How Franklin Roosevelt Secretly Ended the Gold Standard

Upvoted the OP in order to call attention to what I consider primarily a propaganda piece by the Bloomberg new service. There was nothing secret about the executive order <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102</a> , except possibly that even the Wikipedia article does not explain in what manner Congress granted the President (actually the Secretary of the Treasury) such extraordinary power to confiscate property. That FDR used the Brer Rabbit strategy to call attention to his ending the gold standard only shows he was a skilled politician.<p>&#62; <i>The recovery from the Great Depression began instantly with Roosevelt’s policy shift...</i><p>I think most objective measures do not show recovery from the Great Depression until the ramp-up of arms production prior to American entry in WWII.

The article omits an important fact:<p>The public's gold was exchanged at $20.67 per troy ounce, but months later, the official price of gold was raised to $35.00 per troy ounce. Essentially, the public were not properly compensated for turning in their gold.<p><i>"In 1934, the government price of gold was increased to $35 per ounce, effectively increasing the gold on the Federal Reserve's balance sheets by 69 percent. This increase in assets allowed the Federal Reserve to further inflate the money supply."</i>[1]<p>[1] <a href="http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fdr-takes-united-states-off-gold-standard" rel="nofollow">http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fdr-takes-united-...</a><p>EDIT: The article also fails to mention that <i>"violation of the order was punishable by fine up to $10,000 or up to ten years in prison, or both."</i> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102</a>

"The recovery from the Great Depression began instantly with Roosevelt’s policy shift, in March 1933"<p>uhm... no.... more like 1946 - if the recovery had happened before WWII then we wouldn't have had to ration and do all the massaging to get the economy up to war production.

The Roosevelt administration also sued farmers who attempted to grow food to feed themselves, in his insane attempts to control market prices.<p><i>Filburn was ordered to destroy his crops and pay a fine, even though he was producing the excess wheat for his own use and had no intention of selling it.</i><p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v_Filburn" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v_Filburn</a>

This is one of the barest forms of propaganda you'll read in a while.

<i>This way, he could bring commodity prices back up and maintain them at a level that would ensure producers a higher standard of living</i><p>A high standard of living is precluded by high commodity prices.

The article fails to mention that though the US came off the (fixed) gold standard, convertability of the US$ to gold was retained as part of the Bretton-Woods system all the way through WWII, through the post-war "Golden Age of Capitalism" period uptil 15 August 1971 when Nixon unilaterally turned the US dollar into a fiat currency.

"The recovery from the Great Depression began instantly with Roosevelt’s policy shift, in March 1933. He had changed expectations, and begun an administration that would use money as a tool to bring widespread prosperity -- rather than serve as a tool of moneyed interests."<p>This is pure economic propaganda. Anyone with a whit of knowledge of the period knows that the depression lasted through the entire 30s, with unemployment remaining very high for the whole decade (it was 19% in 1938)

Gold buggery articles are like one of the four horsemen of the web site apocalypse. It's one of those quasi-religious subjects that only creates flames.

That was an OK article but I think the best current reference on the gold standard is "Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis" by James Richards. He doesn't so much try to predict the future. Instead he provides a historical perspective and gives the reader the tools to understand events as they happen.