Sebastian Edwards, Columnist

The Gamble: If Gold Won’t Go Up, Push the Dollar Down

Dean Acheson thought Roosevelt’s plan in 1933 was a “sham.” Part three of “American Default.”

May 24, 2018 at 2:00 PM UTC

Sebastian Edwards is the Henry Ford II professor of international economics at the University of California at Los Angeles. He is the author of "American Default."

Dean Acheson thought FDR’s gold program was “a sham.” He quit. — Dean Acheson thought FDR’s gold program was “a sham.” He quit.
Photographer: Bettmann via Getty Images

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This is the third of four excerpts from “American Default: The Untold Story of FDR, the Supreme Court and the Battle Over Gold.”

On the day President Franklin Roosevelt announced that the U.S. government would buy gold at above world-market prices — Oct. 22, 1933 — the official price of the metal was still $20.67 per ounce, the same as it was almost 100 years earlier. This posed a serious legal problem for FDR’s newly announced program, the aim of which was to increase gold prices to help inflate the prices of commodities like wheat, cotton and corn.