Alasdair Macleod: Will governments confiscate gold and silver?
April 25, 2011 by goldguru · Leave a Comment
GATA
12:06p ET Sunday, April 24, 2011
Dear Friend of GATA and Gold (and Silver):
Writing for GoldMoney, economist and former banker Alasdair Macleod reflects on the possibility of confiscation by Western governments of privately held gold. Macleod concludes that confiscation would serve mainly to enrich Asians while impoverishing the few Americans who own gold, without gaining much for the U.S. government. The rationale for the gold confiscation in the United States in 1933, Macleod notes, no longer applies, since gold long ago ceased being part of the country’s circulating money stock. Macleod’s commentary is headlined “Will Governments Confiscate Gold?” and you can find it at GoldMoney’s research section here:
http://www.goldmoney.com/gold-research/will-governments-confiscate-gold….
Six years ago, after much prodding through a member of Congress, GATA managed to engage the U.S. Treasury Department in extensive correspondence about the department’s attitude toward confiscation of privately held precious metals. The Treasury Department replied that, under certain circumstances, it indeed claims the power to confiscate privately held gold and silver — as well as the power to confiscate every other financial asset held by citizens of the land of the free and the home of the brave. That correspondence is headlined “Treasury Claims Power to Seize Gold and Silver — and Everything Else” and you can find it in the GATA archive here:
http://www.gata.org/node/5606
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
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