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

Because of recent inquiries to GATA about the possibility of an attempt by the U.S. Government to confiscate privately held gold and silver bullion and coins and shares in companies mining the precious metals, we're republishing here the correspondence between GATA and the U.S. Treasury Department on the subject in 2005.

The Treasury Department was surprisingly candid in that correspondence, asserting the U.S. Government's authority, in declared emergencies, to confiscate precious metals and to restrict ownership of mining shares -- and to confiscate and restrict every other financial asset as well. So perhaps precious metals investors shouldn't feel too paranoid.

Confiscation has never seemed to GATA to be a serious or imminent threat. While the U.S. Government in 1933 did demand the exchange of circulating government-issued coins for paper money (proceeding to devalue the paper money after the gold was surrendered), that gold then was a huge part of the country's money supply, and amid the national economic collapse at that time the government could make a plausible complaint against "hoarding." There are no such circumstances today, gold no longer being in general circulation as currency. (Yes, we're working on that.)

But of course lately the arrogance and imperiousness of the U.S. government have far exceeded even the paranoia of precous metals investors. Certainly capital controls may be imposed in the United States in the next currency crisis, and it's not far from capital controls to even more brutal interventions in the economy.

GATA's correspondence with the Treasury Department on the subject of confiscation is appended, along with the preface that appeared with the correspondence when it first was published.

FOlks have no idea how much POWER the FedGov has at hand when someone decides to drop the hammer. Read’em and weep.
In an National Emergency:

Executive Orders

Executive Order 10995
Assigning Telecommunications Management Functions
Executive Order 10997
Assigning Emergency Preparedness Functions To The Secretary Of The Interior:
electric power, petroleum and gas, solid fuels, and minerals

Executive Order 10998
Assigning Emergency Preparedness Functions To The Secretary Of Agriculture
Food resources, farm equipment, fertilizer, and food resource facilities

Executive Order 10999
Assigning Emergency Preparedness Functions To The Secretary Of Commerce
transportation, the production and distribution of all materials

Executive Order 11000
Assigning Emergency Preparedness Functions To The Secretary Of Labor
Manpower management employment stabilization

Executive Order 11001
Assigning Emergency Preparedness Functions To The Secretary Of Health, Education, And Welfare
health services, civilian health manpower, health resources, welfare services, and educational programs

Executive Order 11002
Assigning Emergency Preparedness Functions To The Postmaster General
national emergency registration system

Executive Order 11003
Assigning Emergency Preparedness Functions To The Administrator Of The Federal Aviation Agency
emergency management of the Nation’s airports, operating facilities

Executive Order 11004
Assigning Certain Emergency Preparedness Functions To The Housing And Home Finance Administrator
all aspects of lodging or housing and community facilities

Executive Order 11005
Assigning Emergency Preparedness Functions To The Interstate Commerce Commission
railroad utilization, motor carrier utilization, inland waterway utilization

Executive Order 11051
Prescribing Responsibilities Of The Office Of Emergency Planning In The Executive Office Of The President
Executive Order 11490
Assigning emergency preparedness functions to Federal departments and agencies
Executive Order 12472
Executive Order 12472—Assignment of national security and emergency preparedness telecommunications functions

In order to provide for the consolidation of assignment and responsibility for improved execution of national security and emergency preparedness telecommunications functions, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Executive Order 12656
Executive Order 12656 Assigmment of Emergency Preparedness Responsibilities
National Security Emergency Preparedness Policy: Continuity of Government

Executive Order 12919
National Defense Industrial Resources Preparedness
(a) Identify requirements for national emergencies, including military, industrial, and essential civilian demand
(b) Assess continually the capability of the domestic industrial and technological base to satisfy requirements in peacetime and times of national emergency, specifically evaluating the availability of adequate industrial resource and production sources, including subcontractors and suppliers, materials, skilled labor, and professional and technical personnel;
(c) Be prepared, in the event of a potential threat to the security of the United States, to take actions necessary to ensure the availability of adequate industrial resources and production capability, including services and critical technology for national defense requirements;
(d) Improve the efficiency and responsiveness, to defense requirements, of the domestic industrial base; and
(e) Foster cooperation between the defense and commercial sectors for research and development and for acquisition of materials, components, and equipment to enhance industrial base efficiency and responsiveness.

Executive Order 12938
Proliferation Of Weapons Of Mass Destruction
weapons of mass destruction constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, and hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat.

Executive Order 13074
Amends Executive Order 12656 adding a new section 501(16) regarding Noncombatant Evacuation Operations

“The President has the power to seize property, organize and control the means of production, seize commodities, assign military forces abroad, call reserve forces amounting to 2 1/2 million men to duty, institute martial law, seize and control all menas of transportation, regulate all private enterprise, restrict travel, and in a plethora of particular ways, control the lives of all Americans...

Most [of these laws] remain a a potential source of virtually unlimited power for a President should he choose to activate them. It is possible that some future President could exercise this vast authority in an attempt to place the United States under authoritarian rule.

While the danger of a dictatorship arising through legal means may seem remote to us today, recent history records Hitler seizing control through the use of the emergency powers provisions contained in the laws of the Weimar Republic.”

—Joint Statement, Sens. Frank Church (D-ID) and Charles McMathias (R-MD) September 30, 1973

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