[OT] why was private gold ownership made illegal in the US? (Re: "to outlaw general purpose computers")

Harmon Seaver hseaver at cybershamanix.com
Wed Jul 3 12:43:33 PDT 2002


On Tue, Jul 02, 2002 at 11:34:17PM -0400, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
> At 7:31 PM -0500 on 7/2/02, Harmon Seaver wrote:
> 
> 
> >    Wasn't the dollar backed by silver for quite awhile? There were definitely
> > real silver dollars coined for quite awhile, and the dollar said
> >something on it
> > about silver certificate. Likewise many smaller coins had a high silver
> >content
> > -- this ended sometime during Vietnam, not sure the year. I've still got
> >a bag
> > of silver coins laying around somewhere.
> 
> There were silver certificates, yes, and silver coins, until the market
> value of the silver exceeded the value stated on the coin. Pennies have a
> lot of zinc in them now, for the same reason.
> 
> I'm not sure when the silver certificate notes stopped being issued, though
> it seems to me that FDR had something to do with that. I'm pretty sure they
> were being honored at least into the 1970's, and it seems to me that they'd
> just give you $20 worth of silver at market prices if you gave them a
> silver certificate, which wasn't much help unless you thought either the
> future price of silver was going up, or the dollar going down against
> silver sometime later one.


   I did a quick search -- started issuing silver certificates in 1878, quit in
1957, but kept redeeming them for silver dollars until 1964, and for silver
bullion until 1968. 


-- 
Harmon Seaver	
CyberShamanix
http://www.cybershamanix.com





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