Treasury claims power to seize gold and silver -- and everything else

Finance Department of the Treasury Washington/gata.org ^ | January 20, 2005 | Finance Department of the Treasury Washington

[Travis McGee]

It's completely relevant, it's just HUGE. That's all. I don't mind it there. Excerpting the most relevant parts would actually mean far more folks would get the message you hope it conveys.

[Travis McGee]

Still waitng for that list of countries.

[ex-Texan]

If you really want to get 'exercised' review the history of the Federal Reserve Bank. After Teddy Roosevelt moved against Standard Oil for being a monopoly, breaking it up into little companies, John D. Rockefeller swore revenge. He began by getting approval for the Federal Reserve Bank ("Fed"). Contrary to common belief, the Fed is a privately owned by several corporations (and families). Today the Rockefeller family (and others) control the monetary policy of the U.S. Which means that Old John got his ultimate revenge. His family, along with a few other families, now control all the wealth in America.

Standard Oil (S.O.) has expanded its oil company holdings one hundred fold by corporate ownership and interlocking corporate boards. The old Standard Oil broken up by T.R. now controls Texaco-Mobile-Chevron, Unocal-Chevron and British Petroleum (B.P.). Its monopolies are stronger than ever. The S.O. also controls several other major industries. In the meantime, oil is worth more now than ever before. It truly has become "Black Gold."

If you want to blame someone, blame the Rockefellers. It's all their fault.

[snowsislander]

While sifting through some of the background information on the Wikipedia page that I referenced in #16, I noticed a link to this document, which purports to be the actual orders as posted to American citizens (at post offices, it appears from the document) at the time of FDR's general confiscation of gold. I haven't seen this document before, and I cannot vouch for its authenticity, but I found it interesting even if possibly specious.

[Southack]

"This is because they disregarded the lessons which were lost beyond their memory horizon."

Agreed. Happens every day on our stock markets.

But suckers losing money won't cause an economy to crash (the money typically remains in circulation, spent by the guys on the other side of the deal).

Nor is gold a threat to our digital economy. Most people own more gold in the form of worthless, ugly yellow jewerly than they have in investment bullion (which has to be melted, measured, assayed, and professionally stored).

Gold could disappear from this planet tomorrow and the U.S. would never feel its loss.

In a low inflation, low interest rate, high productivity economy, the top thing to track for a hint of a correction (or worse) is the speed of money...i.e. how fast commercial and retail and financial transactions physically occur (but be warned, the government has a very different definition of the speed of money as being our savings rate divided by its monetary measures...making the government stats and charts on this subject meaningless).

If the speed of money decelerates, watch out. If it increases, then hang on!

[Restorer]

You will have to wait awhile longer. I'm traveling and connected only momentarily.

[duk]

Did I read the article correctly, when it mentioned "stocks?" It's not the bullion their talking about but rather the paper trail of ownership which they can confiscate.
Also the article seemed to state that any publicly owned and traded stock is fair game during "war/emergecies."

[Jason_b]

It isn't cool with me. I used the inflation calculator online and discovered as z/vm system programmer I make a bit less in real inflation adjusted terms than a mechanical engineer of your grandparents' era, but he hardly paid any taxes, I pay half in taxes, so I take home half. Is that cool? And you have your counterpart of the past whatever your career, and though you are being paid many paper dollars, it has about the same purchasing power as the gold he or she was paid. So what's the problem, other than the taxes? Only this. Your counterpart could save his money and find it bought the same stuff 30 years later. THAT is cool. But you save your paper today and find 30 years hence that prices have increased by a factor of 10, that is NOT COOL, that is theft. Smarter people use realestate to store wealth because paper money doesn't do the job. But they shouldn't have to because the Constitution guarantees them precious metal money. It guarantees you the right to free speech, the right to keep and bear arms as well. Shall those rights be treated as casually as the former (gold)? Also, the gold was truly owned by your counterpart, he didn't have to rent it from anyone. You, we, needlessly rent your paper money from the banks and your taxes pay the fees. And the inflation losses of your saved dollars pay for bigger government. The crash is happening, it is happening slowly, it is more of a melt than a crash and most of the American people are clueless about debt, and walk into the debt trap like rats after the cheese. Our current paper money serves to transfer wealth, that we create. And the purpose of this attitude on the part of treasury is to prevent us from protecting ourselves completely from that wealth transferral. We are like cows in the stall, with the automated milkers attached and pumping, and that is exactly where our government wants to keep us.

[Restorer]

You have every right to be POed if you wish. But you are delusional if you believe that the average American of today is not immensely better off financially than the average American of say 1920.

Since dollars and purchasing power have a built-in controversy when compared from era to era, let's just look at the way we live.

As late as 1950, the average new home was 975 sf in size. Today it is over 2200.

In 1920 almost nobody had a phone at home, and not much over half had flush toilets and electricity. And of course absolutely nobody had TV, computers or the internet. Most people had a car, but it was a Model T and very few had more than one car.

In 1946, in the movie It's a Wonderful Life, George Bailey is quite proud of the fact that he earns $45 a week rather than $40. He has a solidly middle-clas job. That $45 is worth $462 in 2005. Even if you weren't paying any taxes, that ain't a great deal of money by today's standards.

[Restorer]

BTW, total federal, state and local taxes as a percentage of income was 25% in 1950, 29% in 2005.

Another factoid from 1950. To pay for an average pair of socks the average worker had to work for 90 minutes. Today the time is 13 minutes.

[AdamSelene235]

to track for a hint of a correction (or worse) is the speed of money...i.e. how fast commercial and retail and financial transactions physically occur (but be warned, the government has a very different definition of the speed of money as being our savings rate divided by its monetary measures...making the government stats and charts on this subject meaningless).

No, velocity is usually stated as GDP/money supply.

This ratio has been declining since the 1950's with the exception of a rally in the mid-90's.

[Southack]

but be warned, the government has a very different definition of the speed of money

The government definition for the speed of money is utterly useless. GDP/money supply doesn't tell us how fast money is moving or even how much money is changing hands.

South America is an example of a large money supply that doesn't change hands. The rich in South America hoard their money...when they even leave it in that continent (they often store their wealth abroad). That puts large amounts of money out of effective circulation, doing grave harm to their economic growth potential.

Well, if you have lots of money, but no one is buying or selling anything, you can rest assured that your economy is lousy.

Conversely, lots of large, high-speed financial transactions is positive (e.g. stock exchanges) for an overall economy.

[AdamSelene235]

Then how do you measure it? Gimme some data.

[Southack]

New loans (amounts, time to process), new mortgages, credit card volume, sales tax receipts, UPS/FedEx/USPS volume, car title registrations (new and used), eBay volume, Casino receipts, ATM withdrawals, tax withholdings, wire transfers, stock volume, bond volume, commodity contracts, train shipments, truck shipments, container ship cargo bookings, exercised options, brokerage account withdrawals, gasoline sales, pipeline volume, etc.

The "speed of money" is how fast financial transactions occur, and in what volume.

Zero financial transactions = slow economy. Record financial transactions/volume = booming economy.

[AdamSelene235]

Record financial transactions/volume = booming economy.

By that metric you would have invested in the Kuwati oil bubble.

[Southack]

"the gold was truly owned by your counterpart, he didn't have to rent it from anyone. You, we, needlessly rent your paper money from the banks and your taxes pay the fees. And the inflation losses of your saved dollars pay for bigger government. The crash is happening, it is happening slowly, it is more of a melt than a crash and most of the American people are clueless about debt, and walk into the debt trap like rats after the cheese. Our current paper money serves to transfer wealth, that we create. And the purpose of this attitude on the part of treasury is to prevent us from protecting ourselves completely from that wealth transferral."

That's silly. The U.S. Treasury isn't preventing you from buying all the gold that you desire.

What you want to do is to lock everyone into mandatory gold ownership by tying gold to a currency. That's enslavement. Everyone is forced to invest in gold by default under your coercive system.

In contrast, Americans are currently free to invest in gold if they **want** some of the ugly yellow metal, or they can eschew such nonsense if they prefer. Free country and all that.

Likewise, Americans are not currently coerced by our government into debt; it's a free will choice.

Nor is any "crash" coming, much as you might wish for it. Increases in American productivity, population, and personal wealth (more than 80% of Americans now own stocks, for instance, a far cry from 1935) insure that no such crash is even remotely possible.

Oh, you might get a 10% decline in a real estate market for one or two cities or regions now and again, but not even the massive S&L crisis or the Internet Stock Bubble could do permanent harm to the Great American Long Boom.

American prosperity is pre-ordained; get used to it.

[Southack]

"By that metric you would have invested in the Kuwati oil bubble."

At $67 per barrel today, that would have made you some serious cash.

But yes, that metric would have you chasing hot trends. Beats investing in buggy whip stocks in the vain hope that "one day" they won't be so cheap, though!

[AdamSelene235]

mandatory gold ownership by tying gold to a currency. That's enslavement.

Agreed. However we are currently penalized for preserving purchasing power in the face of dollar depreciation. That's wrong.

[Southack]

"Agreed. However we are currently penalized for preserving purchasing power in the face of dollar depreciation. That's wrong."

Except that the penalty (i.e. currency depreciation) isn't mandatory. Storing your wealth in another medium (e.g. real estate, metals, other currency, stocks, etc.) can avoid that devaluation, if desired.

For most people, it isn't worth the effort... Except to gripe about it, of course!

[AdamSelene235]

I believe, in an inflationary environment, preserving purchasing power is considered a capital gain.