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Message:: [QUOTE="Treashunt, post: 172793, member: 6763"]From David Ganz, a noted numismatic writer: FDR took office March 4, 1933 (the January 20th inauguration we take for granted today did not begin until 1940) and shortly thereafter, the New Deal required millions of dollars worth of gold coinage to be turned in by citizens who held them, acting on a government mandate and under a Presidential Proclamation requiring it.       Only rare and unusual gold coins were exempt -- enough to allow coin collectors to maintain and keep a collection, assuming that they would be able to do that during the depths of economic despair of 1934.       FDR’s Presidential Papers offer a partial explanation as to why he nationalized gold, ended the striking of gold coins, and prohibited ownership of gold bullion by all Americans. On January 31, 1934, his papers show that he wrote he was taking his action “to maintain a reasonably stable cost of living . . . to foster steadily increasing employment . . . to maintain such position of the dollar with reference to other currencies as would encourage an increasing domestic and foreign trade . . . to eliminate broad fluctuations in exchange rates without sacrificing sovereignty over our monetary policy . . . (and) to avoid competitive depreciation of currencies.” During the banking holiday, Roosevelt prohibited the operation of any banking institution, prohibited any bank from paying out, exporting or earmarking gold or gold coins, and temporarily suspended the striking of gold coin by the Mint.       Roosevelt's action, one leading constitutional scholar, Henry Mark Holzer wrote in a 1973 retrospective law review article, was probably illegal at best, and unconstitutional at its worst. Yet, the American people were desperate; a depression gripped the land. Roosevelt, they believed, offered salvation -- a New Deal, even if it was without gold.       Systematically, Roosevelt acted to remove gold from the citizenry, the banks, and the Federal Reserve. The key purpose of the action was to prevent any citizen from buttressing his currency against the debasement about to be perpetrated by the government.       The government's gold stock in 1933 consisted of $2.3 billion in bullion and $806.4 million in gold coin of various denominations. The Federal Reserve held $743-million in gold coin, and a fraction of that amount ($66.5 million) in bullion.     In 1973, gold regulations were eased slightly, to allow more gold coins minted between 1933 and 1961 to be admitted to the country as “rare” coins, however, a drive in Congress to reverse the action of four decades before failed when the House failed by a single vote to call for immediate ownership.       By early 1974, the President had gained the legal authority from Congress to allow private gold ownership at any time he felt it is in the best interests of the international economic situation of the United States. Gold ownership finally came about in one of the most unusual unitings of interest of diverse political elements -- the conservative "gold bugs" and the liberal democrats.       Succinctly, the Democrats had a foreign aid package that was in need of passage; the conservative Republican "gold bugs", most of whom had voted against every foreign aid proposal that ever came before Congress saw a truly golden opportunity.       They added a clause to the foreign aid bill that would simultaneously legalize private gold ownership by a certain day, but also retroactively repeal all of the regulations and laws that impeded holding the precious metal.  For more info: <a href="http://www.numismedia.com/law/index.shtml" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.numismedia.com/law/index.shtml" rel="nofollow">http://www.numismedia.com/law/index.shtml</a>[/QUOTE]

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