There are roughly 540,000 gold bars belonging to 48 foreign countries and 12 international organizations in the Federal Reserve's subterranean gold vault. (Courtesy Federal Reserve)Posted on 09/22/2008 1:41:26 PM PDT by BGHater
Just a Few Blocks From the Bustle of Wall Street Sits $200 Billion in Gold
NEW YORK -- Gold. It's one of the oldest and most prized possessions we have. Egyptian pharaohs were buried with it, the Romans traded it and gold is even mentioned as a gift in the Bible.
As stocks plummet and many realize they don't understand how their money is invested, some on Wall Street are turning to gold as a haven.
Who can blame them? Gold is something you can see, hold and fully understand. In the last two days, the price of gold shot up $110 to $892.70 an ounce.
Just a few blocks away from all the turmoil and panic of the stock market sits the world's largest stockpile of gold. Deep under the streets of Manhattan sits more gold than "James Bond" villain Goldfinger could ever imagine.
And I recently got a private tour inside the little-known vault.
Nearly $200 billion worth of gold rests on bedrock five stories underground, 30 feet below the city's subway system, inside the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's vault.
There are roughly 540,000 gold bars belonging to 48 foreign countries and 12 international organizations in the Federal Reserve's subterranean gold vault. (Courtesy Federal Reserve)
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
There is only one way in or out of the gold vault is through a narrow, 10-foot passageway cut into a 90-ton steel cylinder that sits within a giant steel-and-concrete frame. (Courtesy Federal Reserve)
Some kind of a “full faith and credit” story?
Also Known As Barney Frank’s rainy day fund...
Yeah, but I totally know how this place is vulnerable.
If you set of an charge in a nearby train station, then have 13 big dump trucks on hand, and pretend that you’re part of the construction repair crew called into fix the damages...all of the while keeping police occupied with a threat on a local school, that vault is very vulnerable.
[Someone whispers to mattdono].
They already did that! In a movie? Bruce Willis?
Dang...nevermind.
Especially if the Democrats had anything to say about it.
Dang FR! TOO SLOW!
Nice post.
Fake fears over Ethiopia's gold
Ethiopia's national bank has been told to inspect all the gold in its vaults to determine its authenticity. It follows the discovery that some of the "gold" it had bought for millions of dollars was gold-plated steel. The first hint that something was wrong reportedly came when the Ethiopian central bank exported a consignment of gold bars to South Africa. The South Africans sent them back, complaining that they had been sold gilded steel. An investigation revealed that the bank had bought a consignment of fake gold from a supplier, who is now under arrest. Other arrests followed, including business associates of the main accused; national bank officials; and chemists from the Geological Survey of Ethiopia, whose job it is to assay the bank's purchases of gold and certify that they are real. But what has clearly now got the government even more worried is that another different batch of gold in the bank's vaults has also been found to be fake, and this time it was gold which had been there for several years, after being seized from smugglers trying to take it to Djibouti. Mining The Ethiopian parliament's budget and finance committee ordered the inspection of all gold in the national bank's vaults. A report from the auditor-general on the affair is expected to be presented to parliament during its current session. Gold is mined in Ethiopia in considerable quantities, and a trader selling gold to the central bank has to have it tested and certified by the Geological Survey. Whether the bank bought fake gold in the first place, or whether real gold from the vaults has been swapped for gilded steel, the fraud has cost the bank many millions of dollars, and it must have involved collusion on a considerable scale. |
Susa had something like that. Maybe more gold. It took one invader to change hands and impoverish the former owners for a long, long time.
It would take 100%, every gold ingot and coin on Earth, to fund the current round of US government bailouts. We're talking real taxpayer money.
Two sevenths of the Wall Street bailout, in gold.
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