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For decades, the U.S. government has stashed gold five stories beneath Manhattan in a vault under the Federal Reserve's fortress near Wall Street. Or has it? Some conspiracy theorists suspect that the billions of dollars' worth of bullion might have been looted in a dramatic heist, a la the movie "Die Hard: With a Vengeance." Others claim that the gold has been used in a shadowy government transaction, or swapped with gold-painted bars. It's even caught the attention of politicians like Rep. Ron Paul and members of Germany's Parliament. Now all of us may finally get some answers.
The federal government has quietly been completing an audit of U.S. gold stored at the New York Fed. The effort included drilling small holes in the bars to test their purity. The Treasury Department has refused to disclose what the audit has revealed so far, saying the results will be announced by year's end. But as one former top Fed official said recently, the testing may finally prove that "Goldfinger didn't sneak in at night" and take the gold. "The calls for audits are saying, 'We don't trust the government for the last 200 years,'" said Ted Truman, a former assistant Treasury secretary and Fed official. He called perennial questions about the country's reserves "the gold bug equivalent of the birther movement."
The Treasury's auditing operation, including drilling, is a first for the New York Fed. The department's inspector general previously audited and tested only gold it keeps under heavy guard at Ft. Knox, West Point and the U.S. Mint in Denver. These three locations hold 95% of the country's bullion. In New York, about $21 billion in U.S. gold is locked inside the Fed's vault. It's stored alongside bullion from three dozen other countries and organizations such as the International Monetary Fund. All told, about 23% of the world's official gold reserves are stored in the central bank's vaults.
The audit, which began in January, took place 80 feet below the Fed's limestone and sandstone Italian Renaissance building in Manhattan's financial district. Visitors to the vault make their way through a steel and concrete entrance where a 90-ton door rotates open. Inside, a massive scale is ringed by 122 blue cages that hold about 530,000 gold bars 34,021 of which belong to Uncle Sam. The auditing team counted the U.S. stash, selecting more than 350 bars from which to extract samples for assaying. The process involved about half a dozen employees of the Mint, the Treasury inspector general's office and the New York Fed. It was monitored by employees of the Government Accountability Office, Congress' investigative arm.
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Yeah, we're lucky to have Rand Paul in Congress. One of the very few true voices for Freedom & Liberty.
Yeah, we're lucky to have Rand Paul in Congress. One of the very few true voices for Freedom & Liberty.
Rand is a POS tea party hack.
You're trying to debate with a guy who has an avatar of his head in his ass. Just sayin'.
I know. Am amateur wingnut for sure. He or she was merely projecting. Happens a lot on Message Boards.
