[oblomov]

They did not confiscate all of it. Many people hid their gold. Those with a lot of gold put it in European banks vaults (and the fortunate chose Switzerland rather than Germany or France as their banking location).

[DivaDelMar]

The executive order is here:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2140081/posts?page=91#91

[slowhandluke]

Ah, but they tried. And IRA/401k money is a lot easier to find than gold in safety deposit boxes or hidden at home or elsewhere. A phone call to a very few firms like Vanguard and Fidelity would find well over 20% of it, and it was 20% of the gold that they found.

If you want to really roil the markets, confiscating 20% of the 401k/IRA accounts and scaring the rest into overseas gold would do wonders.

Dow 500, here we come.