U.S. Gold Standard Timeline And Confiscation

[geof_junk]

Will it happen again with the worlds fait currency in trouble

 

U.S. gold standard timeline 

• 1879: The gold standard is adopted by the U.S.
   
• 1879 to 1914: The so-called classical gold standard era. One ounce of gold represents $21.
   
• 1933: The U.S. bans gold ownership. Franklin D. Roosevelt uses the authority granted to the president by the Trading with the Enemy Act to require all U.S. citizens to sell their gold coins, gold bullion, and gold certificates to the Federal Reserve in exchange for $20.67 per ounce. This is knows as Roosevelt's Executive Order 6102. Jewelry and rare coins are excluded. The process of seizing all the gold allows the governments to print more dollars and stimulate the economy.
   
• 1934: The value of the dollar in gold is changed from $20.67 to $35 per ounce.
   
• 1950s: Black market for gold is on the rise.
   
• 1971: The price of gold is no longer fixed to the U.S. dollar. Richard Nixon puts a halt on the U.S. dollar’s convertibility into gold. This means that other countries can no longer redeem dollars for gold.
   
• 1973: Nixon scraps the gold standard.
   
• 1974: Roosevelt’s Executive Order to nationalize all privately-owned gold is repealed and Congress restores the U.S. citizens’ right to own gold.
   
• 1977: Trading With The Enemy Act is amended, removing the U.S. president’s authority to control gold transactions during a period of national emergency, aside from during a time of war. At the same time, International Emergency Economic Powers Act is introduced, which gives powers to the president to regulate international commerce after declaring a national emergency.
   
• 2020: Trading With The Enemy Act and International Emergency Economic Powers Act are both still in force.

 

"United States Gold Confiscation—1933

Labeled Executive Order 6102, President Franklin Roosevelt signed on a law on April 5, 1933 “forbidding the hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the continental United States.” It basically meant that private owners were required to take their coins, bars or gold certificates to a bank, and exchange them for US dollars at the prevailing rate of $20.67 per ounce......
“Under the Trading With the Enemy Act of 1917, as later amended by the Emergency Banking Act of March 9, 1933, violation of the order was punishable by fine up to $10,000, up to ten years in prison, or both. Numerous individuals and companies were prosecuted.” $10,000 was a fortune in 1933!...Worse, the ban on private ownership of gold in America—the home of the free—lasted over four decades. Not until January 1, 1975 could US citizens own more than $100 in gold again".

"
Australia Gold Confiscation—1959

The Australian government similarly nationalized gold. The law, part of the Banking Act in 1959, allowed gold seizures of private citizens if the Governor determined it was “expedient so to do, for the protection of the currency or of the public credit of the Commonwealth.” In other words, they made it legal to seize gold from private citizens and exchange it for paper currency. The country’s Treasurer stated in a press release that followed, “All gold (other than wrought gold and coins to a limited extent) had to be delivered to the Reserve Bank of Australia within one month of its coming into a person's possession.” The law also said you weren’t allowed to sell gold, except to the Reserve Bank of Australia (their central bank). Nor could you export any gold (send it outside the country) without the bank’s permission. .....the law....destroyed the local private gold market overnight. Like the US ban, this rule wasn’t short lived either. Reports indicate it stayed on the books until 1976, a full 17 years, before being “suspended.”
 

[Clay Diggins]

Roosevelt did not "nationalize all privately-owned gold". So much myth has been repeated for so many years about the 1933 Presidential order and the 1942 war powers act that it's pretty much assumed to be fact. So sad that people don't question the obvious problems in this narrative.

The first question that comes to mind is how the heck did they get 125 million freedom (and gold) loving Americans to just hand over their gold without complaint? The fact of the matter was most Americans were exempt from the order. Roosevelt did not ban the possession of gold coin or certificates but instead made an exemption for amounts personally held. Here's the actual text of the exemption from the order:

"All persons are hereby required to deliver on or before May 1, 1933, to a Federal Reserve Bank or a branch or agency thereof or to any member bank of the Federal Reserve System all gold coin, gold bullion and gold certificates now owned by them or coming into their ownership on or before April 28, 1933, except the following:

Gold coin and gold certificates in an amount not exceeding in the aggregate $100 belonging to any one person"

Now this may seem a small exemption from today's perspective but in fact very few households held more than $100 of gold per person in 1933. That was nearly 5 ounces of gold per person or about 23 ounces of gold for the average size family. The simple fact of the matter was silver coin was the common mans wages and savings. Silver was not affected by the order. Gold was not used in day to day family purchases or payments.

What Roosevelt did was to exempt what today would be about $8000 in gold for each individual. About $40,000 for the average size family. That's why nobody complained - the world was in a growing inflationary/deflationary spiral and people were worried about food and a roof over their heads, they sure as heck weren't worried about a Presidential order to turn over gold they didn't own and most likely had never owned. From the common man's perspective the gold order was directed at rich people only. With the Wobbly movement and socialism popular at the time your average working guy blamed the rich for their personal lack of success.

Now ask yourself, how many Americans that owned more than 5 ounces of gold turned in their gold or had it confiscated? The answer is in the dozens. Remember this was a banking order. Safe deposit boxes were not opened or seized. The banks eagerly turned over their vault gold for a cut of the new thing (with incentives). In short individual gold owners that had the gold in their possession did not, for the most part, give the government their gold or gold certificates. The "confiscation" was limited to the banks and a few rich idiots.

The gold order, and subsequent revaluation, destroyed the nations economy. The depression that was created didn't recover to 1929 levels until 1958. That's a generation living in poverty. The theft of American's fully backed financial system is still causing havoc today. In no way am I trying to absolve Roosevelt or the banks who joined in to accomplish his illegal order. This was a very bad thing that was done. In my experience the way to fix bad things is to gain an understanding of how a bad thing can be fixed. We can't do that if we keep swapping myth and rumor for the facts.

Lesson to learn? If you don't personally hold your gold you don't own it - as the trusting folks banking their gold in 1933 learned.

Barry