How much gold is actually in Fort Knox?

Just an fyi post. A recent editorial piece written on gold in the US Bullion Vaults at Fort Knox and at the New York Federal Reserve Gold Vault:

Uncle Sam’s Mysterious Hoard from The Atlantic [November 2010 Issue]

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According to the CIA...

where the US has...
Reserves of foreign exchange and gold:

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$130.8 billion (31 December 2009 est.)
country comparison to the world: 17
$77.65 billion (31 December 2008 est.)







The above used to be gold alone... they have recently added SDR and other financial instruments.

Again, my belief is that the US Gov't holds no gold and that the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 along with EO 6102 transferred what gold was in the Treasury over to the Central Banks.

I will continue to say… buy PMs before it is against the law --- again

 

It isn't particularly exciting, but there is a lot of information in the footnotes to the Federal Reserve's annual financial statements. It's on their website someplace, but I don't have a link. The difficulty in finding the information is a testament to its irrelevance compared to other Fed activities.

 

It doesn't matter what you think as this is on their website. Furthermore, you cherry picked this line out of the post without the subsequent lines. You asked two questions and you received a definite answer backed by evidence put out by the federal reserve. It's my guess based on your commentary that you did not know the Fed actually held this gold and now you are attempting to tap dance out of it with the distractions.

 

Indeed. This is exactly what I posted and which you originally disputed, in how they settle accounts with the other central banks. I never used the word "sale". Of course at the time, you had no idea of this.

 

Indeed and I was wondering if someone was going to notice this. This is because the gold held here isn't denominated in Federal Reserve (note) dollars. This gets back to my original statement on the purpose of the gold in the Federal Reserve and why it is there. The gold is denominated in US Lawful Money. This would be considered the true asset value of the gold denominated in US Treasury money if the time came to liquidate the Fed. This value was set in 1971, I believe, and has remained constant. The Fed, can't list it's own dollars as assets, they instead are liabilities. The gold was actually originally acquired from FDR in 1933 for $35/oz. (After it was seized from the people at $20/oz.) FDR used the difference to fund his federal programs.

Allegedly, a big portion of gold bars in Ft. Knox are not at London Gold Delivery specs as the bars are 90% crown gold alloy and never refined up to a more pure state. There is also supposed to be an undisclosed amount of unmelted 1933 and earlier USA gold coins stored there as well. If so, a treasure trove in numismatic value well beyond the worth of the gold itself.

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Thoroughly answered now. Even the originator of the statement now seems to acknowledge the importance of this gold. If it was found to be missing, there would be hell to pay at many levels of government, outrage by those in the know, and the world finance system would go into hysterics.

 

Congressman Ron Paul is pressing for this - and introducing legislation that will go viral like Audit the Fed did - when congress resumes.

Dr Paul's pressing for the full deal - beyond a count of the gold, because counting the bars isn't enough. We need to know the count as well as any and all swap arrangements the Fed has made with other central banks. Essentially, there could be tons of gold sitting there, which is likely, but depending on any swap arrangements, none of it may even belong to us.

 

In 2009 I believe the US still 'owned' 15% of all gold ever mined.

 

"How much gold is in Fort Knox?" Not enough.

 

It's scary how we Americans are so compliant with the way our middle class is being robbed and eroded, isnt it?

The only reason our dollar is really able to buy stuff & be the world reserve currency, aside from the Fed just 'saying so,' is because we send our military to bomb you or overthrow your government if you as a country decide otherwise. This is the basic way the US government and central bank operate - we entangle ourselves into the internal affairs/financial systems of over 100 countries, spread our goodness through militarism, then if the country under our thumb disagrees or defends itself, we bomb them. If they go along, we send them money; hundreds of millions of dollars. Diplomacy is 100% off the table.

 

If the US sold off all of its gold reserves and advertised same to the world....the USD would collapse. While we aren't on the gold standard anymore, that gold backs our FRN. Oversimplification? No.

The lack of an audit for 50+ years scares me. The only reason not to audit is because there isn't as much gold as there should be.

 

A lot

 

You are wrong again. What you said is that the gold backed by the certificates is what gives people confidence in the FRN. I correctly pointed out that (1) the Fed can't actually take possession of the gold, and (2) nobody cares as is evidenced by the fact that the Fed was able to issue currency backed by junk assets acquired from the banks that has little or no value. Regarding settlement with other central banks, gold plays no role in this. Central banks are free to buy and sell gold for their own account for their own reasons, but the settlements between them are currency transactions, not gold exchanges. You live in a fantasy world. The rest of us have to invest in the real world.

 

The dollar is the currency of the US. It has value because of the social contract honored by the vast majority of people to accept it for wages and in trade. Other nations that want to buy good, services, farm products, or purchase assets in the US need dollars out of necessity. It would retain value even if it wasn't the world's reserve currency, although perhaps not as much [although this is theory]. It isn't because of the military. Now there is no doubt that the actions of the Fed and US government have made dollars a less-than-best store of value, which means that wealth is best preserved by holding assets that are not denominated in a fixed number of dollars, like gold, common stocks, real estate or business assets.

 

Did you ever hear of FDR?

There has been no gold backing since his executive order.

 

Your guess is, as usual, wrong. Reread post #5. I fully acknowledged the existence of the gold certificates [but not physical gold]. You seem desparate to take this thread in a different direction. The point is and always has been that the existence or nonexistence of the gold [certificates] is not an issue. Look at the Fed's balance sheet. FRNs used to be backed just about 100% by US government securities. Now they are backed by a lot of mortgage backed securities and other assets of doubtful value, and nothing happened. This is the real world.

 

Going off the gold standard has resulted in a crushing, potentially fatal, debt crisis. We wouldn't have been able to get ourselves into this mess if our currency was still tied to something of value - like gold. You can print money, but you can't print gold, or silver, or platinum, to back it up.

Going off the gold standard has allowed the government to simply print money to fund endless wars, failed "stimulus" programs and a huge welfare state. The resulting inflation from going off the gold standard has robbed the middle class of its wealth. This amounts to the largest transfer of wealth in history. These are the "real world" implications of going off the gold standard and going fiat.

The government wanted/needed more money to spend and having to come up with more gold to back the notes was too difficult. The easy answer was to sever our currency's relationship with gold and start printing...with the anticipated results.

As a wise man once said: All fiat currency eventually returns to its intrinsic value: Zero.

 

Good points. The fact that mortgages are indeed considered assets is something that most people don`t realize, but is slowly being brought to attention. The banking system is slightly more scrutinized after the bail-outs, so even though nothing has happened yet, that could change in the next couple of years.

Very interesting reading all of these posts.....many different opinions and points of view.

 

I believe gold is still transferred between banks and others on occasion. I know when I buy some, I want it transferred to me. lol

So if a bank invested in gold, they might certainly expect to physically receive it also ? At least they do in the movies.

 

Foreign central banks haven't been able to get gold for dollars since 1971, which by most definitions was the end of "backing" by gold. As long as Boeing, wheat farmers, and Microsoft take dollars in exchange for their exports, the dollar will have value overseas. If Fort Knox were empty, there would be some psychological impact but the absence of $180 billion of assets that can't be traded for dollars anyway wouldn't mean much to the markets compared to $153 billion of exports *every year* that are exchanged for dollars. Central banks settling accounts in gold: I don't actually know whether they ever do, but citation needed?