As part of the New Deal, Franklin D. Roosevelt confiscated all privately-owned gold and made it illegal to own the shiny metal, and fixed its price. Jim Powell of the Future of Freedom Foundation goes through the history of the disastrous actions taken by FDR and the aftermath.
Roosevelt understood that he must apply the full force of federal power to suppress the natural desire for gold in troubled times. The Emergency Banking Act, signed into law March 9, amended the Federal Reserve Act by adding a new subsection (n), which empowered the secretary of the Treasury to demand that all Americans surrender their gold and receive paper money. The following day, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6073, which made it illegal for Americans to take gold out of the country.
In his first “fireside chat,” delivered on March 12, Roosevelt didn’t say a word about his backstage maneuvering to seize gold. He remarked that “hoarding during the past week has become an exceedingly unfashionable pastime.”
Less than a month later, on April 5, 1933, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6012, which expropriated privately owned gold. He ordered Americans to surrender their gold to the government by May 1, 1933. Violators would be subject to a $10,000 fine or as many as 10 years in prison.
The government would love nothing more than for you to believe that they have all the answers. They want you to believe that through their laws you somehow magically become more free or more equal. This notion is a fallacy. Government by its very nature is force. Over time many people have attempted to seek methods to minimize government’s force over our lives, but as time moves forwards more and more laws are created limiting our options.
One of the key ingredients in attaining some semblance of freedom is to become financially independent. A new book, “5 Steps To Freedom“, by Jeff Nabers and Phoebe Chongchua supplies us with some extremely effective tools to escape financial slavery. Take elements of Tom Wood’s “Meltdown“, Ron Paul’s “Manifesto“, and Peter Schiff’s “Crash Proof” all rolled into one and you come very close to describing “5 Steps To Freedom”.
The five high level steps are:
Measure
Move
Maintain
Multiply
Mention
The first portion of the book is an education on topics such as:
Here is Ron Paul’s opening statement today during the House Financial Services Committee hearing on “Consumer Protection and the Role of The Federal Reserve”. He uses his time to promote the idea of “honest money” to legalize the use of gold and silver as legal tender.
I apologize for the poor audio, but that’s how the stream came across.
Most of the public is still unaware of that the gold price is currently suppressed by governments and central banks in collusion with bullion dealers. Even fewer realize that suppression of the price of gold has plenty of historical precedence. The following is the story of the London Gold Pool.
by Jake Towne, the Champion of the Constitution Originally published on Sunday, June 14, 2009 at http://www.nolanchart.com/article6535.html
“When gold speaks, all tongues are silent.” – Italian proverb
This article will briefly review the history and aftermath of the infamous London Gold Pool. For those unfamiliar with monetary history, let me quickly establish the events framing the London Gold Pool.
In 1933, the FED’s monetary inflation caused the Great Depression which was also America’s first bankruptcy. FDR plundered the American people’s gold and one month later outlawed the private possession of gold, an illegal act that existed until 1975. From 1933 onwards, America was on a “gold bullion standard.” A “gold bullion standard” exists when gold coins are not minted and owned by the people, but large international transactions with foreigners are handled in gold bar. However, the FED, America’s central bank, continued inflating the monetary supply which debases the currency and likewise increases the foreigner’s redemption of gold. (emblem)
Instead of answering the question directly the author analyzes the behavior of gold during times of inflation. The conclusion is that gold (at times) goes down during inflationary events:
Zoom out and the big picture gets even more interesting: The March 20, 2009 high in gold is below the February 20 high, which itself was well beneath the March 2008 all-time peak. Since then, the Fed’s campaign to breathe new life into the economy via cash infusions and credit creation has been tireless. (Last estimate: $12.8 trillion.)
In the end, the evidence speaks for itself. Gold has not fulfilled its promise as hedge against “inflation,” or an economic safe-haven. This scenario, while shocking to the bevy of gold bugs who swarmed around the metal at the onset of the Fed’s bailout binge — is no surprise to EWI subscribers.
While the stats given do not lie, I take issue with the general claim that “Gold has not fulfilled its promise as hedge[sic] against inflation or an economic safe-haven“. The author makes the mistake of assuming that “trading” in gold is the same as accumulating gold for wealth preservation. Sure, if the value of gold goes down it is worth less and those who are trying to trade gold for profit are going to be hurt. But those of us accumulating gold will just purchase more.
Why? The simple answer is, because gold always has value. It certainly has fluctuations in value, but it has always had value and it will likely always have value. No one can make that claim about fiat currencies with a straight face.
[In case you do not yet understand futures markets, "backwardation" means that silver to be delivered today is now being priced higher than metal to be delivered later. This article refers to the LBMA, or London Bullion Market Association's futures market in London, England. For more details on backwardation, please refer to my five-part December series which starts here "The End for the Dollar and all Fiat Currencies (1/5)". Contango is the opposite of backwardation and exists when futures price is higher than the spot price as I explained for those new to futures terminology here "The Money Matrix - What the Heck Are Derivatives? (PART 10/15)". [As you read, please also note that I am NOT a commodities trader, I am just an engineer by trade, so feel free to help me out with my analysis or mistakes.] ( Photo) (2)
Do you know how much gold is exchanged daily in dollars? If not, prepare to be shocked.
by Jake, the Champion of the Constitution Originally published on Sunday, March 29, 2009 at http://www.nolanchart.com/article6228.html
While gold trades as a currency (or “medium of exchange”) and also is a “store of value,” and even a “unit of account” for some, and very little is actually consumed. Economically speaking, gold trades even in the modern world as money. Gold is a luxury good with insignificant industrial usage. Its major market as a luxury good is Indian women’s jewelry, but to these women gold is their money or insurance if their mate leaves, dies, or is disabled so the metal is not consumed – it can be easily recovered. ( Photo) (2)
To make my case that gold is money, what seems to be little known is that the gold market is also quite large – the LBMA in 2008 traded about $80 billion USD per trading DAY per the data collected by the IFSL 2009 Bullion Markets Report p3/8 – which I took the time to verify to be correct from its original sources – or $20.3 Trillion in turnover in 2008 and 254 LBMA trading days. However, the IFSL makes a significant note that this volume is quite likely three-to-five times larger since much of the transactions are increasingly netted out and cleared without appearing in the statistics. Please compare this to the 2008 GDP of the United States at $15 Trillion and understand the rough estimate that 75% of the world’s trade in gold (and half of the world’s silver) is traded via the LBMA.
“Peering through reverent fingers I watch [the Gods of the Market Place] flourish and fall. And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.” – Rudyard Kipling
by Jake, the Champion of the Constitution
Originally published Saturday, February 14, 2009 at http://www.nolanchart.com/article5998.html
[In case you do not yet understand futures markets, "backwardation" means that silver to be delivered today is now being priced higher than metal to be delivered later. This article refers to the LBMA, or London Bullion Market Association's futures market in London, England. For more details on backwardation, please refer to my five-part December series which starts here "The End for the Dollar and all Fiat Currencies (1/5)". Contango is the opposite of backwardation and exists when futures price is higher than the spot price as I explained for those new to futures terminology here "The Money Matrix - What the Heck Are Derivatives? (PART 10/15)". [As you read, please also note that I am NOT a commodities trader, I am just an engineer by trade, so feel free to help me out with my analysis or mistakes.] ( Photo) (2)
As we learned in “The Significance of Gold Backwardation Explained (4/5)“, backwardation is a sign of a very tight market, and a market that will be tight for sometime into the future either 1) current supply is very tight, 2) future supply is projected to be very tight, or 3) there is a severe distrust in counterparties that the short positions can deliver the goods on time per the contract, or vice-versa that the long positions will not have the cash.
While gold traded as a “store of value” (a currency, really), very little is actually consumed. Silver, on the other hand, serves as both an industrial metal and a “store of value” for silver investors. As we learned here, both silver and gold are precious metals since there is very little aboveground stock. All of the gold stock in the world would fit into a cube 20.5 meters to a side. Due to high amounts of industrial usage, the silver stock is even smaller, less than 14.5 meters to a side.]
The LBMA Silver Mid Rate goes negative AGAIN!!!! Read on to see why I used 4 exclamation points.
by Jake, the Champion of the Constitution Originally published Friday, January 30, 2009 at http://www.nolanchart.com/article5916.html
[In case you do not yet understand futures markets, "backwardation" means that silver to be delivered today is now being priced higher than metal to be delivered later in the London Bullion Market Association's futures market in London, England. For more details on backwardation, please refer to my five-part December series which starts here "The End for the Dollar and all Fiat Currencies (1/5)". Contango is the opposite of backwardation and exists when futures price is higher than the spot price as I explained for those new to futures terminology here "The Money Matrix - What the Heck Are Derivatives? (PART 10/15)". [As you read, please also note that I am NOT a commodities trader, I am just an engineer by trade, so feel free to help me out with my analysis or mistakes.] ( Photo) (2)
As we learned in “The Significance of Gold Backwardation Explained (4/5)“, backwardation is a sign of a very tight market, and a market that will be tight for sometime into the future either 1) current supply is very tight, 2) future supply is projected to be very tight, or 3) there is a severe distrust in counterparties that the short positions can deliver the goods on time per the contract, or vice versa that the long positions will not have the cash.]
“Surreptitious market manipulation by government is leading the world to disaster.” – GATA, the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee in a $264K full-page color ad in the Wall Street Journal, January 31, 2008
by Jake, the Champion of the Constitution Originally published Thursday, January 29, 2009 at http://www.nolanchart.com/article5832.html
“Gold is Money, and Nothing Else.” – JP Morgan before Congress, 1914. Notice he forgot to mention silver. GO GATA!
In Part 1, I meandered a bit but one point I belabored was that the United States under Obama will refer to China as a “currency manipulator.” In this article, please also me to meander again, but if you care to research any of the links I will introduce, you might agree with me that first Obama and “Turbo Tax” Tim have to defend my claim that America is itself a “currency manipulator.”
The Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee was organized in January 1999 to advocate and undertake litigation against illegal collusion to control the price and supply of gold and related financial securities. GATA opposes collusion against a free market in gold, other precious metals, currencies, and related securities. Their main theories center around demonstrating that governments, central banks, bullion banks, and even some major miners have colluded to suppress the price of gold. By doing so, they make their own fiat currencies appear stronger. ( photo) GATA’s evidence is summarized here and an 25-minute introductory movie is here Part (1)(2)(3)
My first two pieces of evidence are taken from a very upbeat letter celebrating the 10th anniversary of GATA written by Bill Murphy of lemetropolecafe.com. You can read the full version here. First is a description of Obama’s “new” Clinton-era, anti-gold central planners. Second is a 1961 Federal Reserve document found by researcher Elaine Supkis that clearly outlines secretive currency manipulation as standard operating procedure for America’s quasi-private central bank.
Liberty Maven
“, by Jeff Nabers and Phoebe Chongchua supplies us with some extremely effective tools to escape financial slavery. Take elements of Tom Wood’s “
“, Ron Paul’s “
“, and Peter Schiff’s “
” all rolled into one and you come very close to describing “5 Steps To Freedom”.
While gold trades as a currency (or “medium of exchange”) and also is a “store of value,” and even a “unit of account” for some, and very little is actually consumed. Economically speaking, gold trades even in the modern world as money. Gold is a luxury good with insignificant industrial usage. Its major market as a luxury good is Indian women’s jewelry, but to these women gold is their money or insurance if their mate leaves, dies, or is disabled so the metal is not consumed – it can be easily recovered. ( 
The Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee 
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