Roosevelt and Gold Robbery

Roosevelt stole all US citizens' savings in January 1934 with one simple trick.

The Gold Reserve Act handed all gold held by the Federal Reserve to the Treasury, then let Roosevelt reprice gold from $20.67 to $35 per ounce by executive proclamation. That single move cut the dollar's gold content by 41%. Every dollar you held lost 41% of its backing overnight.

Roosevelt needed to inflate debt away and fund New Deal spending without going to you directly. Devaluation is taxation without a vote. The purchasing power comes from somewhere, and it came from every American holding dollars or dollar-denominated savings.

The government had already made private gold ownership a crime under Executive Order 6102 in April 1933, forcing citizens to surrender gold at $20.67. Then, once the government held all the gold, Roosevelt repriced it upward by 69%. The profit, roughly $2.8 billion, went straight to the Exchange Stabilization Fund, a Treasury slush fund Congress never directly controlled.

Inflation is a transfer mechanism. The first spender captures real value; every subsequent holder absorbs the loss. In 1934, the Treasury was the first spender. Your parents and grandparents were not.

Sound money constrains government, and governments destroy it for that reason.