Nov 23
In 1933 the President (FDR) signed Executive Order 1602 “forbidding the Hoarding of Gold Coin, Gold Bullion and Gold Certificates” by U.S. citizens.
Note – it wasn’t a LAW, not passed by Congress, but it did threaten 10 years in prison.
Put another way… if you got something they want, they will take it.
Nah… it would never happen again, you say. Uh huh… It was a crisis. And by gosh we aren’t in a crisis are we?
November 23rd, 2009 at 5:50 am
The President cannot create a criminal law. He may be able to decide, if some existing law gives him authority, what constitutes an infraction of that law. Which is largely what Bush-Cheney were doing with their “unitary executive” claims. It’s OK to be for or against a “unitary executive” but not on the basis of whether your side holds the power.
November 23rd, 2009 at 8:11 am
Sigh…. it is all Bush’s fault. Oh and that Cheney guy too. You’ve still got BDS big.
And it has moved into the logic part of your brain. So sad.
Bush-Cheney never claimed they could make their own law and confiscate property from US citizens. Their executive power claims were largely centered around privacy of decision making process so that they could get a wide range of inputs.
Sigh….
November 23rd, 2009 at 8:38 am
We will be three years into this Obama reign and he will still be spouting nonsense about W. Nice and safe for 7 1/2 years thanks to W; still hates him. Strange.
November 23rd, 2009 at 8:55 am
So, Obama wants his czars, but President Bush shouldn’t have fired any federal prosecutors.
November 23rd, 2009 at 10:37 am
I have mentioned this to numerous people who never seem to believe me, or are simply shocked that the US government would confiscate gold. Even those you would expect to be old enough to remember it.
Gold is fairly constant in value, not in price. Which means the dollar fluctuates, and more importantly inflates significantly over time. To a government that is going into massive debt, confiscating Gold is a way of doing damage control to allow them to keep spending, then they can use massive inflation to mitigate their debts.
On the current politic argument:
Bush was neither conservative nor anywhere near perfect. He, like many others before or after, used a crisis to gain incredibly scary amounts of power. The current president is using another crisis to gain scarier power. The power to suspend Habeas Corpus is bad (Bush), the theft of the right of self determination on a national scale is far worse (Obamacare).
On a historical scale, Bush made some bad decisions and was hated virulently, but in the end defended the nation effectively then turned into a raving liberal when the economy went tits-up.
On that same scale, Obama has been thus far extremely ineffective at doing anything but unprecedented power grabs and illegal takeovers of private industry. It will take a few years before his long term legacy is seen, but socialized medicine, a massive and ever-increasing debt and government takeover of private industry are his crowning achievements to date.
I, for one, welcome our new bureaucratic overlords.
November 23rd, 2009 at 11:32 am
Good comment Dan. I’d suggest that Bush cannot suspend Habeas Corpus in someone who never had it (foreign terrorist). But points well taken.
I do not think they will confiscate gold again. Instead, I think, they will move to tax what is purchased, like Europe’s VAT. Same effect… if you have it, they get it.