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The Weight (2016) --a neglected aspect of the New Deal


The newly released movie THE WEIGHT, starring Ethan Hawke, Russell Crowe and Julia Jones looks at an aspect of the Depression in 1933 now largely lost to history --the off book and sometimes violent machinations over gold as the Roosevelt administration both de-monetized and confiscated the stuff.   

What usually IS remembered is that the administration de-monetized gold. The shiny stuff would no longer back the Federal Reserve notes. (Eleven years later, the Bretton Woods Accord introduced some backdoor re-monetization -- but that is another story.)

More to the movie's point, or at least to its backstory and a couple of expository speeches, Roosevelt figured he could not allow a lot of gold to remain in private hands. Had it stayed there, it could have been freely exchanged and it could well have become a de facto money, or at least a dangerous competitive risk to the fiat paper money by which it was supposed to have been replaced.  So, private persons were ordered to turn in their gold to the Federal Reserve, for arbitrary low payment in the fiat dollars, with certain exceptions such as for small-scale collectors of coins.  

The ownership of gold bars and coins beyond these exceptions, by private US citizens, was made illegal, and this continued to be the law right through the Bretton Woods period, until the Gerald Ford presidency. 

The movie I've mentioned depicts a corrupt boss of a prison chain-gang contractor (played by Russell Crowe) planning to steal some of the gold in the custody of a friend of his, gold that is in danger of being confiscated. Crowe's character and his friend are planning to hide it away against the day when its value will again be recognized, and the foresight of such thievery will be rewarded. This both enables and complicates the determination of Ethan Hawke, part of the chain gang, to win his freedom, and to win the return to his custody of his daughter. 

Unsurprisingly, that sort of thing happened -- the government confiscation program (under an executive order [6102] from FDR without any immediate legislative mandate), as well as a wide range of private and semi-private shenanigans in reaction, all happened -- and it is heartening to see it recognized by Hollywood.   

The following year, Congress gave its post hoc blessing to EO 6102 in the Gold Reserve Act of 1934. The Supreme Court -- notoriously not a reliable ally of Roosevelt in this period -- nonetheless upheld Congress' action.  

As to the movie: I recommend it. 
    
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