See 
Confiscation, My Assets! for additional perspective on the confiscation issue.
Published 1/16/05.
Just because the Mogambo Guru is one of the best reads on the Internet, you may have thought he must be 100% perfect. This Optimist wants to tell you, however, that the Mogambo is not 100% perfect. 99.999% perhaps, but not 100%. The Optimist hopes to improve your perspective by filing in the gaps left by the glaring .001% deficiencies in the work of the Mogambo.
For example, consider that two recent Mogambo issues alluded to the pessimistic possibility of gold being confiscated, but the Mogambo offered no positive perspective. Fortunately, the Optimist is here to tell you the good news that there is no need to worry about confiscation of gold. Governments will not confiscate gold because doing so would produce too much political heat. The only thing that politicians hate more than political heat is restraining themselves from spending other people's money. The good news brought to you only by the Optimist is that government will not confiscate your gold. Government will, of course, impose a 90% windfall profits tax surcharge on gold and gold shares owned by the rich (defined as anyone who can feed his family and own gold too), because governments like to tax everyone, and especially rich people like you. Some of you may need to sell most of your gold or shares to pay the tax, but you can be happier in that process by knowing that the government will not take your gold from you.
On the other hand, as all two handed economists are fond of saying, government will confiscate your silver. The difference is that there is an abundance of gold around, and government doesn't really need yours. Government wants only the real wealth that your gold represents, and they have a wonderfully subtle program for efficiently extracting that wealth. That program is the Irresistible Retrieval System (sometimes abbreviated as IRS). Silver, in contrast, is a rapidly vanishing essential resource, not only for world wide industry, but more important for U.S. Defense Contractors. One morning, Congress will receive lots of surprised and panicked phone calls from Defense Contractors (and from everyone who manufactures anything) about how the old cardboard boxes they throw cheap silver into each day for the next day of manufacturing went empty overnight. Then those ever alert protectors of our national future will quickly realize that the system they use to irresistibly retrieve your dollars will not produce the real silver their campaign contributors demand. The Optimist is sure that our defenders of American freedom will waste no time before they declare a national emergency and immediately craft a new program to Systematically Transfer Every Available (oz. of silver) Legally (always abbreviated as STEAL) from you. What else can Congress do after it is too late to plan ahead?
Now that you have heard the positive news from the Optimist, compare it to the offerings from the Mogambo below, and I hope you will agree that the Optimist has indeed contributed an additional .001%:
12/30/04: - Henry T. took exception to my phrase in the last MoGu, "You own gold. Nothing can happen to you." Like a lot of other people who are fearful of another confiscation of gold by the government, like the commie bastard FDR did in the 30's. He says "Wrong. Hoards will be confiscated. None are more hated than those who foresaw disaster and took proper steps to avoid it. Especially if we told them so. Then we ants learn that grasshoppers are carnivores."
1/13/05: - For those who fret that the government might confiscate their holdings of precious metals, Chris Powell of GATA got a response to a question to the Treasury department from Roberta K. McInerney, who bills herself as Assistant General Counsel, (Banking and Finance), Department of the Treasury. She writes "I am writing in response to your e-mail of November 29, 2004, which forwarded a question from a constituent of Congressman Larson's as to whether the Treasury Department could force the redemption of U.S. gold bullion coins at face value, or the surrender of foreign bullion coins.
"In Public Law 97-258 (Sept. 13, 1982), Congress eliminated a statute (12 USC 248 n) which had allowed the secretary of the Treasury to require individuals and others to deliver to the Treasury gold coins, bullion, and certificates. As a result, this statutory authority no longer exists."
Click the Commentary link above to see additional offerings from the Optimist.