Is This The Start Of India's Gold Confiscation?

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-10/start-indias-gold-confiscation

SBSS 18. Silver Confiscation

http://youtu.be/qUuCIvpR814

Turkish Government "Goes For Gold"; Seeks To "Transfer" Private Gold Holdings Into Bank System

This "polite confiscation" of citizens' gold will occur in the US--again, as it did in 1933, under Executive Order 6102, by Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  It's happening as we speak in Turkey. 

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/turkish-government-goes-gold-seeks-transfer-private-gold-holdings-bank-system

For some Turks, the government will have to unveil a lot more sweeteners before they part with the family gold. 

Because what may not be apparent to a Princeton Ph.D., is more than obvious to a 70 year old housewife in Istanbul:

"I'm keen to save, so keeping gold at home is easy for me; there is no complicated procedure," said Ayten Altin, a 70-year-old housewife in Istanbul. "In an emergency, I can convert it to cash and I don't have to wait for the bank to say the asset has matured."

How bankrupt governments will confiscate your gold

http://www.sovereignman.com/expat/gold-confiscation/

Will governments confiscate gold?

http://www.goldmoney.com/gold-research/will-governments-confiscate-gold.html

As concerns mount that there is another financial crisis in the offing and the gold price rises, American investors worry increasingly about whether the US government will confiscate their gold. The precedent was set by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who in 1933 forced all of America’s gold owners to sell their bullion to the Federal government at the official price.

However, the situation today is very different from that of 78 years ago. At that time, gold was the primary currency, the dollar being tied to it at $20.67 per ounce. But today, the Fed and European central banks strongly deny that gold has any monetary role at all, and argue instead that it’s just a hangover from the past: “that barbarous relic” as Keynes called it. Its confiscation would be an embarrassing admission that gold, after all, is money.

Nevertheless, as paper currencies continue to lose credibility, the temptation for any government to seize its citizens’ gold to enhance official holdings must be growing. Americans today, however, are unlikely to meekly accept confiscation the way they did under Roosevelt. And nowadays, you may be American, but your gold is not necessarily held at an American bank: it is just as likely to be in London, Zurich or Hong Kong.

The wording of a compulsory order is all-important. Confiscation requires the gold itself to be surrendered, which presumably would be the objective if a government is to add to official holdings. If gold ownership is merely banned, it is a different matter. A bullion bank holding gold in an unallocated account would almost certainly be unable to deliver physical gold if required to do so by the American government, but it would be able to close out the account for cash. And there is the thorny question of derivatives, which hardly existed in the 1930s. All futures and options trading would cease, and contracts for forward delivery would be cancelled, possibly with serious financial consequences.

The international nature of gold would probably require all G10 or even G20 members to agree to similar actions against their own citizens. It seems unlikely that all governments would agree to this, unless they all had their backs hard against the wall.  The G20 also includes China, India, Saudi Arabia and Russia. It is extremely unlikely that these countries will be prepared to confiscate their citizens’ gold to appease the Americans.

Just the mention of these names alerts us to the dangers of a confiscatory move by the US. It would make the Chinese and Indian middle classes instantly wealthier than the average American, measured by gold ownership – an interesting thought when paper currencies are losing credibility. On balance, a repeat of the Roosevelt confiscation seems unlikely. But there is one thing we can be certain of, and that is that the risk of silver confiscation is more remote, so perhaps that is the safer metal to own.

The Bank Runs Of The Early 1930s And FDR’s Ban On Gold

http://blogs.forbes.com/richardsalsman/2011/04/06/the-bank-runs-of-the-early-1930s-and-fdrs-ban-on-gold/

The article is generally accurate, but a couple clarifications are in order,

1) After FDR confiscated private gold holdings via Executive Order 6102 in 1933, gold was re-priced from $20.67 to $35 in 1934.  That's how the author came up with this calculation:

...so FDR’s Treasury, not private gold owners, profited from the 60% gold-price jump.

2)  The price of gold remained fixed at $35 until 1971 when Nixon took us off the gold standard.  It was later officially re-valued to $42.22 in 1973 (where it remains today), despite a floating market price.  Hence, my confusion by the author's comment:

Since private gold holding was legalized, the gold price has increased by nearly eight-fold, from $185/ounce to $1464/ounce, and precisely because the U.S. dollar, officially unhinged from gold, has declined in basic purchasing power.

Overall, I agree with the tone and the basic premise of the article:  the price of gold will increase as long as the Fed and US Treasury continue to debase the USDollar.

Gold confiscation: straws in the wind

This is a must-read opinion editorial on gold.

http://www.caseyresearch.com/displayCdd.php?id=495

California authorities investigating Goldline's sales practices

This is a nice hit piece by ABC News' George Stephanopoulos on Goldline's executive for their alleged boiler room sales practices. Notice Goldline's Scott Carter's response to Stephanopoulos' assertion that the government can't confiscate the citizen's gold. In fact, FDR absolutely banned private gold ownership in 1933 by Executive Order. See below.



Executive Order 6102, issued April 5, 1933:
http://www.wellsfargonevadagold.com/confiscation-order.pdf

Criminal Penalties for Violation of Executive Order
$10,000 fine or 10 years imprisonment, or both, as provided in Section 9 of the order.

Convoluted logic

After European finance ministers unveiled a $1 trillion bailout plan for Greece and other indebted nations, gold immediately crashed almost $30. Why did it crash if:

1) quantitative easing (money creation) is inflationary, and
2) gold is a hedge against inflation?

The answer is while gold is an effective hedge against inflation, it is an even better hedge against financial crisis (and eventual collapse). In light of the Club Med countries' fiscal problems, gold prices have been rising, as the possibility of bond defaults has become very real. Hence the correct flight to gold as a safety valve, and the incorrect flight to the USDollar as a long-term safe haven (I would agree the dollar may rise nominally in the short term--until the market figures out the USdollar is an impaired currency).

With the announcement of a bailout for indebted European countries, the markets perceive the possibility of a default has been taken off the table. Hence, the fear of a financial crisis subsided temporarily last night in Asian overseas trading. However, sober speculators realized quantitative easing is also inflationary, and subsequently drove the price of precious metals back up. Long-term, precious metals bulls will ultimately profit--whether inflation or financial crises occurs, probably both.

The Euro bailout is a precursor to more bailouts about to occur in the US. Attempts from both sides of the pond to normalize economic recovery will fail, as the bailouts are merely debt bandaids to major debt problems. I expect the Fed to "rescue" bankrupt states and municipalities, including currency swaps and quantitative easing as part of their monetary arsenal. The Fed certainly can't reduce short-term interest rates any further--we are already at zero.

In a related matter, European Central Bank (ECB) President Trichet last week declared the ECB would not resort to purchasing junk bonds from Greece, Spain or Portugal, in attempting to prop up the Euro currency. In a huge reversal last night, the ECB agreed to purchase said bonds. Talk about head fakes. In the process, the ECB slaughtered the bond vigilantes who were betting on the Euro collapsing, as well as the countries whose governments and citizens have been living beyond their means for decades. Ultimately, those bond vigilantes will be proven right, as the ECB has indeed extended the Euro zone life line, but they have done nothing to structurally resolve their debt problems. These bailouts merely delay the inevitable collapse; they do nothing to address the debt problems--if anything, they make them worse.

While current group think among economists, politicians, and academia have distorted Keynesian economics into its current monstrous from of government manipulation in markets, John Maynard Keynes for whom those economic theories have been named after, was absolutely correct with this comment:

"Markets can remain irrational far longer than you or I can remain solvent."

In other words, perfectly efficient markets with rational price discovery mechanisms are mythical in a world where markets are rigged and gamed to the advantage of a powerful few. I should correct myself: gold is not only a hedge against inflation and financial crisis, it also hedges an individual against a corrupt and reckless government money printing press. When one takes possession of physical gold, there are no counterparty risks. Thousands of banks have collapsed over the course of modern banking history. Thus, depositors and holders of derivatives have lost capital in our fiat currency financial system, unlike holders of gold, which have retained their store of value for thousands of years. With gold ownership, there are no other claims against it, and you won't get zeroed out.

The only way to be dispossessed is if the government confiscates it, which is exactly what Franklin Delano Roosevelt did by Presidential Executive Order 6102 in 1933:

http://www.wellsfargonevadagold.com/confiscation-order.pdf

See disclaimers on side bar.

Disclosure: long physical gold and silver, long precious metals mining shares.