QS...you asked for other opines after JWCB gave his...he has...now it's my turn<g>
>>I'm interested in your own view (and that of anyone else who cares to chime in), used in your own investing decisions, of the odds of a ban, and the best means of avoiding financial harm if it occurs.<<
There is one glaring difference between a potential gold confiscation worries now and the reality of the one back in history.
That is the CONTEXT of the previous confiscation.
That contextual setting is most often ignored in popular press and by present pundits...If I may, I'd like to
nutshell it for you.
1) The US Gov't naively guaranteed Germany's official war reparations to France aftere WWI in 1917.
2) The first guarantor of Germany making those payments was Great Britain.
3) The German's defaulted (of course)...and the French raided the UK treasury and broke the Pound Sterling as the result.
4) The Pound Sterling was decoupled from the physical backing of the GOLD @ 4.86 Pounds to the oz as the result.
5) So, France moved to the second guarantor, USA.
6) There began a series of demands upon the NY Fed to pay IN GOLD the defaulted payments by the Germans and now the Brits. We paid up and paid up and paid up and paid up...UNTIL Oct 1931.
One of the BEST factual chronicles of this series of events was then codified by none other than the then current Saturday Evening Post magazine, a much loved former US institution, (probably best known for their series of nostalgic Rockwell cover art.)
The nutshell above is found within approximately 12 issues from Spring 1931 through Spring 1932. That series was originally published under the title: A Bubble That Broke The World, 1932, by Little Brown and Company, and re-released in 1996 by Fraser publishing house.
If you can get ahold of a copy, I would draw your attention to the pages 110 thru 121.
Bottom Line?
France made one last over-reaching grab for US NY Fed Gold at the time of the presidential transition team from the Hoover administration to the incoming Truman administration in order to try to embarrass the yet to be inaugurated US President, as well as the lame duck outgoing Hoover..
You see, France owed us, yes, the USA,$ 3.75 BILLIONS in WWI reparations which she was refusing to pay because Germany wasn't paying France, and U.K. had folded. At the same time France owed USA, she was demanding $600,000,000 from us in German defaulted payments. The French hutzpah was astounding!
The transition team conspired with the NY Fed, and personally handed the then on US soil to collect in person, the hated French Prime Minister M. Laval, his head, and he went home with his barren entourage of ships dispatched earlier to return, laden with US gold one more time, embarrassed and empty handed.
The New York Times chronicles it in this manner on Oct 26, 1931:
OPEN QUOTE:
"In a cautious way, the joint statement made known that President Hoover and Premier Laval had determined that their two governments should stand together in their maintenance of the gold standard. Among the things accomplished were the reassurance by Premier Laval that abnormal moverments of gold from New York would be stopped, and that re-examination of German's capacity to pay reparations should be made under the existing provisions of the Young Plan, with the United States deferring aciton on a survey of European debts to determine the capacity of debtor nationss to pay until after a Young Plan committee has reported on Germany's financial position."
CLOSE QUOTE.
Truman HAD to replenish our gold reserves the only way he knew how: confiscation...which was immediately followed by a revaluation of gold from the then $20.67 peg to the $32 peg in order to stay on the gold standard just agreed two by joint communique with the French's Laval.
While it could be argued, Q.S.
in the light of current events-- aka the Saudi blackmail of low oil prices PLUS a physical gold ownership kicker
---- as the result of the rescue of Kuwait from Iraq in 1991---
..... is a similar raid on our Fed Reserve gold, unequaled since 1931 when the French last picked our golden pocket, ...we have NOW extracted our own form of revenge...pflooding the world with our phoney pfiat dollars.
Since I personally believe the current events do NOT equal the above historical context of the previous confiscation, I share JW CB's LACK OF CONCERN for any current gold confiscatory scenario.
Not only has the gold been revalued once again to the $42 level, post Nixon's 1971 closing of the gold window (also priorly established timeline laid out in the 1943 Bretton-Woods Currency Accord for the rebuilding of Europe--it is my personally assurance from one who speaks with Alan Greenspan directly,
...that, he, Alan, has NO concern for the accumulation and storage of RAW gold. His only concern, especially immediately prior to Y2K when he personally conducted bully pulpit phone intercessions with my contact and others of similar financial wherewithal who were buying good delivery bars privately--was that the good delivery bar game halt immediately or there would be unpleasant personal financial and business consequences for not complying with A.G.'s expressed wishes.
To that end, I take great comfort in the knowledge that gold in raw form, or in any number of altered forms--NOT COINAGE, nor ingots, nor tokens, but raw OR chemically altered forms is an acceptable way to safely hold
gold in this current clime and for the foreseable future.
The are parts of this great nation where "gold is still spoken," individually pursed and harvested in quantities. As long as those pockets of sanity in a fiat economic system exist here, I sleep well and dismiss talk of gold confiscation.
It is my hope this contribution to the discussion adds contextual framework and a "suggested best means of avoiding financial harm" such as you requested priorly.
You need to know three things when considering the raw gold option:
Price
Purity
Poundage.
As long as you can calculate these 3, ownership of raw gold is a worthy option to fear of confiscation.
Regards.
gold & platinum_tutor |
