Executive Order 6102
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Executive Order 6102 is an Executive Order signed on April 5, 1933 by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt "forbidding the Hoarding of Gold Coin, Gold Bullion, and Gold Certificates."
Contents |
[edit] Effect of the Order
The Order required most people to deliver on or before May 1, 1933 all but a small amount gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates owned by them to the Federal Reserve. Under the Trading With the Enemy Act of October 6, 1917, as amended on March 9, 1933, violation of Executive Order 6102 was punishable by fine up to $10,000 ($166,640 if adjusted for inflation as of 2008) or up to ten years in prison, or both. Because of this forced immediate sale of gold to the Federal Reserve at the government set price of $20.67 per troy ounce, this Executive Order is often referred to as the Gold Confiscation of 1933. Shortly after this forced sale, the price of gold from the treasury for international transactions was raised to $35 an ounce; the U.S. government thereby devalued the U.S. dollar by 69%.
Order 6102 specifically exempted "customary use in industry, profession or art"--a provision that covered artists, jewelers, dentists, and sign makers among others. The order further permitted any person to own up to $100 in gold coins ($1,664 if adjusted for inflation as of 2008; a face value equivalent to five troy ounces of Gold).
[edit] Invalidation and reissue
Despite the dire threat of ten years in prison there was only one prosecution under the order, and in that case the order was ruled invalid by federal judge John M. Woolsey, on the technical grounds that the order was signed by the President, not the Secretary of the Treasury as required.[1]
The circumstances of the case were that a New York attorney, Frederick Barber Campbell had on deposit at Chase National over 5,000 ounces of gold. When Campbell attempted to withdraw the gold Chase refused and Campbell sued Chase. A federal prosecutor then indicted Campbell on the following day (September 27, 1933) for failing to register his gold.[2] Ultimately the prosecution of Campbell failed but the authority of federal government to seize gold was upheld.
The case forced the Roosevelt administration to issue a new order under the signature of the Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, which was in force for a few months until the passage of Gold Reserve Act on January 30, 1934.
[edit] Abrogation and subsequent events
The Gold Reserve Act of 1934 abrogated the gold clause in government and private contracts and changed the value of the dollar in gold from $20.67 to $35 per ounce. This price remained until August 15, 1971 when President Richard Nixon announced that the United States would no longer convert dollars to gold at a fixed value, thus abandoning the gold standard for foreign exchange (see Nixon Shock).
The limitation on gold ownership in the U.S. was repealed after President Gerald Ford signed a bill legalizing private ownership of gold coins, bars and certificates by an act of Congress codified in Pub.L. 93-373 [2] [3] which went into effect December 31, 1974. P.L. 93-373 does not repeal the 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. That is, contracts are unenforceable if they use gold monetarily rather than as a commodity of trade. However, Act of Oct. 28, 1977, Pub. L. No. 95-147, § 4(c), 91 Stat. 1227, 1229 (originally codified at 31 U.S.C. § 463 note, recodified as amended at 31 U.S.C. § 5118(d)(2)) amended the 1933 Joint Resolution and made it clear that parties could again include so-called gold clauses in contracts formed after 1977 [3].
[edit] False Rumors of Safety Deposit Seizure
 |
This article contains weasel words, vague phrasing that often accompanies biased or unverifiable information. Such statements should be clarified or removed. (March 2009) |
Circulating on internet are rumors that Executive Order 6102 led to the seizure or freezing of safe deposit boxes in 1933. There are also falsified versions of the text of the order which imply that "Internal Revenue Service agents" managed this supposed freezing of safe deposit boxes. The actual text of the order which can be viewed in the PDF file below has no reference to IRS agents or safe deposit boxes.
In actuality, despite the threat of criminal prosecution, no safe deposit boxes were forcibly searched under the order and the few prosecutions that occurred in the 1930s for gold hoarding were executed under different statutes. One of the few such cases occurred over two years later in 1936 when the safe deposit box of Zelik Josefowitz, who was not a U.S. citizen, containing over 10,000 ounces of gold was seized with a search warrant as part of a tax evasion prosecution.[4] In 1933 approximately 500 tonnes of gold were turned in to the Treasury "voluntarily" at the exchange rate of $20.67 per troy ounce.[5]
Although the U.S. Treasury did not seize safe deposit box contents it nevertheless came into possession of a large number of them due to bank failures. During the 1930s over 3,000 banks failed and the contents of their safe deposit boxes were remanded to the custody of the Treasury. If no one claimed the box it remained in the possession of the Treasury. As of October, 1981, there were 1605 cardboard cartons in the basement of the Treasury each containing the contents of an unclaimed safe deposit box.[6]
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- PDF of Executive Order 6102 distributed by the Postmaster General.
- Text of Executive Order 6102 from The American Presidency Project.
- How Americans Lost Their Right To Own Gold And Became Criminals in the Process by Henry Mark Holzer.
- 1933 Audio of FDR's Banking Crisis Fireside Chat
