Question

1. Explain why Roosevelt asked Congress to abandon on the gold standard, and then later restored it. How did these decisions reflect his administration’s monetary policy?

Answer 1

The gold standard was used in the USA for two periods: 1879/1914 and 1925/33. When Roosevelt acceded to the government in March of 1933, Great Britain had already left the system (1931) due to the capital outflow. In the case of the US, although foreign devaluations had somewhat diminished their competitiveness, and 20% of gold reserves had leaked during the previous year, the stock of reserves had not decreased critically. Unlike England, which abandoned the gold standard due to flight of reserves, Roosevelt decided to do so to promote a general rise in prices through the devaluation of the dollar, trying to force the exit of the depression. That is why on 6/3/1933 he banned the banks from international gold (based dubiously on the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917) and on 9/3/1933 (through the Emergency Banking Act) he nationalized the currencies and gold bullion as well as gold certificates held by banks, delivering trust money in exchange for the official parity of US $ 20.6 an ounce.

The market received full impact of the measures only on 4/20/1933, when the compulsory gold exchange was extended to individuals and non-financial companies. Then the dollar began to devalue quickly against gold. However, not satisfied with the market devaluation reached, on 12/5/1933 Roosevelt achieved a Joint Resolution of the Congress to begin a policy of buying gold in the international market (in the national had already captured everything), in order to exacerbate devaluation. The international price went from US $ 20.6 per ounce to US $ 35.

This presented a new problem: almost 60% of public and private long-term debt was indexed with the price of gold. If indexation is applied, debt services would increase from 5% of GDP to 20%, given the fall in output due to economic depression and the increase in the value of gold due to devaluation. Therefore, on 5/6/1933 a Joint Resolution of the Congress invalidated the golden clause of public and private contracts, qualifying it "against public policy" and rendering it retroactively not enforceable in the courts.

Only on 31/1/1934 the dollar was officially devalued in gold terms and the obligation to melt all bullion gold was established, limiting its existence to numismatic pieces. Only the possibility of freely trading in US off-shore gold monetary operations remained, a faculty that was finally revoked by J. F. Kennedy.