Ron Paul: Is There Actually Any Gold @ Fort Knox?

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) has questioned whether there is actually any gold at Fort Knox and at the New York Federal Reserve bank.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-brief...ron-paul-plans-bill-to-audit-us-gold-reserves​

Is there anything to this? Or is this just Ron Paul being wacky?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

I support an audit.
But I wonder where in hell gold could be taken to? I mean, we're talking bricks of gold, not exactly the easiest stuff to move. If it were moved, someone would have said something at some time.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

I support an audit, but the gold's all there.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Wait a minute, wasn't the gold stolen by Simon "Peter" Gruber (the brother of Hans Gruber)?

 

This is just Paul being whacky. This is not new. It is a recycled allegation that the extreme right wing resurfaces to scare people.

The fact is the Gold reserves at Fort Knox are not that signficant to the nation. At current prices, the gold at Fort Knox is worth around 150 billion dollars...not that much in terms of the nation's worth and the broader measure of money supply (M2).

M2 = about 8.5 Trillion dollars

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bullion_Depository

Two, most of the gold on deposit at the New York Federal Reserve belongs to other nations...put on depost with the Fed for safe keeping.

 

Stories of the Gold not being in Fort Knox have been around for a long time.

Stories of the investment banks selling paper gold unbacked up by any physical gold have been circulating at least since 2008.

The price of paper gold and physical Gold sometimes diverge a little.

If you wanted to prop up major currencies it might be necessary from time to time to undermine the alternatives to currencies by dumping them into the market. Phony paper gold may have been dumped into the market in the summer of 2008 to stop the slide of the dollar. Then if people wanted to take delivery of the gold real gold would have to come from some place.

Do you trust the government not to cooperate with politically connected thieves? Do you trust the government not to take secret actions intended to be for the good of the nation? Would it make sense for China to want the physical gold in exchange for financing the USA's debt?

Has anybody been monitoring truck traffic too and from Fort Knox? Even officially "the Gold holdings peaked during World War II at 649.6 million troy ounces (20,205 metric tons). Current holdings are around 147.3 million troy ounces " from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bullion_Depository

There is a railway very close to the depository.

I take no position on whether the Gold is or is not there.

 

Who cares?

 

Ron Paul is a kook.

Either he is saying this because he is a kook, or like some other people, he has ties to the Gold industry (think of the TV commercials) and is somehow making out from stoking fears.

 

No one understands our monitary system. He thinks he can run on that?

 

The Gold Standard has been a rallying cry for some economic mavericks, but that's not really what Paul is on about here. This is just kookiness. Or, as I said, he is just another person trying to tell people to buy gold.

 

The vaults actually have seals on the inside and outside of them that are broken if it is openned. Some of them have not been openned in decades, some longer. You can't fake the seals.

This question was asked in the 70's and they proved that the gold was there. The reason they don't support audits is because everytime a seal is broken a significant amount of the security in the vaults is lost.

You cannot remove any amount of gold without it being pretty obvious.

 

But what if Pussy Galore's Flying Circus used a nerve agent that knocked everyone out?

 

I think it's all part of an elaborate plot on Ron Paul's part to steal all the gold at Fort Knox. First he denies that there is any gold there, so they let him visit the facility where he cases the place for his team, after which they tunnel in and steal it all. They will sell it to the Saudis or China and then use the money to run for office on the premise that the reported theft of all the Fort Knox gold is just a conspiracy theory.

 

Then some villain could just enter Fort Knox and irradiate the gold making it useful on the market, thus driving up the value of the gold you have in your bedroom closet!

Brilliant, Counte. . . simply brilliant.

~String

 

Suppose there was an audit and it turned out that only 10% of what is claimed to be there was actually there. What effect would this have? Would it affect the dollar or the value of US government bonds? What would be the political fallout?

 

Effect on the dollar? None (besides the market blip it would cause). The dollar isn't on any "standard". Political fallout? Oodles and oodles.

~String

 

I think there would be some effect, but I am not going to speculate on what ifs.

 

I realize that the dollar is not based on gold anymore, it is based on "the full faith and credit of the Unitted States Government". But wouldn't the credibility of the US government take a major hit if it were shown to be lying about the gold deposits? In the present environment, I could see it setting off a run on the dollar.


Maybe we shouldn't do the audit.

 

I don't think the audit is going anywhere. Nobody in DC takes Paul seriously.

 

Since the dollar is no longer backed by gold or silver, it would have no economic effect. It would have, as String pointed out, political repercussions. It would be great opportunity for extremists like Paul,Fox News,beck, limbaugh, et al to make some political hay and scare the bejesus out of American working stiffs. But if it was lost while under Republican management, I expect they might remain mum on the issue.

A hundred and fifty billion dollars is really not that signficant when put into prespective as previously pointed out. The george II adminstration lost 9 billion dollars in Iraq and no one even sneezed. Most people didn't even notice.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War_misappropriations

http://costofwar.com/

The only way it would affect the economic picture is if it caused enough political turmoil to cause government to do something adverse to its economic interests. And I don't think Paul or his fellow conservatives have that much political power yet.