Why did FDR do this? Does anyone here know?
Ostensibly because gold hoarding adversley affected the economy and deepened the depression. In reality, FDR took siezed gold assets, exchanged at “fair” value to the original owners, then jacked the price of gold up to artificially inflate the economy (which predictably, didn’t work). Ain’t Gub’mint grand?
This was very soon after the bank holiday. Remember many banks around the country had failed. People were becoming more and more frightened about what disaster was coming next and what could be done to avoid it. Confiscating the gold and giving paper notes in exchange was seen as a way of reinflating the economy.
By the middle of 1933 people were in such a state that if they were told that standing on their head at noon would fix things they would have done it.