Seize Gold,
Silver--and Everything Else, GATA Says
Business Editors
MANCHESTER, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 22, 2005--The
U.S. Government has the authority to prohibit the private possession of gold and silver coin and bullion by U.S.
citizens during wartime, and, during wartime and declared emergencies, to freeze their ownership of shares of mining companies, the Treasury Department has told the Gold
Anti-Trust Action Committee.
But gold and silver owners aren't alone in such jeopardy.
For the U.S. Government claims the authority in declared emergencies to seize or freeze just about everything
else that might be considered a financial instrument.
The Treasury Department's assertions came in a letter
to GATA dated August 12 and written by Sean M. Thornton,
chief counsel for the department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, who replied to questions GATA posed to the
department in January. It took GATA six months and some
prodding to get answers from the Treasury, but the
Treasury's reply, when it came, was remarkably
comprehensive and candid.
The government's authority to interfere with the
ownership of gold, silver, and mining shares arises,
Thornton wrote, from the Trading With the Enemy Act, which became law in 1917 during World War I and applies during declared wars, and from 1977's International Emergency
Economic Powers Act, which can be applied without
declared wars.
While the Trading With the Enemy Act authorizes the
government to interfere with the ownership of gold and
silver particularly, it also applies to all forms of
currency and all securities. So the Treasury official
stressed in his letter to GATA that the act could be
applied not just to shares of gold and silver mining
companies but to the shares of all companies in which
there is a foreign ownership interest.
Further, there is no requirement in the law that the
targets of the government's interference must have some connection to the declared enemies of the United States,
nor even some connection to foreign ownership. Anything
that can be construed as a financial instrument, no matter
how innocently it has been used, is subject to seizure
under the Trading With the Enemy Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
Having just gone through a controversy about a Supreme
Court decision about government's power of eminent
domain, most Americans may be surprised to learn that the Trading With the Enemy Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act could expropriate them instantly
and far more broadly without any of the due process
extended to parties in eminent domain cases. All that is
needed is a presidential proclamation of an emergency
of some kind -- and of course Americans lately have
been living in a state of perpetual emergency.
When the Trading With the Enemy Act was passed in
1917, gold and silver formed part of the official
currency of the United States and were essential to
ordinary commerce, so perhaps an argument could be
made then against "hoarding," even if "hoarding" could
not be well defined. That is no longer the case; the
United States has officially disavowed gold and silver
as money and they no longer have a meaningful role in
commerce. (GATA is working on that.) So gold and silver investors may want to ask their members of Congress to
seek repeal of the statutes that give the government
the authority to interfere with the private ownership
of gold and silver, emergencies or not.
And ordinary citizens with no particular interest in
gold and silver may want to ask their members of Congress
to reconsider these statutes simply for being wildly
tyrannical.
GATA's correspondence with the Treasury Department is
posted on the Internet here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gata/message/3276
FVI,V Why not ?
