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Converting Gold Coins Into Bullion Bars After 1933
Much has been made of President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 6102 forbidding the hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates. The order of April 5, 1933, and the subsequent removal of gold coins and gold notes from commercial circulation, while likely traumatic for a few, had little impact on most American families. Ordinary wage earners and white collar employees rarely saw gold coin in circulation. Savings, when not kept in a bank account, were mostly in paper currency and whatever silver coins could be saved from time to time. The Executive Order was directed primarily at those who had hoarded gold in the month prior to the order or who had kept gold as a speculative investment pending any devaluation of the dollar. Rumors of devaluation and changes in the price of gold had circulated for more than a year and the Hoover Administration had taken steps to identify those holding large amounts of gold coin.
During the 1932 presidential campaign in October, Hoover told a large audience in Des Moines, Iowa, that just after Great Britain abandoned the gold standard (September 1931), the Secretary of the Treasury informed him that unless something could be done to thwart speculators, the United States could be forced off the gold standard within two weeks.
We have defended the country from being forced off the gold standard, with its crushing effect upon all who are in debt … We determined that we should not enter the morass of using the printing press for currency of bonds. All human experience has demonstrated that that path, once taken, cannot be stopped, and that the moral integrity of the government would be sacrificed because ultimately both currency and bonds would become valueless.
After telling his audience how successful his administration had been, Hoover, who wrote most of his own speeches, then inserted a strange yet typical comment:
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coinweek.com
Much has been made of President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 6102 forbidding the hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates. The order of April 5, 1933, and the subsequent removal of gold coins and gold notes from commercial circulation, while likely traumatic for a few, had little impact on most American families. Ordinary wage earners and white collar employees rarely saw gold coin in circulation. Savings, when not kept in a bank account, were mostly in paper currency and whatever silver coins could be saved from time to time. The Executive Order was directed primarily at those who had hoarded gold in the month prior to the order or who had kept gold as a speculative investment pending any devaluation of the dollar. Rumors of devaluation and changes in the price of gold had circulated for more than a year and the Hoover Administration had taken steps to identify those holding large amounts of gold coin.
During the 1932 presidential campaign in October, Hoover told a large audience in Des Moines, Iowa, that just after Great Britain abandoned the gold standard (September 1931), the Secretary of the Treasury informed him that unless something could be done to thwart speculators, the United States could be forced off the gold standard within two weeks.
We have defended the country from being forced off the gold standard, with its crushing effect upon all who are in debt … We determined that we should not enter the morass of using the printing press for currency of bonds. All human experience has demonstrated that that path, once taken, cannot be stopped, and that the moral integrity of the government would be sacrificed because ultimately both currency and bonds would become valueless.
After telling his audience how successful his administration had been, Hoover, who wrote most of his own speeches, then inserted a strange yet typical comment:
More:
Converting Gold Coins Into Bullion Bars After 1933
By Roger W. Burdette, special to CoinWeek ..... Much has been made of President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 6102 forbidding the hoarding of gold
coinweek.com