Re: [OT] why was private gold ownership made illegal in the US? (Re: to outlaw general purpose computers)
At 7:31 PM -0500 on 7/2/02, Harmon Seaver wrote: Wasn't the dollar backed by silver for quite awhile? There were definitely real silver dollars coined for quite awhile, and the dollar said something on it about silver certificate. Likewise many smaller coins had a high silver content -- this ended sometime during Vietnam, not sure the year. I've still got a bag of silver coins laying around somewhere. There were silver certificates, yes, and silver coins, until the market value of the silver exceeded the value stated on the coin. Pennies have a lot of zinc in them now, for the same reason. I'm not sure when the silver certificate notes stopped being issued, though it seems to me that FDR had something to do with that. I'm pretty sure they were being honored at least into the 1970's, and it seems to me that they'd just give you $20 worth of silver at market prices if you gave them a silver certificate, which wasn't much help unless you thought either the future price of silver was going up, or the dollar going down against silver sometime later one. Cheers, RAH -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
Re: [OT] why was private gold ownership made illegal in the US? (Re: to outlaw general purpose computers)
On Tue, Jul 02, 2002 at 11:34:17PM -0400, R. A. Hettinga wrote: At 7:31 PM -0500 on 7/2/02, Harmon Seaver wrote: Wasn't the dollar backed by silver for quite awhile? There were definitely real silver dollars coined for quite awhile, and the dollar said something on it about silver certificate. Likewise many smaller coins had a high silver content -- this ended sometime during Vietnam, not sure the year. I've still got a bag of silver coins laying around somewhere. There were silver certificates, yes, and silver coins, until the market value of the silver exceeded the value stated on the coin. Pennies have a lot of zinc in them now, for the same reason. I'm not sure when the silver certificate notes stopped being issued, though it seems to me that FDR had something to do with that. I'm pretty sure they were being honored at least into the 1970's, and it seems to me that they'd just give you $20 worth of silver at market prices if you gave them a silver certificate, which wasn't much help unless you thought either the future price of silver was going up, or the dollar going down against silver sometime later one. I did a quick search -- started issuing silver certificates in 1878, quit in 1957, but kept redeeming them for silver dollars until 1964, and for silver bullion until 1968. -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com
Re: [OT] why was private gold ownership made illegal in the US? (Re: to outlaw general purpose computers)
On Tue, 2 Jul 2002, Adam Back wrote: Just curious, but what was the rationale under which private possession of gold was made illegal in the US? It boggles the mind... Adam Eric's comment are correct. A bit more info. The US wanted to devalue the $ and substitute a general gold standard for a government to government gold standard. The gold standard price of gold was $20.67/ounce. By forcing Americans to turn in their gold before devaluation, the Feds got more gold for less money. They also wanted the freedom to inflate. Gold clauses were common in contracts and they would have made soft money difficult. As is traditional under US law, gold ownership was banned for US citizens and permanent residents anywhere on earth. There were controlled exemptions for coin collectors, jewelers, and dentists. Gold smuggling became popular during the Vietnam war and the monetary crises of the '60s and '70s. It was re-legalized in January of 1975 (the only decent act of the Ford Admin). DCF
Re: [OT] why was private gold ownership made illegal in the US? (Re: to outlaw general purpose computers)
Wasn't the dollar backed by silver for quite awhile? There were definitely real silver dollars coined for quite awhile, and the dollar said something on it about silver certificate. Likewise many smaller coins had a high silver content -- this ended sometime during Vietnam, not sure the year. I've still got a bag of silver coins laying around somewhere. On Tue, Jul 02, 2002 at 07:37:48PM -0400, R. A. Hettinga wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 At 8:53 PM +0100 on 7/2/02, Adam Back wrote: Just curious, but what was the rationale under which private posession of gold was made illegal in the US? It boggles the mind... Roosevelt wanted to make the dollar a fiat currency, IIRC. Before then, you could redeem dollars for gold, after then you could redeem dollars for, well, dollars. This was slid sideways a bit after the war by the Bretton Woods agreement, which made various European currencies exchangeable into dollars at mostly fixed rates, and *foreigners* could exchange dollars into gold. Which, once Europe was on its feet financially, and Johnson's democrats began inflating the dollar to pay for Vietnam and other fun things, deGaulle's France (did I spell those both right, AAA? :-)) happily started changing dollars into gold, FOB Paris, thank you very much. At which point, Nixon floated the dollar, and, at the same time, allowed the private possession of gold in the US again. Then he did something really stupid and instituted price controls, but, he was always an Nerf-Conservative political opportunist anyway, or at least a Keynesian, which is the same thing, even Le Monde Diplomatique says so ;-)... Fortunately, the rest of the innumeracy that was the New Deal has been going down the shitter since then. They finally got rid of the Glass-Stegal act a few years ago, for instance, the law that bifurcated investment banks and banks of deposit. Cheers, RAH -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGP 7.5 iQA/AwUBPSI5NMPxH8jf3ohaEQLH8wCeOlVDblBsF0ZCkqfUH89d2tfXn+QAn0UU Ab7b99fnYcZi+Db1BFivOsu3 =iCZG -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com
RE: [OT] why was private gold ownership made illegal in the US? (Re: to outlaw general purpose computers)
Duncan Frissell said: By forcing Americans to turn in their gold before devaluation, the Feds got more gold for less money. But: the individual common folk couldn't be forced to turn in their gold if the govmt didn't know they had any, right, since gold wasn't/isn't trackable. So it would only have been highly visible commercial entities who couldn't refuse? .. Blanc
Re: [OT] why was private gold ownership made illegal in the US? (Re: to outlaw general purpose computers)
At 7:31 PM -0500 on 7/2/02, Harmon Seaver wrote: Wasn't the dollar backed by silver for quite awhile? There were definitely real silver dollars coined for quite awhile, and the dollar said something on it about silver certificate. Likewise many smaller coins had a high silver content -- this ended sometime during Vietnam, not sure the year. I've still got a bag of silver coins laying around somewhere. There were silver certificates, yes, and silver coins, until the market value of the silver exceeded the value stated on the coin. Pennies have a lot of zinc in them now, for the same reason. I'm not sure when the silver certificate notes stopped being issued, though it seems to me that FDR had something to do with that. I'm pretty sure they were being honored at least into the 1970's, and it seems to me that they'd just give you $20 worth of silver at market prices if you gave them a silver certificate, which wasn't much help unless you thought either the future price of silver was going up, or the dollar going down against silver sometime later one. Cheers, RAH -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
Re: [OT] why was private gold ownership made illegal in the US? (Re: to outlaw general purpose computers)
Wasn't the dollar backed by silver for quite awhile? There were definitely real silver dollars coined for quite awhile, and the dollar said something on it about silver certificate. Likewise many smaller coins had a high silver content -- this ended sometime during Vietnam, not sure the year. I've still got a bag of silver coins laying around somewhere. On Tue, Jul 02, 2002 at 07:37:48PM -0400, R. A. Hettinga wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 At 8:53 PM +0100 on 7/2/02, Adam Back wrote: Just curious, but what was the rationale under which private posession of gold was made illegal in the US? It boggles the mind... Roosevelt wanted to make the dollar a fiat currency, IIRC. Before then, you could redeem dollars for gold, after then you could redeem dollars for, well, dollars. This was slid sideways a bit after the war by the Bretton Woods agreement, which made various European currencies exchangeable into dollars at mostly fixed rates, and *foreigners* could exchange dollars into gold. Which, once Europe was on its feet financially, and Johnson's democrats began inflating the dollar to pay for Vietnam and other fun things, deGaulle's France (did I spell those both right, AAA? :-)) happily started changing dollars into gold, FOB Paris, thank you very much. At which point, Nixon floated the dollar, and, at the same time, allowed the private possession of gold in the US again. Then he did something really stupid and instituted price controls, but, he was always an Nerf-Conservative political opportunist anyway, or at least a Keynesian, which is the same thing, even Le Monde Diplomatique says so ;-)... Fortunately, the rest of the innumeracy that was the New Deal has been going down the shitter since then. They finally got rid of the Glass-Stegal act a few years ago, for instance, the law that bifurcated investment banks and banks of deposit. Cheers, RAH -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGP 7.5 iQA/AwUBPSI5NMPxH8jf3ohaEQLH8wCeOlVDblBsF0ZCkqfUH89d2tfXn+QAn0UU Ab7b99fnYcZi+Db1BFivOsu3 =iCZG -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com
Re: [OT] why was private gold ownership made illegal in the US? (Re: to outlaw general purpose computers)
On Tue, 2 Jul 2002, Adam Back wrote: Just curious, but what was the rationale under which private possession of gold was made illegal in the US? It boggles the mind... Adam Eric's comment are correct. A bit more info. The US wanted to devalue the $ and substitute a general gold standard for a government to government gold standard. The gold standard price of gold was $20.67/ounce. By forcing Americans to turn in their gold before devaluation, the Feds got more gold for less money. They also wanted the freedom to inflate. Gold clauses were common in contracts and they would have made soft money difficult. As is traditional under US law, gold ownership was banned for US citizens and permanent residents anywhere on earth. There were controlled exemptions for coin collectors, jewelers, and dentists. Gold smuggling became popular during the Vietnam war and the monetary crises of the '60s and '70s. It was re-legalized in January of 1975 (the only decent act of the Ford Admin). DCF
RE: [OT] why was private gold ownership made illegal in the US? (Re: to outlaw general purpose computers)
Duncan Frissell said: By forcing Americans to turn in their gold before devaluation, the Feds got more gold for less money. But: the individual common folk couldn't be forced to turn in their gold if the govmt didn't know they had any, right, since gold wasn't/isn't trackable. So it would only have been highly visible commercial entities who couldn't refuse? .. Blanc
