One such crazy anecdote

https://web.archive.org/web/20081215084648/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,847704,00.html 

 This is a good alternate history of The Great Depression which does not idolize FDR as usual, but shows him as the bumbling technocrat that he was. 

In particular: Herbert Hoover wanted to do the bank holiday ASAP to stabilize markets, but FDR literally wouldn't return his calls. FDR wanted to wait until after he was in office, so he would get the credit for it.

https://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Man-History-Great-Depression/dp/0060936428/ 

 FDR **caused** the Great Deression. The guy is competing for the most blatantly socialist & economically disastrous president we’ve ever had with Woodrow Wilson. 

 I'd agree that he greatly extended The Great Depression and made it worse, but Herbert Hoover was also pretty interventionist and had some pretty terrible policies during his term. The stories of farmers producing milk and pouring it down the drain were under his watch; they had some dogma against deflation at the time. 

 for sure, but the great depression was simply something that would have been cleared by the market in about 6-12 months like every major down turn is when there isn't aggressive intervention. So FDR is the only reason it lasted for 10 years and actually *became* the Great Depression to begin with. 

But you are entirely right that Hoover was very much the same. In fact there was a writing i read a long time ago by one of FDR's economic advisors who said that they literally took one of Hoover's plans, while publicly attacking hoover, essentially rebranded it as The New Deal, and did almost all of the same things Hoover had intended to do. 

 History is written by the winner... 

 Very low probability of this kinda order happening again. Nobody can afford gold, or any kind of asset for that matter. Not enough people have it to make it impactful to confiscate again. Today, It's work, get taxed, paybills, get taxed, save, get taxed, invest get taxed.

They don't need to take your gold when they can already take part of your check before you even get it.