Ive heard this before from all sorts of angles, that Fort Knox is empty. The Emperor wears no clothes, etc. Is this true? Why would people say this? Has anyone actually seen the gold there (or that’s supposed to be there)? How come nobody has audited it? If empty what does that mean for the United States? Or other countries for that matter.
What has been done to verify what if anything is there?
With all the concerns out there lets take a look at some facts on the ground, world reactions to the United States holding its gold for them. Again this is a blog and not a comprehensive “authority”, I will give enough links throughout the article for anyone wishing to dig deeper. But after doing this article I grew very concerned about the gold situation.
Some backgrounder:
(below article clipping from The Globe, Dec 1981)
Much of the gold held by the Fed in trust for other countries was a result of World War 2. Lots of countries shipped their gold there for safe keeping as they were under imminent threat of invasion from the Axis powers. The Cold War was also the case for many countries leaving some gold reserves in the U.S. as they feared Soviet invasion or Chinese Communist invasion in the case of Taiwan.
Last year(2012) the Duetsche Bundesbank (Germany’s Federal central bank) was ordered by the government there to conduct a physical audit of all of Germany’s gold deposits worldwide including those in the United States. Previously they had relied on written guarantees that audits were being done. But alarm bells started sounding from an independent auditing group (Bundesrechnungshof aka Federal Court of Auditors in English) there and got the government moving on it (not an easy feat!). And well things started getting a little sticky. The U.S. Federal Reserve refused to audit Germany’s holdings in the United States! The German’s now want their gold back and apparently it will take a period of seven years to do it. huh? why so long? It leads to a slew of theories and speculation. But this is gold in New York and not Fort Knox but interesting none the less.
France being France was a little more dramatic in getting their gold from the United States sent their Navy (on order of Charles De Gaulle the French President at that time) in 1965 to start bringing gold back to France from the New York Fed. It has been reported around the web that this happened in 1971 in one day with 400 tons but it’s a bit of a misnomer. The French didn’t own a battleship at this time. More likely it was a destroyer (yeah Im picky) and probably the last shipment along with the death of the Bretton Woods agreement and the so called end of the Gold Standard by U.S. President Nixon. So not surprising the end of the Gold Standard when everyone wanted their gold back. Dwindling gold reserves= lower dollar value. Not so hard to see why the Gold Standard ended.
So what about the gold in Fort Knox?
So has anyone audited the gold there?
- U.S. Congressman Ron Paul had called repeatedly for auditing the U.S. Gold Reserve to no avail!
- GATA the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee has an ongoing campaign to get a proper audit guess we’ll see if that happens……
- the last “audit” was done September 23rd,1974 by a delegation of Congress (after demands from Congressman John R. Rarrick) and select media and others. Essentially it was a look and see and to my knowledge no actual weighing or counting of gold took place. If anything it only created more suspicions. This was done under H.R. 351: “To vest in the Government of the United States the full, absolute, complete, and unconditional ownership of the twelve Federal Reserve Banks.” he was defeated the following election…. go figure.
- the so called KPMG audit in 2006 actually only audited the U.S. Mint and did not actually set foot in any gold reserve areas including Fort Knox. On top of that one of their lead auditors was charged with insider trading earlier this year. Not exactly top notch accountability or integrity. Guess you need a corrupt firm to do a crooked audit. Link to KPMG. After just looking into these guys I might do a piece just on them and their connections!
- FDR was one of the only Presidents to actually be allowed into the depository in Fort Knox.
- 1953 was the last time anything resembling an audit was actually conducted and even then only 5 percent of the gold was actually tested and audited.
- Przemyslaw Radomski at Sunshine Profits has some good reports showing the relation between gold reserves, inflation, etc. The Devil is in the details!
Ironically every time it seemed that I typed in Fort Knox gold into whatever search engine the top results are everyone asking if there is gold in Fort Knox. I would hope that the gold is there but with almost no audit of any kind in generations one of America’s most important hoards could be gone. I can’t help shake the feeling that the cupboards are bare. With the rest of the world drawing in it’s own gold reserves there very well could be a return to a gold standard or currency based from PROVEN reserves. If that happens the United States could be in some very serious trouble! The Preppers and Libertarians would be happy to see a return to a gold or silver standard as it would keep a more honest and open system but if the cupboards are bare it would actually be disastrous. Maybe this really is why there is so much secrecy on how much gold the U.S. really does have. There really does need to be serious debate as the current fiat system really is inherently corrupt
So if it’s gone where did it go? I heard the Rockefeller’s stole it.Stay tuned.-EvS