Category: Monetary Control

• The Gold Confiscation Plot (1933)

  The Gold Confiscation Plot was the belief that Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 6102 did not primarily aim to stabilize the American monetary system, but to strip gold from private citizens so it could be diverted into foreign or private custody, most dramatically to a secret bank in London. In the theory, gold surrender was a patriotic pretext masking a transfer away from the American public. The real historical policy is clear: Executive Order 6102, signed on April 5, 1933, forbade most private hoarding of gold, and the Gold Reserve Act of 1934 vested monetary gold in the U.S. Treasury. The conspiracy version did not deny these formal acts. It claimed they concealed the true destination of the nation’s metal wealth.