I can’t remember where, because it’s been a while, I read that over the years, most of the gold has been sold off and much of it to different countries. So, the gold has multiple owners.
I heard most of our gold is leased out. A few years ago the Germans asked for their gold back from the NY depository and were told we couldn’t get it back to them for 7 years. Supposedly we had leased their gold out and when they finally got it back it wasn’t the same gold they had deposited.
Yep, it has been put up as collateral against the National Debt. So have all the Federal lands and mineral resources they grabbed up over the years.
That’s kind of the interesting notion with Fort Knox - the gold is there, but who actually owns it now?
“Paper gold” - sounds almost as plausible as buying debt and repackaging it as an investment item.