What's in your vault? Uncle Sam audits its stash of gold at the New York Fed

Los Angeles Times ^ | August 02, 2012 | Andrew Tangel

[Brown Deer]

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."

[Brown Deer]

Birther /börthör/ n.  1. A person who exhibits the audacity to read the U.S. Constitution, and then demands that his/her government actually obeys it.  2. A derogatory term developed and used by Leftists and Neo-Cons in a lame attempt to marginalize those who harbor the silly notions that Truth matters, and that Republics perish who refuse to uphold the Rule of Law.

[Brown Deer]

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.

[Ditter]

uh oh!

[4rcane]

In other words, Trust government accounting, but private corporations can’t be trusted and must be audited every year. Those who advocate private individuals be audited must be conspiracy theorist

[Don Corleone]

"Goldfinger didn't sneak in at night" and take the gold.

"cause it wasn't there. Roosevelt sold it all off to the world during the 'Depression:' to keep our government afloat."

[puppypusher]

Just how are we to trust the auditors who are doing this job?They are government employees are they not?

This would be like trusting the IRS to perform an audit on itself.Its just not possible.

[Iron Munro]

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.

Or much more likely, a pretense to get their hands on the gold in order to cover up an ongoing theft, divert some, or screw the people in some other way.

Usually when this federal government administration states a reason or justification for some act the truth is the exact opposite.

[SaraJohnson]

It is highly irresponsible for the government NOT to inspect what it expects when it comes to the elite managing other people’s money...or gold!

After what we have seen in shake downs of the US Treasury and real estate market by banksters and wall street, it is a conspiracy theory to propose the elite and their corrupt political enablers are honest and trustworthy people and don’t need to be audited.

[Iron Munro]

TAKE THIS POLL:

CHECK ONE:

I trust the federal government:

- As far as I can throw an M1-Abrams tank

- To always lie, cheat, steal

- To do what is wrong for America

- That's the funniest thing I've heard all year

- You call those bumbling fools a government?

[Doogle]

"..he say's that most of it's gone, ..and and this guy Soros is laughing his a&& off"

[stars & stripes forever]

The question should be “How much gold is in the US vault?”

[Zakeet]

The newser who wrote this article is about as smart
as the bum in the picture!

From this: The Fed's Gold Is Being Audited... By The US Treasury

For all those financial novices who fail to grasp the simplest relationship between assets and liabilities, the allegation expounded by the "conspiracy theorists", as the LA Times calls them, has never been that the gold at the NY Fed is not there. It is by all means there: after all what safer place to keep it than 80 feet below the Federal Reserve itself, the same Fed which has exclusive access to the 1000+ strong Federeal Reserve Police whose "primary duty is to provide force protection to Federal Reserve facilities. Secondary responsibilities, depending on the particular location, may include liaison work with other law enforcement agencies and/or investigative work related to administrative matters."

And not only the gold belonging to the US: it is well known that the bulk of Europe's sovereign gold is also contained deep under downtown Manhattan: we wish them all the best when they attempt to repatriate the physical when they need it, such as the day after the EUR finally collapses.

No - what the "conspiracy theorists" allege is that claims existing in paper format on the physical gold held under Liberty 33 are orders of magnitude greater than the actual physical gold these claims supposedly have recourse to. Indeed, this too was a conspiracy theory until the failure of MF Global proved it to be a conspiracy "fact" and the entire asset-liability rehypothecation daisy-chain threatened to begin unwinding in November of 2011, at which point forced delivery of hard assets would expose the entire facade of the modern financial system to be a hollow sham.

So unless the Treasury will also conduct a full "audit" of every single paper trail and every physical bar is mapped to all of its existing obligors, then the entire operation is absolutely meaningless and simply a waste of taxpayer money. Because the physical gold may well be there (and furthermore it is the gold at Ft. Knox that was questionable; never the gold held by the Fed, but who cares about details). The problem is if the paper claims on this gold are far greater than the actual deliverable physical gold for that moment when the latest attempt to kick the can down the rehypothecated road finally fails.

[DannyTN]

There have been many independent audits of the gold at fort knox.

Grounding the Hype

[Ellendra]

"The calls for audits are saying, 'We don't trust the government for the last 200 years,'"

We don't.

[bgill]

Just how are we to trust the auditors who are doing this job?They are government employees are they not? This would be like trusting the IRS to perform an audit on itself.Its just not possible.

Bingo. If they found nothing but dust bunnies, does anyone believe they'd admit it? If they can't bother to secure the borders, vet a POTUS, or stop government freebie plundering, then they certainly can't keep up with the gold.

[Godebert]

Spot on!

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

That would be great, if they had actually looked at the physical gold.

http://news.goldseek.com/GoldSeek/1164211260.php

“KPMG LLP, an independent public accountant, performed the audit of the Mint’s Fiscal Year 2005 financial statements.

“Notice what the above says: an audit of the financial statements. It doesn’t say an audit of the physical gold.

“KPMG LLP never saw any physical gold. They never went to Fort Knox.

“They audited the reports that the Treasury Department and the Mint gave them via the Deputy Assistant Inspector General for Financial Management and Information Technology Audits Report.

“The report also contains a disclaimer by the Treasury Department that the audit did not include Treasury gold held by the Federal Reserve.”

[David]

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.

Also look at Zakeet's #12 where there are some informative thoughts.

US gold is in several different classes. International tender bars of specified fineness and size; Historical bars most of which were twice the size and of lesser fineness; official US gold coins from pre 1934 periods; coin melt (when the gold coins were recaptured from banks and funds in the 30's and melted) which are of much lesser fineness than is acceptable as international tender; and in the form of official US Treasury gold certificates for which the Federal Reserve transferred all of its approximate 8000 Metric Tons to the Treasury at some early date, probably the late 30's. For more extensive information, you might look at the testimony of counsel for the Federal Reserve to Ron Paul's committee in 2011.

Most of the non-tender gold was held at Fort Knox and purportedly remains there. Some of the non-tender gold; some of the coin gold and some of the tender gold is purportedly held at West Point. For the most part, the remainder is purportedly held in the Basement of the NY Fed.

The Treasury apparently (not on the record) loaned some gold to some Bullion Bank (gossip would have you believe J P Morgan) for use in currency interventions, presumably in the gold markets. So that gold was presumably delivered in connection with sales.

However, to some extent, such sales were to foreign government Central Banks (such as Germany to the extent we know about one such sale). The terms of sale provided that the gold would be delivered to the Germany cage in the basement of the New York fed but that the Treasury would have a continuing lien on it to secure the commitment of the borrower to return the gold on termination of the lease (or loan).

So, several years ago, when the Bank of Germany wanted delivery of the gold it bought to Berlin, the N Y Fed refused to deliver because of the Treasury's right to return. That gold is still in New York as you would know from reading the New York Times.

Other than that, there are in fact lots of suspicions about how much gold the US really has and where it is located. They aren't conspiracies at all but simply gossip in the financial community expressing doubt all the gold is there--particularly in the context of a study that was done ten or fifteen years ago demonstrating that the total of all claimed physical gold accounted for exceeded the total amount of all gold ever produced.

Counsel (for the Fed) testified to Congressman Paul's committee that the fed has since (adoption of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913) purchased or otherwise acquired an additional 1200 +/- Metric Tons of gold, now owning a total of something like 9600 +/- Metric Tons in total.

The so called "gold painted" bars aren't gold painted at all. It is well known that tungsten has about the same density (weight) as gold. And in fact, some gold bar or bars have turned up in international commerce which turned out to be tungsten, plated with a layer of gold. How much of that exists is an open question.

General discussion is that you can't tell the difference without drilling the bar--that there is no test. I do not know if that is true or not. Apparently the bars that were found were discovered by back checking the bar number's to their point of origin and demonstrating that the actual bar with that number were somewhere else.

[null and void]

So, they know the truth, but won’t tell us until after the election.

I question the timing.

[David]

ERROR IN MY #18:

In the eighth paragraph of my text, I state that counsel testified that the fed had purchased an additional 1200 Metric Tons of gold--in fact what he said is that the Treasury had purchased an additional 1200 Metric Tons.