> "The answer lies in the presidential regime of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s. Although the Depression had been brought about by the Federal Reserve, which had been established in 1913, Roosevelt blamed the Depression on America’s gold-coin/silver coin system that had been functioning for more than a century. Therefore, Roosevelt decided to convert America’s monetary system to a paper-money system. He ordered every American to deliver his gold coins to the federal government, on pain of a felony conviction for failing to do so. In exchange for their gold, Americans received government-issued paper money.
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> "Amazingly, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of what was obviously a flagrantly unconstitutional action. The Court’s rationale was that the national emergency of the Great Depression vested the president with extraordinary powers to save the country.
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> "But there was one big problem with the Court’s legal rationale: **The Constitution did not provide for an emergency exception.** In fact, the Framers expressly excluded an emergency exception from the Constitution because they knew that emergencies have always been the time-honored way that tyrants have assumed dictatorial powers" (emphasis added).