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We need to make this page easier to find. I read a PDF of the original announcement distributed by the Postmaster General and so no mention of 6102. I suggest creating a "Gold Confiscation Executive Order" article that redirects to this one, or something similar. I don't know how to create one though. 137.201.247.20 (talk) 11:46, 26 December 2007 (UTC)Russel Fugal
Mike Maloney Gold And Silver Video
POV?
"and helped to stabilize the economy by eliminating large private hoards of wealth and centralizing gold commerce."
Utter POV garbage. Confiscating gold helped "stabilize" the economy by eliminating presumable greedy hoarders? Someone needs to fix this revisionist nonsense.
what was the emergency? - Omegatron 01:57, Dec 19, 2004 (UTC)
I think what needs to be done is state the facts, then have sections "arguments for", rebuttal, and "arguments against", rebuttal. I'm starting work on it in my word processor.
Rfugal (talk) 00:07, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
68.252.245.86 notes that the text of the executive order as quoted differs significantly from at least one contemporary publication of the order. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I think it's safe to assume that the version currently in the article is bogus. (Has there ever been a law written in the history of mankind, let alone the United States, that suddenly shifts into second person part way through?)
Also, odd punctuation aside, "U.S. Gold confiscation" strikes me as a pretty loaded title. "Confiscation" may be literally accurate, but the word has a strong negative connotation and suggests that the owners were not confiscated for the taking, when in fact they were as required by the 5th Amendment. I am therefore boldly rewriting the quote from the executive order and moving the article to a more neutral title, "United States Executive Order 6102." --Paul 00:24, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
31 U.S.C. § 463
The text of [1] mentions the above captioned USCode. However, that chapter and section doesn't appear to exist anymore. Is it possible that sometime between 1974 and now that the section was relocated within the code? or has the Gold Clause Resolution of 1933 been repealed?
I have removed that citation from the main article. Maybe someone with more interest in this can track it down. --G1076 00:42, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
Dollar De-valued
The text mentions the dollar was de-valued by 69%. This is wrong.
If the price of gold was raised from about $20.67 to $35, you get this number (69%) if you subtract 20.67 from 35, then divide by 20.67. This represents the percentage increase in the price of gold. It does not mean the percentage of value lost. To get that, one should subtract from 100% the ratio of the old to the new, ie ( 1 - 20.67/35 ), or 41%.
Imagine you had $1 and wanted to sell it to the US in 1933. You would receive 0.0484 ounces of Gold. The next day, EO 6102 goes into effect. Now you want to sell another $1. You get 0.0286 ounces of Gold. By what percent did your dollar lose value? Well, it could now purchase 41% less gold than before. Or, in other words, it could purchase only 59% of the amount of gold that same dollar puchased the day before. The inverse of this number (169%) is the percentage difference between the new value and the old value. Subtracting 1 from that number (69%) is the percentage increase between the old and new values.
Otheus is wrong. The devaluation was 69%. I do these financial calculations all the time. If you could get .0484 of something one day, and .0286, you'd get a 41% decline. That would be the correct inference is the baseline amount were .0484. It isn't. DocGov (talk) 15:23, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
Reworded to fix. Also eliminated notion that gov't "profits" when it takes currency out of circulation. --69.231.75.56 09:34, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
Dollar Devalued...?
I don't know if we should say so baldly "the dollar was devalued to 69.3%". Against what? Rice? Palladium? Wood? This is true against gold. I don't know...was it usual in 1933 to measure the value of paper currencies only against gold, as the US WAS fully or partially on the gold standard...? I suggest we add "...against gold" to the sentence. What do others think?Chris. Fulker 02:46, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
fixed price contracts unlawful?
Toward the end it says "...Gold Clause Resolution of 1933, which makes unlawful any contracts which specify payment in a fixed amount of money or a fixed amount of gold" Does "fixed amount of money" really belong there, the implication is that all fixed-price contracts are unlawful. Does the term "money" mean something different here than the common usage? If so it should be clarified, if not, removed. Herostratus 15:34, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
How can an executive order impose criminal penalties?
Of course the Executive Order was unconstitutional and so were the Acts of Congress also - but that does not matter if only four our of the nine Judges on the Supreme Court try to enforce the Constitution. If five Justices of the Supreme Court say an Executive Order to execute all people over five feet tall is Constitutional then it goes into effect. Ditto with an Act of Congress to execute everyone over five feet tall - this reliance on the, government appointed, Supreme Court to limit government power is the problem.94.0.66.230 (talk) 16:54, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
Executive orders are not laws, they're simply directives of executive policy. Only Congress can define an activity as criminal. 71.203.209.0 14:27, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
Executive orders are the mechanism by which the Imperial Presidency overrides the rule of law - in this case to seize all personally owned gold. Who said America was a democracy?
Conflict of interest concerns.
FYI: I've been having trouble with User:Esoule who has been editing elsewhere under circumstances in which there is a clear conflict of interest. I thought to check that user's edit history and I noticed an edit to this article from 30th November 2007 in which that user added:
(Note my highlighting).
You might want to investigate the accuracy and relevence of this (somewhat autobiographical) addition in the light of this editor's history.
SteveBaker (talk) 12:44, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
As it was unsourced, i just now removed it from the article. DGG (talk) 02:37, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
Reference the following URL: http://www.coinmag.com/archive/spring99/tribute.html which includes reference to "Confessions of a Gold Bug" (Adam Smith Publishing 1990). That book describes the origins and campaigns of the National Committee to Legalize Gold (NCLG) which began on August 15, 1971. ESoule (talk) 14:15, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
6260
In the book "Investing in Gold and Silver" by Michael Maloney it mentions Executive Order 6260 as the one that outlawed ownership of Gold. From doing a little bit of research, I guess 6260 succeeded exec order 6102. -- Suso (talk) 12:48, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
False Rumors, Frederick Barber Campbell, etc
I substantially added to the clarity and factuality of this article by citing the two most important gold cases in the 1930s, the Frederick Barber Campbell case and the Josefowitz case (1936). I also deleted two paragraphs on monetary policy which appear to have to been written with the view of explaining the rationale for the order but really were just unclear and more or less irrelevant to the subject matter.
Also, I think it is important to address the false "gold seizure" rumors which are very widespread on the internet so I added a section to debunk those myths. I should also mention that I read every issue of the New York Times in April of 1933 for mentions of this topic of which there were several. The gist of these articles is basically that the gold turn in was voluntarily. There is absolutely no mention of safety deposit boxes being seized in any issue of the New York Times during the month of April 1933. Also, it is worth mentioning that in June or July of 1934 Time Magazine had an article on gold turn ins to the Treasury stating the substantial amounts of gold turned in since the enactment of the Reserve Act on January 30th, 1934. This article reinforces the voluntary nature of the turn ins.
John Chamberlain (talk) 00:30, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
I removed parts of the hoax (a/k/a rumor), as many people have cut-and-paste that section from the Wikipedia page into forums, and either assumed or wanted others to believe it was real. Hopefully, the "..." sections will make it a bit more clear that that it isn't the real 6102 text.
FWIW, the first version of this article was just the text of the hoax.
AboutSilver (talk) 13:40, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
Still in effect?
I don't think it says anywhere if this is still in effect today or if it's not being enforced anymore. Shadowcelibi (talk) 17:59, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
Constitution's gold clause??
What is the gold clause in the US Constitution?Mulp (talk) 06:47, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
Reasons?
Nothing is said about the reasons. A opening paragraph about it, why actually this act was introduced? ~~Merewyn --Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.156.124.19 (talk) 13:17, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
Unconstitutional (and criminal!) nature
This act seems to contravene basics tenets of private property. If I walked into somebody's house and demanded they surrender one of the home entertainment systems they have hoarded in their house to me for a price that I determine (or more to the point, on an IOU that I write on a rubbish piece of paper), I would be thrown into jail for stealing. This would be the case in just about any country on earth. Despite the fact that there are reasons given : "to stabilize the economy... etc...", I think those excuses are extremely weak. In a system of competing currencies (dollar vs gold etc); a weak currency should be allowed to fail. There is also a marked irony in that instead of gold being hoarded in a distributed fashion throughout the economy; the government would now hoard instead - only, in an even greater concentration.
To my mind; this was a crime of extraordinary proportions; probably aimed at profiting only a very small few. -- Preceding unsigned comment added by AlexBehrman (talk o contribs) 03:24, 2 July 2011 (UTC)
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Bias?
The article headline "Invalidation and reissue" suggests that there were no consequences to the prosecution of Frederick Barber Campbell, but later in the article, it is made clear that the feds came in and confiscated the gold anyway! A better title might be "Lawyer's Gold Confiscated." 106.56.135.47 (talk) 03:24, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
Deleted "500 tonnes sold" text
Approximately 500 tonnes of gold were sold to the U.S. Treasury in 1933 at the rate of $20.67 per troy ounce A "sale" is a voluntary act between two willing parties, and the Executive Order 6102 confiscated privately owned metal and gave them what the government determined was compensation.Jonny Quick (talk) 02:42, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
Prosecutions section
I'm not sure what the value of the prosecutions section is; most of them seem to be disconnected newspaper clippings found by random internet searches, and most are skimpy enough on the details that it's hard to tell whether this order was the primary reason for the prosecution. Additionally, since they're essentially disconnected anecdotes, they don't really give a comprehensive view of the order, its effect, and the way it was enforced -- it's just a bunch of random stories put together to form some sort of arbitrary narrative. Shouldn't it be removed and replaced with something that draws on scholarly analysis rather than a random selection of primary sources? --Aquillion (talk) 20:56, 20 July 2013 (UTC)
Section on "Similar laws in other countries" is very thin
Australia was by no means the only other country to have such a law. Britain, for example, had a similar law, though I'm not sure of the dates (1931(?)-1980 (?) ). I wonder if someone who is well informed on the subject could add a list (with relevant dates) of other countries that have had similar laws. Norvo (talk) 22:59, 14 March 2015 (UTC)
Section request - Public Reception
Not sure if this request would be appropreiate for this article, but I would be interested to learn what the American Publics reaction to this Executive Order was. That is, were people accepting of it due to the destructive nature of the Great Depression? Were there violent protests? Did news outlets cover it negatively or positively? Did they cover it at all, or was it barely a blip on their radar?
I'm only vaguely aware of this Executive Order in a modern context, and it is usually a topic which I only hear it brought up in a negative conditions (with the Nixon follow through in '71, and the Ford repeal in '74), I'd be very interest to know how it was received by the public at the time. Did any elected officials attempt to put up resistance against the EO, or speak out against it after it's enactment, or was it seen as a good thing?
It may be difficult to keep personal opinions at bay for a section like this, but I think it would do some good in giving a historical perspective to the reader. Sawta (talk) 18:08, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
Price of gold
?The price of gold from the Treasury for international transactions was thereafter raised to $35 an ounce ($648 today[4]).? That's wrong. The given reference is not supporting this false claim. As far as I know 1 ounce in the FED books is still 35$. Ju52 (talk) 15:23, 12 December 2017 (UTC)
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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