The specter of government forcefully confiscating gold is still roaming around out there.
That nagging prospect dampens many buying decisions, unfortunate at a time when gold, and especially silver, are near historically bargain basement prices when measured in fiat currency.
Buy low, sell high only works for those who buy low.
Somewhere in everyone’s buying decision is rebellion against government lunacy. So, what’s the plan if government outlaws that defiance?
In examples spanning eight decades over three continents, ordinary people caught in very different circumstances chose to defy government repression of personal gold ownership.
In the 1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt and Nazi dictator Adolph Hitler joined global, repressive trends by outlawing private ownership of more than five ounces of gold.
Many skeptical Americans responded by stiffing FDR, shipping outlawed gold overseas for safekeeping, or burying it on family farms. That gold remained hidden for four decades, until Gerald Ford lifted restrictions in 1974.
Europeans targeted by Hitler’s murderous genocide improved their chances of escape using outlawed gold. It paid for bribes and safe passage away from Nazi atrocities and helped refugees build new lives once they stopped running.
In recent years, repressive gold policies in India jolted that continent, where gold lives deep in the DNA, essential to religious ceremonies and social structure.
Tax hikes and import restrictions were meant to protect the paper rupee. Citizens rebelled by dodging taxes, launching legal challenges, and doubling down on gold smuggling, while keeping demand for gold at a steady level. New Delhi was forced to rethink its repression, pushing a unique national discussion about gold to the forefront.
Today, a different crime of confiscation, stealing the value locked in gold and silver, is also failing.
Illegal, documented, proven and now admitted bullion bank price manipulation has likely denied gold and silver owners realistic, much higher values.
Another confiscation is taxation when metals are sold for paper profit. Your practical, legal way to avoid that confiscation is to keep your metal instead of trading it for paper. That works great for those who see metals as money and savings, not investments.
That brings us to the chilling specter of that black-ops squad coming to confiscate your coins and bars.
Even in the 1930s, jackboots didn’t actually knock on doors to round up the gold. And the government’s call for everyone to turn in their gold didn’t work very well. Would it even be attempted now?
Two internationally respected economists have opposing views on confiscation, but come to the same practical conclusion – always be buying gold.
Acclaimed Austrian School economist Dr. Marc Faber is known for predicting the 1987 stock market crash and the birth of the current gold bull market.
He’s often argued the U.S. is “corrupt” and would force an expropriation of private gold, paying as little as possible. Faber seeks safety geographically, saying he would never hold gold in the U.S. or even in his Swiss homeland, feeling vaults in Asia are safer.
Economist, author and investor Jim Rickards is the guy who used to teach financial warfare to Pentagon generals. He sees any government confiscation attempt as “unenforceable” and “unlikely.”
Rickards believes the day government really wants your gold, it will simply offer a high price to coax it from you, paying with paper money freshly printed that morning. The offer would be high enough to outbid competing market expectations. Otherwise, he says the Fed doesn’t mind the price gradually rising.
Faber and Rickards, both recent Money Metals podcast guests, believe the planet is just one or two missteps away from a disastrous economic meltdown. Both make credible arguments the U.S. Federal Reserve and other central banks are inhabited by buffoons.
Both men are buying gold and silver and recommending you buy gold and silver too.
Rickards advises ten to twenty percent of invested wealth should be in physical gold. Incidentally, his studied math says gold today should be valued at many thousands per ounce.
Faber says he buys gold every month and doesn’t intend to ever sell, despite his concern for confiscation. Says Faber, “we don’t know how the world will look ten years from now.”
What’s the plan if Faber is right?
You’ll have warnings. News of intentions will leak. Lapdog media, fond of demonizing physical gold, will begin demonizing individual gold owners.
A familiar comparison is firearms ownership. While most Americans know little about gold, they do understand what’s at stake in the up-close-and-personal 2nd Amendment gunfight.
America’s reaction to constant, hard-nosed threats of firearms confiscation has been – buy more firearms! And extra ammo!
Sales zoom every time the subject comes up. Gun makers love to say Obama is the world’s best gun salesman.
A government gold grab would mimic anti-gun rhetoric, tagging gold as a “national economic concern,” just as Richard Nixon blamed “speculators” for his international gold default in 1971.
Gold demand (and prices) would skyrocket at the first sign of trouble.
And what if Rickards is right?
The notion the Fed might engineer a red hot gold price instead of a ham-handed confiscation is suggested by credible studies and by a former Fed Governor. Don’t forget Alan Greenspan saying gold is going “measurably higher.”
Should market prices zoom ahead of banking price suppression in the race to the top, a paralyzed Fed may have no choice, just to establish its own cap on the all-important gold price.
Fears of “forced confiscation” might all but disappear – for awhile. Many gold owners would happily sell for overnight paper profits.
Many others, with no trust whatsoever in government, would keep their gold, choosing to wait and see.
MoneyMetals.com columnist Guy Christopher is a seasoned writer living on the Gulf Coast. A retired investigative journalist, published author, and former stockbroker, Christopher has taught college as an adjunct professor and is a veteran of the 101st Airborne in Vietnam.
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From my cold, dead hands.
afraid of what ? …Goverment intrusion has destroyed 3 Generations of my family anyway ….seriously what the ” Bleep ” do they think we are afraid of ? them …..? ..If so they are DREAMING ..
What would I do with gold in a crisis? Eat it? I surely wouldn’t trade anything useful for some shiney metal in a pinch. I have never understood the obsession with “precious metals” , unless you’re into alchemy or making computers, it escapes me.
But you would trade something useful in exchange for monopoly money colored strips of paper…yeah, THAT’s a sound investment strategy. Ask the people in Venezuela how THAT’s working out for them…
The paper is equally silly I agree, I just don’t see the value in gold.
I’m working towards being self sufficient, so hopefully most of my transactions in the future can be done with barter. For now I must conform to the monopoly system backed by nothing.
It really doesn’t matter that you don’t see the value in gold. It’s the fact that for hundreds of years others have. It’s a store of wealth, a hard asset. Gold rises when confidence in governments break down.
Thanks for the history lesson, I’m well aware everyone is brainwashed. Worship the shiney stuff.
Well that’s dumb. Why would even think you could ‘eat gold’? Who does that? Ever? Maybe some greedy spanish explorers got gold poured down their throats, but most don’t eat it. You BUY STUFF WITH IT.
Eat veggies instead. They’re better for you all round and won’t weigh you down like nibbling on a nugget.
I was referring to monoatomic gold, some think it enhances overall brain function.
It was Treason then, it would still be treason today. Not one person who serves within our governments – state or general (federal) – was delegated that authority.
The people who serve within our government are NOT “our government”, that is the US Constitution, each state’s Constitution, and us, “We the People of the united States”. Elected, hired, contracted, etc all SERVE WITHIN our government, and are ALLOWED to use the delegated authority assigned to the different branches and to named in writing speicific offices within the branches. Those that serve within our governments – stat and general (federal) – are only ALLOWED to use that authority as long as they are doing the duties assigned to the position being occupied and have taken and are KEEPING the Oaths required. All of this is in writing, and it IS the contract that they serve under.
Anything else they do is either a breech of the contract or Treason, *Terrorism, and other crimes committed against the American people, the US Constitution, our nation.
Those that have broken the Oaths, don’t do the duties assigned to the position/branch no longer represent the American governments, and LAWFULLy have no real and legitimate authority beyond that of force; nor do they any longer represent the American people in any of the dealings they supposedly make in the American peoples name. At least they are the Domestic Eme,ies of the USA all Oath takers take an Oath to defend the nation from.
Roosevelt also confiscated the people’s silver in 1934. He was an all around banker loving scumbag.
Barely 1% of all Americans have ANY precious metals at all. IF the feds were going to steal something, they would nationalize IRAs and similar retirement accounts first. US gold in private hands would be chump change to them…wouldn’t be enough to finance even a month’s worth of government spending…