Urban Survival Planning - Gold and Silver Buying and the Confiscation Debate

An Anonymous Reader has left a comment on a previous post concerning the how the Government's new requirement on sellers issuing 1099's for commodities purchases over $600 can be used basically to "register" Gold and Silver for future easy confisciation by the Government.  Anonymous said....."I'm sure this was accidental and they have no intention on confiscating your gold after TSHTF. As a famous person once said "We have to pass the bill so we can find out what is in the bill"! LOL"

Another Anonymous Reader, not realizing the LOL (Laugh Out Load) sign off, said........"I disagree with the above statement. Just remember Argentina. They confiscated gold, silver, savings accounts, retirement accounts. They stated that they would then redistribute the total funds in a monthly payment equal to everyone. Even those that had nothing to begin with. If you didnt take the offer you would not get anything. Hmmm,... wonder why Our government has been studying Argentina's actions. In todays state of policies and affairs you can not ever trust the Government to do whats Right, they do whats best for them and the government."

You have to understand how and why Gold was confiscated in the past in order to make a determination if it is possible in the future.  My point is if you don't want anyone to take it away, then don't let them know about it in the first place...hence the purchasing of Gold and Silver in small amounts from multiple sources.      


The shortest route to understanding possible Government Confiscation of Gold and Silver is through an excellent short article published on http://www.silvermonthly.com/   entitled:  "Government Confiscation of Gold: It Happened Before — Could It Happen Again?"  Some of that article is posted below:

Confiscation all dates back to the Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA) 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.

Like inflation, deflation also begets (perpetuates) 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.

UrbanMan's comment:  See any similarity to today's economy?

Under FDR, 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.

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.