> SnowDog said: > "...wasn't helped at all..." (??) I'm curious what you would have done in > FDR's place... If you allow the 'run' to continue, then soon there will be no more gold in the US > Treasury to back the Federal Reserve Notes remaining in use...
If there weren't enough gold reserves to meet the demand it's because the US had been running a con game, printing "gold-backed" notes that had no gold backing. If e-gold or GoldMoney tried this, creating more fictional gold grams would not be the solution. FDR engaged in theft and counterfeiting as a solution to a problem caused by theft and counterfeiting. A more honest solution would have been to make good on all gold redemptions as possible, and then begin a massive liquidation of government assets to purchase gold on the open market until all redemptions were made. To avoid the pricing problems of sudden mass liquidations and mass gold purchases, the government might have offered gold bonds to those who would accept them. These bonds would be payable with interest in gold after a fixed time period. To people immediately demanding their gold, the government would have to tell them to wait, and then proceed quickly to round up enough gold to satisfy the request. The sale of government assets include office buildings, vehicles, huge tracts of land, etc. In other words, my solution would be: take every action to make good on all the gold redemptions. Do not steal the gold. > ... So a default on the redemption of Federal Reserve Notes would bankrupt the country -- and not just the > government, but all private debts as well. But that's just it -- the government did default on the redemption of Federal Reserve Notes, and it did bankrupt the country by deepening the depression and spreading it worldwide. Sadly, it did not bankrupt the government, only the indentured servants we like to call "citizens". Brother, can you spare a dime? I must emphasize that when the government devalued the dollar and confiscated gold, they WERE defaulting on their redemption obligations. They didn't magically skirt the underlying hard reality just because some politicians signed some pieces of paper. > So what do you do? Do you go to Congress and try > to get them to remove the country from the gold standard, and make all > Federal Reserve Notes, legal tender. At the time, this was thought to be > unconstitutional, ... It would have required a Constitutional > Amendment, which would have taken several years to implement ... There was no time. Yes, at the time it was thought to be unconstitutional. That's because, as you say, it was unconstitutional. There was time for FDR to have a fireside chat and level with the American people. I don't think it was any easier for FDR to say "we're stealing your money" than it was to say "sorry, hold on, we're getting your money." > I think he did the only thing he knew how to do with the powers that had > been granted to his new office. He was not granted these powers. He had no more legal authority to do what he did than my immigrant grandfather had. But that never stopped a president from doing anything to consolidate and maintain power (e.g. Lincoln, LBJ, Nixon, etc.) Regards, Patrick Chkoreff --- You are currently subscribed to e-gold-list as: [email protected] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Use e-gold's Secure Randomized Keyboard (SRK) when accessing your e-gold account(s) via the web and shopping cart interfaces to help thwart keystroke loggers and common viruses.
