Roosevelt’s Crusade against Gold

Jim Powell

9/22/2009

Early in the New Deal, Franklin Roosevelt became convinced that to get America out of the Great Depression, the federal government must gain total control over money. The Federal Reserve seemed to have been powerless during the contraction, so Roosevelt asserted the power of the presidency. He began demonizing gold.

Why gold? For centuries, people have viewed gold as the ultimate store of value, something to buy that can help preserve savings when governments depreciate coins and currency. Gold is a beautiful, lustrous metal. It’s durable. It doesn’t break, burn, or corrode. Brilliant gold coins have been recovered from sunken treasure ships after several hundred years beneath the sea. Gold is malleable, and ever since ancient Egypt, people have shaped it into splendid coins, jewelry, and sculpture. Because gold is rare, it has been a far more reliable store of value than paper money, which can be inflated at the whims of politicians.

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