period of his life, despite never having formally studied economic theory, he started teaching the subject and covering topics raised by the American poet Ezra Pound. He pioneered monetary law as an academic discipline in the University of Teramo—developing an economic theory that outlines how currency - as a measure of value and as such conventionally accepted by those who use it as a medium of exchange - is a "tool" for the exchange of goods (the theory of the induced value of money). His theory is that those who accept the convention of a currency's value, have the right to own it at its inception (the people's ownership of money). In this sense, the central banks are private corporations, who according to Auriti derive undue profits from seigniorage on the issue of paper money, assuming responsibility for an important source of public debt. This theory draws more power from the abolition of the direct relationship between money (convertible into gold) and gold reserve, established by the Bretton Woods initiative launched by the Richard Nixon administration on 15 August 1971. It, thereafter, transformed the business of issuing currency and further emphasized the conventional nature of monetary value created by the acceptance by the people of this convention. The SAUS and the Bank of Italy In the 90's, Giacinto Auriti conducted a series of initiatives as Secretary General of the "Union of Anti-Usury" (SAUS) and as a legal representative of the cultural association, "Alternative social property of people." One of his initiatives was a request filed before the Court