Executive Order 6102
Executive Order 6102 was signed on April 5, 1933 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to call for the confiscation of all privately held gold coins and bullion in the U.S. The order begins: - By virtue of the authority vested in me by Section 5(b) of the Act of October 6, 1917, as amended by Section 2 of the Act of March 9, 1933, entitled "An Act to provide relief in the existing national emergency in banking, and for other purposes", in which amendatory Act Congress declared that a serious emergency exists, I, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, do declare that said national emergency still continues to exist and pursuant to said section to do hereby prohibit the hoarding gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the continental United States by individuals, partnerships, associations and corporations and hereby prescribe the following regulations for carrying out the purposes of the order[.] [1]
Gold discovered was confiscated and the owners compensated at $20.67 per ounce. Then, shortly following the confiscation, the price of gold from the treasury for international transactions was raised to $35 an ounce. The government held this price until August 15, 1971 when President Richard Nixon announced that the United States would no longer convert dollars to gold at a fixed value. The ban on private gold ownership in the US was repealed by an act of Congress codified in Public Law 93-373 [1] which went into effect December 31, 1974. When considering this, it is important to recall that 93-373 does not repeal the Gold Clause Resolution of 1933 (31 U.S.C. 463) which makes unlawful contracts which specify payment in a fixed amount of money or a fixed amount of gold. That is, contracts are unenforcable which use gold monetarily rather than as a commodity of trade. See Gold standard for related material.
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