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So-called HJR 192 was, when enacted, designated Public Resolution 10. This was a practice, long ago discontinued, of distinguishing enacted bills from joint resolutions; nowadays both are numbered in one sequence as Public Laws.
HJR 192 did not affect debts except to this extent - gold ceased to be a medium of exchange inside the US. Gold certificates, contracts calling for payment of a certain dollar amount in gold, and the like, could no longer, under this law, be enforced for gold. All such obligations were made payable in other forms of legal tender, including paper money, dollar for dollar.
This was upheld by the US Supreme Court. However, in another case, the Supreme Court stated that a contract calling for payment in a specific weight of gold, rather than dollar amount, was enforceable for payment in gold.
In the 1970s the restriction on gold was repealed, so that (the relatively small number of) contracts and investments still operating from before 1933 calling for payment in gold, which had for 40 years been paid in FRNs or other forms of currency, could resume payments in gold, and new contracts callying for payment in gold could be written and enforced. However, payments due in the intervening 40 years could not be retroactively collected in gold.
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