Posted on 04/28/2026 7:45:14 AM PDT by delta7
The bulk of the US gold reserves held in Fort Knox are made up of impure “non-standard” bars that don’t qualify for use in international settlements. In practice, this means that most of America’s massive gold stockpile is illiquid and wouldn’t be readily accepted on the international market should the need arise:
“It’s a decrepit relic just like our monetary policy is. With respect to America’s gold stockpile, we hold ourselves to a lower standard than the rest of the world,” Money Metals CEO Stefan Gleason said.
The French central bank recently sold 129 tonnes of similar non-standard gold that was stored in New York and replaced it with higher-quality bars that will remain in France.
Notwithstanding the lack of any credible physical audits for decades, US gold reserves are reported to be 8,133.5 metric tons. That’s roughly 261.5 million troy ounces. About half of that (147.3 million ounces according to the US Mint) is stored at Fort Knox. The rest is spread out between the Denver Mint, the West Point Bullion Depository, and the Federal Reserve vault in New York.
America’s gold is valued at $42.22 per ounce by statute. The price does not fluctuate with market movements.
According to the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA), gold bars must contain 350 to 430 fine troy ounces and have a minimum fineness of 995.0 parts per thousand to be acceptable for international settlements. In fact, the “good delivery” standards across the globe have been transitioning to 0.9999 purity.
Based on documents released during a 2011 House Committee on Financial Services Hearing, however, we find only around 17 percent of the gold bars held by the US government in Fort Knox meet any modern-day purity standards.
Here’s a breakdown of the purity of the gold bars held in Fort Knox:
Fineness between 899 and 901 – 64 percent Fineness between 901.1 and 915.4 – 2 percent Fineness between 915.5 and .917 – 17 percent Fineness of 0.995 or higher – 17 percent The average purity of US gold reserves is 916.7 Problematic Audits, Chain-of-Custody Discrepancies, Missing Records
Keep in mind, we’re operating on guesswork here because the US government’s gold holdings have not been audited since at least the 1970s.
In 1974, the government put together a publicity stunt in the name of an audit. The US Treasury opened just one of its 15 Fort Knox vault compartments to politicians and reporters to view the gold and confirm its existence.
That’s been called an audit. However, none of the bars that were passed around were ever matched to a serial number, assayed or tested for purity, or even verified as part of the United States’ holdings. As Sound Money Defense League Director Matthew Cortez pointed out, “It seems the made-for-TV spectacle in 1974 was more of a pep rally than any credible proof of what the amount of US gold purported to be in those vaults.”
Following the 1974 publicity stunt, the US Treasury says it conducted a multi-year process of opening and inventorying vault compartments and affixing new tamper-evident seals to the doors of each compartment upon completion. However, these so-called audits failed to meet basic transparency or accounting standards.
Some reports have since gone missing, and there is no record of comprehensive assaying, weighing, or transactional history available to the public.
Furthermore, there is evidence that seals on vault compartments have been broken over the years, bars have been moved for unknown reasons, and seals have been re-affixed without fresh auditing. Subsequent annual reviews of the schedules of compartment seals serve only to whitewash the prior discrepancies.
In sum, the US Treasury’s management of US gold reserves is replete with audit “no-nos” that would never pass muster at a responsibly run private depository.
An “audit the gold” bill introduced by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) last year would not only require a comprehensive audit of US gold reserves, including, importantly, an accounting of any transactions involving said gold. It would also require the Treasury to refine all non-standard bars so that they meet modern requirements for international settlements—a process that could take several years.
Why So Much Non-Standard Gold?
How did the US end up holding so many impaired gold bars that are illiquid on global markets?
It is the legacy of US policy that abandoned the gold standard, leaving us with the fiat system we live with today.
Needing to expand the money supply to support his spending plans, President Franklin D. Roosevelt decided to expropriate the public’s gold and add it to the national reserves. On April 5, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 6102, effectively making private gold ownership illegal.
FDR claimed the measure was to prevent “hoarding.” However, by creating an expansive definition of “hoarding,” the EO was designed to take virtually all gold coins and bars out of private hands and transfer them to the government.
Many people refer to Roosevelt’s scheme as “gold confiscation,” but that overstates what actually happened. The government didn’t go door-to-door taking people’s gold. However, the Federal Reserve still collected plenty of gold, especially gold held by institutions.
But many Americans also turned in their gold voluntarily as an act of obedience. Some likely did so because they trusted the government, others out of a sense of patriotism, and some probably turned their gold in out of fear.
Everyone was paid roughly $20 per ounce for their gold. But six months later, FDR formally devalued the dollar by some 40 percent when he declared gold worth $35 per ounce.
Much of the confiscated gold was in the form of coins that were generally 90 percent pure. At the time, private banks, along with the Federal Reserve, held a large number of coins. That was because Federal Reserve notes were redeemable for gold.
However, with private ownership of gold effectively banned, people would no longer be able to trade paper for metals, and there was no need to hold on to a bunch of coins. The government melted the coins down and formed them into bars, which now sit in Fort Knox vaults (as far as we know).
In a 1994 article published by The Journal of Economic Education, William C. Wood called the Fort Knox depository “an artifact of the gold standard days.”
The gold currently in Fort Knox came from the melting of Depression-era gold coins, from lend-lease arrangements in War II, and from government operations under the gold standard. Wood specifically noted, “The gold resulting from melting of coinage has considerably lower quality than the ‘fine’ or ‘good delivery’ gold commonly used in international trade. The majority of the gold in Fort Knox is the lower-quality coin gold.”
In some ways, it makes sense that US gold reserves are impure and useless on the international market. It reflects the nature of the fiat system that replaced it.
Mises Institute Editor in Chief Ryan McMaken called the US gold reserves “a legacy of theft and lies,” pointing out that the gold reserve was never intended to be a “static, untouchable hoard of the US government.”
"It was supposed to be there for Americans and other users of dollars who traded in their dollars for gold. Gold was supposed to flow in and out. Then, the US government slammed the doors of the federal gold vaults shut and declared “the gold is all ours forever.”
Like most everything else the US government “owns,” the gold in the US gold reserves is there due to many years of lies, gaslighting, and deception. The gold is there because the US regime defaulted on its debts and reneged on its promises to back dollars in gold."
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So for all the complaining about Nixon taking us off gold standard, there was no standard gold at the time
I also note that every once in a while a "coin bar" with US Mint markings shows up at auction and they sell for a considerable premium over the bullion value.
August 1971: A French Warship Docked In New York to Repatriate French Gold
In August 1971, a French naval vessel quietly arrived in New York Harbor under secret orders: to retrieve a portion of France’s gold reserves stored in the vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. This bold maneuver, orchestrated by President Georges Pompidou, was a dramatic expression of France’s growing distrust in the United States’ ability to uphold the Bretton Woods promise of dollar-to-gold convertibility....
...President Charles de Gaulle had been warning of this imbalance since 1965. By 1971, his successor, Pompidou, made good on the threat—demanding gold in exchange for dollars....
....Nixon’s Shock Response
Just days later, on August 15, 1971, President Richard Nixon went on national television to announce the temporary suspension of dollar-gold convertibility. In a now-famous broadcast, he declared:...
The “new” international standard. In line with LBMA/ Crimex standards.These standards are what make Gold the “ Highest Quality Liquid Asset”.
AI:
“Form of Gold Held by EU Banks.
Gold Bullion Bars
EU banks typically hold gold in the form of bullion bars. These bars are standardized for both weight and purity, making them a reliable asset for financial institutions.
Characteristics of Bullion Bars
Weight: Bullion bars come in various weights, commonly ranging from 1 kilogram to 400 ounces.
Purity: The purity of these bars is usually very high, often at least 99.5% gold content.
Gold never transacted is unfit for transcation. Who knew?
“Impure gold” = 99% tungsten covered with gold paint.
Just as I began to read the post, I thought of your prior comment in the other thread. And, 1st comment up on the above is yours!
Great to see you again! Now off to read the comments to see what others are thinking.
When was he asked? Or is this just another "Trump's fault" because your dog got hit by a car and died?
Lemme guess: the “impurities” consist of tungsten cores?
“Gold never transacted is unfit for transcation.”
Not sure if it can’t be transacted. Just that it trades at a lower worth amount than when it was put into storage.
But since the feds started printing more than replacement money they have been deflating it anyway. When you print a dollar that represents a dollar’s worth of gold, as that’s what it is supposed to do, and you print another dollar, and don’t destroy the first one, you now have 2 dollars representing the same gold thus each dollar is now worth 50 cents. And if you do that enough since starting that in 1971, it brings the entire value down. But the 50 cents can be transacted. And I’m not sure if they know how many bills they under covered.
wy69
but who cares now?
The point of confiscating all that gold and burying it for decades was to prevent it's use as a basis for any currency. How pure, or even how much, doesn't really matter. Goldfinger was late to the game.
The Von Mises folks know all this They are just trying to trick someone important into admitting it.
Both the source and the person who posted the source. Nonstop fake news propaganda.
Is Fort Knox’s “impure” gold worth more than the Chinese gold plated tungsten you are so enamored of?
Bingo, melt of 90% that us coins were made of.
We need to go back
Re-melt and refine. That’s all that’s necessary..............
Even at current valuations there’s only a couple months worth at current spending levels. That’s assuming it’s all still there, or hasn’t been sold off, or leased, or whatever. “Encumbered”
My theory is the government has secretly sold off huge swaths of land out West, timber, gas, and oil, minerals, etc. pledged as collateral perhaps.
I’ve always assumed that the actual gold was stolen during rat administrations and, if there’s anything there, it’s all painted bricks.
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