Executive Order 6102: Did You Know?

Government Confiscation of Gold: It Happened Before — Could It Happen Again?

FDR’s 1933 Gold Confiscation was a Bailout of the Federal Reserve Bank

The Foundations of the Great Confiscation

Confiscation all dates back to the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917. That year, President Woodrow Wilson signed the “TWEA” into law, forbidding American individuals and businesses from engaging in trade with “enemy nations.” The world’s functional gold standard, which had overseen tremendous global economic growth in the early years of the twentieth century, was effectively halted by the outbreak of World War I, and the stage was thus set for the Great Depression and World War II.

Shortly after taking office sixteen years later, Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 6102 into law, prohibiting the “hoarding” of gold. Under this executive order, Americans were prohibited from owning more than $100 worth of gold coins, and all “hoarders” (i.e. people who owned more than $100 worth of gold) were forced, by law, to sell their “excess” gold to the government at the prevailing price of $20.67 per ounce.

 

Then, once the government had all the gold, FDR revalued the dollar relative to gold so that gold was now worth $35 an ounce. By simple decree, the government had thereby robbed millions of American citizens at a rate of $14.33 per ounce of confiscated gold, which is why most historians agree that the Gold Confiscation of 1933 is the single most draconian economic act in the history of the United States.

The Utilitarian Rationale Behind Confiscation

The reasoning behind the Great Gold Confiscation was, of course, the Great Depression, which had begun several years prior. After an inflationary run-up in prices and asset values, the stock market crashed in 1929, and the economy soon went with the crash.

 

Rather than responding to the situation with laissez-fair wisdom, President Herbert Hoover, often accused of being a proponent of laissez fair by those to whom the term is considered an epithet — instead raised taxes and erected new trade barriers, intensifying the misery. When FDR was elected, the people were willing to go along with nearly anything to try to alleviate the deflation that had gripped the country and strangled economic activity.

The boom of the 1920s was largely an illusory creature of the still-new Federal Reserve’s gross ineptitude, and by the thirties when reality had caught up to the loose-money standards of the prior decade, the money supply quickly contracted, causing deflation.

 

Like inflation, deflation also begets more of itself, and as prices dropped, it became wiser for the possessors of money to hold it rather than spend it, since prices would be lower the next day — and even lower the day after that — ad infinitum.

Since no one was spending money, businesses went under and people were out of the work, thus making the situation worse. In response, FDR knew what needed to be done — prices needed to be stabilized. On this, few would disagree. The exception economists take is with the implementation the president chose to pursue.

First, as discussed, private ownership of gold was effectively barred. The only exceptions were coinage worth $100 or less, or collectible coins, industrial uses, and jewelry. Gold could not be “hoarded” as a significant investment, and all “hoarders” were made to sell their gold to the government.

 

The Federal Reserve itself — a private banking cartel more so than an arm of government — was not excluded from this requirement either, as made clear by the Gold Reserve Act of 1934. That legislation required the Fed to surrender all gold and gold certificates held, to the United States Treasury.

Finally, the dollar was revalued, and U.S. Dollars was then redeemable at a rate of $35 an ounce, as opposed to the old gold standard of $20.67. However, it’s important to note that only foreign bankers and international governments could redeem their dollars for gold — private gold ownership was still illegal in the U.S. until the end of 1974.

The effect revaluation had on the U.S. dollar was an instant depreciation of 41%. Thus, prices were pushed back up again, in nominal terms, at least. What the long-term effects of this action would have been in the absence of World War II will never be known, but within a few years, the U.S. war economy was humming.

 

Following the end of the second great war, the U.S. stood alone as an economic super power, virtually untouched by the Axis or Allies, while most of Europe lay in ruins. It all made Roosevelt’s coercive and unconstitutional acts look ingenious, but scholars from the left and right continue to debate whether they were truly wise or if the New Deal was bailed out by global externalities.

So, under legally dubious means, FDR and Congress passed a law outlawing the private ownership of gold in excess of $100. Millions of Americans were made to trade in their gold coins for paper dollars — effectively at gunpoint. Then, once all the coins were in the government’s coffers, FDR revalued the dollar from $20.67 per ounce of gold to $35 an ounce — a theft of almost forty-once cents on the dollar.

 

Gold ownership remained illegal in the United States until 1954. That year, the Treasury Department legalized the ownership of rare coins. What was a rare coin? Well, since the government had seized all pre-1934 coins, then by definition, all such coins were deemed “rare.” After all, these coins were so uncommon that those few in circulation were worth much more than their face value or the value of the gold of which they were made — the coins had numismatic value. They effectively were no longer “money,” and thus they didn’t pose a competitive threat to the government’s fiat currency.

Gold, Government, and the Law

 

In 1969, the federal government further clarified the 1954 ruling and officially exempted “rare coins” from any future government confiscations — but still reserved the “right” for the government to seize its citizens’ gold in the future. “The basic principles governing the administration of the Gold Acts and Orders,” said the Treasury Department in 1969, “are that gold, as a store of value, can be held only by the government and that private citizens and entities in the United States can acquire gold only for legitimate and customary industrial, professional, and artistic purposes.”

Two years later, in 1971, President Nixon “closed the gold window” and took the U.S. dollar off the gold standard — making it a true fiat currency with no asset backing or intrinsic value. Four years after that, President Ford legalized the private ownership of all gold — not just rare coins — and gold has continued to be fully legal for the past thirty-two years. Or has it?

 

Although laws prohibiting gold ownership have been repealed, the laws allowing the government to confiscate gold have not. Rare coins, however, are the exception. For the government to confiscate citizens’ bullion, all the government has to do is act on long-dormant laws. But for the government to confiscate rare coins, it would have to overturn fifty-plus years of precedent and shatter the legal system’s overarching ideal of jurisprudence. This may not be entirely impossible, but it certainly offers the holders of pre-1934 gold coins more protection than the owners of bullion.

 

Reinstating the Gold Standard?

But why would the government confiscate gold? Some argue it did so in the past in order to revalue the dollar relative to gold, and since the dollar is no longer on the gold standard, the government would have no reason to confiscate gold. This is a good point, but it also begs the counter-argument: Now that the U.S. dollar is not backed by gold, it’s only a matter of time before the house of fiat-money cards crumbles. When this happens — when the government’s printing presses are incapable of printing money with any real value, then the government will certainly look to do something, and conveniently, laws on the books allow it to confiscate privately owned gold. It’s likely that the government could do this ostensibly to reinstate the gold standard!

 

In such desperate times, would rare coins be safe? It is impossible to know for sure, but it is certainly true the coins would be safer than bullion or non-rare coins. After all, look no further than to the first Great Confiscation in which many “patriotic” Americans willingly turned over their gold for paper money. Certainly, some Americans would do this again, especially if it were in the name of reinstating the gold standard. The government would probably promise gold redemptions would be
reinstated “in a matter of time.”

And while certainly not all goldbugs would willingly turn over their gold, there would be far less resistance to government confiscation of commodity-valued gold than there would be to the seizure of rare, numismatic coins. The government would not want to be in the business of coin dealing, at least not at first, and it would undoubtedly go after the low-hanging fruit — especially when laws on the books allow it to be legally picked.

Gold Confiscation: Could it Happen Again?

Although the U.S. dollar is constantly under pressure, the U.S. government continues to stockpile debt, and impossible-to-fulfill entitlement commitments loom on the horizon, the idea that the U.S. government would try to confiscate citizens’ gold today or anytime in the foreseeable future certainly seems spurious at best. After all, the government did so in the past in order to recalibrate the gold standard, which we have not been on since 1972.

 

However, our government has become increasingly bold in its refusal to be restrained by the Constitution, and following the return to limited government (at least in rhetoric) by the Reagan administration in the eighties, the Constitution has been all but ignored by subsequent administrations and congresses.

The government might want to reenact gold confiscation, and most congressmen would feel no moral compunction about doing so, but logistically, it would seem virtually impossible in today’s globally interdependent and well-connected economy.

Investors might need to beware, however, if certain interest groups on the left and right get their way and begin building walls, both literally and figuratively, around the country in an effort to block that global interdependence. Protectionism and higher taxes led to the greatest depression in U.S. history, and along with it came gold confiscation. It would probably take a similar impetus for such a sequence of events to happen again.

 

 

PAPER REPLACES SPECIE

 

During the 1800s, paper money was suspect in the eyes of many. Nobody would ever choose a government-issue $20 note over a $20 gold coin. Gradually during the late 1800s and early 1900s, confidence in government paper money increased to the point where it was widely accepted. People accepted the money because they felt confident they could exchange it at the US Treasury or any Federal Reserve Bank for gold at any time – it even said so on the notes. Without the gold exchange clauses printed directly on the notes, the public would have been much less likely to accept them. Silver Certificates and United States Notes circulated alongside Gold Certificates, which were legally interchangeable dollar-for-dollar.

 

THE “FED” AND EASY MONEY

 

In 1913 the Federal Reserve Bank was established and it began issuing Federal Reserve Notes the following year.

Once free of the restrictions imposed by the limitations of available physical gold for coinage, the quantity of Dollars in circulation increased dramatically. The increase was mostly in the form of paper money, not specie.

 

The result was an economic “boom”, also known as “The Roaring Twenties” (1923-1929). But like all artificially-induced stimulus, it came to a crash in the fall of 1929. The burden of over-extended credit was the culprit. Prior to the formation of the Federal Reserve, money in circulation consisted of copper, silver, and gold coins, United States Notes, Silver Certificates, and Gold Certificates. All of these were non-interest-bearing, were issued directly by the US Treasury, and did not have any debt associated with their issuance.

 

Notes issued by the Federal Reserve, however, were generally lent out, with interest due. So for every Federal Reserve dollar in circulation, somebody needed that dollar to pay off a debt. During the Roaring Twenties, a lot of people took on debt, resulting in a great credit expansion. When only physical gold and silver was used as money, institutions were very cautious about lending it out because if the debtor defaulted, the creditor would be out some serious (sound) money.

 

But with the advent of Federal Reserve Notes, the bank was more willing to lend. And with easier qualification terms, people stepped up to the window. The increased willingness to lend was due to the fact that the item being lent out was just a piece of replaceable paper, not a hard-to-get piece of gold. Sure, the notes said “redeemable in gold” (otherwise they might have been refused in commerce). But few members of the public actually exchanged such notes for actual gold. And thus, the Federal Reserve was free to lend almost at will, with little regard for loan losses. When the interest burden of all that new credit began to weigh more-heavily on the general economy, the inevitable credit contraction led to the Stock Market Crash and the Great Depression. Everyone was suddenly reluctant to borrow, banks were reluctant to lend, and the velocity of money in circulation slowed to a crawl.

 

 

A GOLD RUN ?

 

The financial footing of the United States became shaky. European countries which were holding substantial quantities of US gold-clause notes began presenting them to exchange for physical gold. The US Government’s fixed price of gold at $20.67 per troy ounce had been in effect for some time. But as the Great Depression deepened, the free-market price of gold started creeping up above that. This was an indication that confidence in gold-clause notes was starting to wane. A gold run on the Federal Reserve bank was imminent. And that was something that couldn’t be tolerated.

 

And the reason that a gold run couldn’t be tolerated, is that neither the Federal Reserve nor the US Treasury held anywhere near enough gold to back all the Gold Certificates and Federal Reserve Notes that were in circulation. And printing more of these notes would only erode confidence in them even further. The gold fractional-reserve system was at the end of the road.

 

 

GOLD-CLAUSE NOTES

 

This is a typical gold-exchange clause found on Gold Certificates issued by the US Treasury from about 1905 to 1922.

 

And the clause on series 1928 US Treasury Gold Certificates looked like this:

 

Series 1914 Federal Reserve Notes carried this gold-clause:

 

1928 series Federal Reserve Notes were printed with this:

 

 

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