Franklin D. Roosevelt

Implemented decisive statutory and executive measures that altered the domestic monetary foundation of the U.S. dollar during the Great Depression. Issued Executive Order 6102 (1933) requiring private gold surrender to the Treasury and oversaw the Gold Reserve Act of 1934, which transferred title to monetary gold to the federal government and authorized a statutory revaluation of gold. Set the official gold price at $35 per ounce in 1934, effectively devaluing the dollar relative to previous parities and changing the basis for international and domestic price relationships. These concrete policy moves eliminated domestic private convertibility of dollar claims into gold and shifted the mechanism by which the dollar's value was anchored from private specie holdings to federal statute and Treasury balance-sheet management. The federal accumulation and revaluation of gold reserves altered exchange-rate relationships and had immediate effects on trade competitiveness, debt burdens, and domestic price levels. The legislative and executive instruments deployed during this period established precedents for sovereign control over monetary metal reserves and for using statutory price adjustment as a tool of currency stabilization and macroeconomic policy. The consequences reverberated through later negotiations over international monetary arrangements and informed how the dollar would function as a unit of account in subsequent international regimes.