In recent days, President Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Senator Rand Paul and a few others have pushed for an audit of U.S. gold reserves, with a special focus on Fort Knox gold.
This is perfectly reasonable given that the U.S. gold reserves (which are owned by the U.S. Treasury and not the Federal Reserve) have not been subjected to even a partial audit in at least twenty years.
Part of the goal of the audit is to discover if any of the gold has been stolen. The U.S. Mint, the government agency that acts as custodian of the gold, has reported for many years that the official size of the gold reserve is 8,133.46 metric tons of gold.
However, since there has been no audit for so long, the Mint's position is basically "trust us, brother."
Relying on federal bureaucrats has never been a particularly smart policy, which is why there are constant demands for some kind of transparent audit.
If it is revealed that the total size of the U.S. gold reserves is less than the official figure, it will be the ultimate reminder that there are many, many thieves and incompetents among those running the U.S. federal government. After all, if there is less gold in the U.S. gold reserves than reported, presumably it was stolen at some point.
This would be an appropriate destination for U.S. government gold, since much of it was stolen to begin with.
When I say "stolen," I don't even mean that "taxes are theft" and that the United States bought the gold with taxpayers' money. In truth, the way the U.S. Treasury acquired much of its gold hoard is even more dishonest than ordinary taxation.
Rather, it is likely that most of the gold at Fort Knox, as with gold in the U.S. regime in general, is gold stolen from ordinary Americans as part of Franklin Roosevelt's efforts to end the gold standard and confiscate private gold holdings in the United States.
In other words, the U.S. gold reserves are a legacy of the way the U.S. government reneged on its promises to exchange U.S. dollars for gold.
Instead of paying the gold owed to dollar holders, the U.S. government hoarded it. That stolen gold is what auditors will count if the U.S. government ever allows an honest accounting of the Treasury's gold reserves.
Where did the Fort Knox gold come from?
In his 1994 article for The Journal of Economic Education, economist William C. Wood writes that "the Fort Knox depository is now an artifact of the gold standard days."
He then adds, "The gold currently at Fort Knox comes from Depression-era gold coin smelting, World War II lend-and-lease agreements, and government operations under the gold standard."
The reference to "Depression-era gold coins" is telling. Most of those gold coins were probably the coins confiscated from private owners by the U.S. government following Roosevelt's Executive Order 6102, which prohibited private ownership of gold.
Of course, few Americans owned gold bullion, and the gold that was in private, non-institutional hands was mostly gold coins.
Roosevelt's edict required private citizens to turn that gold over to the U.S. government in exchange for a price that, in practice, was below market value. And what would happen if one did not want to give up one's property to the U.S. government? That's too bad.
In addition, private banks and the central bank held gold in coin form for dollar holders who, prior to confiscation, occasionally presented U.S. dollars for exchange into gold.
This is, in part, the Fort Knox gold that Wood classifies as gold held for "government operations under the gold standard."
However, after 1933, banks did not need to hold gold coins for this purpose, as Roosevelt's effort to end the gold standard included a ban on banks paying gold.
Thus, these coins ceased to have an immediate market value among banks. Where did all these gold coins end up? Most of them ended up in the hands of the U.S. Treasury, after it seized the gold from the Federal Reserve in 1934.
Proof of this is the nature of the gold preserved at Fort Knox today.
Wood further explains that the gold found there is not the type of gold typically found in bullion used for international transactions: "The gold resulting from coin smelting is of considerably lower quality than the 'fine' or 'good delivery' gold commonly used in international trade. Most of the gold found at Fort Knox is lower quality minted gold."
However, the legacy of gold theft by the U.S. regime is not limited to coins that were in private hands in 1933. Much of the gold in U.S. gold reserves today is gold that would have been paid to the private sector had the U.S. government not reneged on its promises to pay war bonds in gold.
The 1934 default on gold-based Liberty bonds
Every time the so-called "debt ceiling" is discussed, various servants of the U.S. regime such as Jerome Powell or Janet Yellen claim that "the United States has never defaulted on its obligations". This is a lie...
It could be said that it was a default, in a broad sense, when the Roosevelt regime refused to meet its obligations to dollar holders under the gold standard. The United States also defaulted in a formal and legal sense when it refused to pay its World War I Liberty Bonds in gold as promised.
Specifically, in 1934, the United States defaulted on the fourth Liberty Bond. The contracts between debtor and creditor on these bonds were clear: the bonds were to be payable in gold. This posed a major problem for the United States, which was facing huge debts until the 1930s, following World War I. As John Chamberlain described :
When Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933, interest payments alone were depleting the Treasury of gold; and since the Treasury had only $4.2 billion in gold, it was obvious that there would be no way to pay the principal when it came due in 1938, let alone meet expenses and other debt obligations. These other debt obligations were substantial. Since the 1890s, the Treasury had been short of gold and had financed this shortfall by making new bond issues to attract gold to pay interest on earlier issues. The result was that by 1933 the total debt was $22 billion and the amount of gold needed to pay even the interest on it was soon to be insufficient.
How did the U.S. government deal with the situation? Chamberlain notes that "Roosevelt decided to declare default on all domestic debt by refusing to redeem it in gold to the Americans".
In other words, thanks to its profligate deficit spending, the U.S. government was running out of gold by the early 1930s, so the regime defaulted on gold bonds. Gold that would have gone into private hands was hoarded by the federal government and declared off-limits to the public. Much of that gold remains in U.S. gold reserves today.
Non-compliance with international gold obligations
Not all of the gold in the U.S. Treasury is stolen from ordinary citizens. Some is stolen from foreign governments.
Another illustration of the dishonesty of the "we never default" narrative is the fact that the U.S. government defaulted in 1971 on its obligations to foreign governments under the Bretton Woods system.
That is, instead of paying what was owed to foreign governments in exchange for gold under that system, the U.S. government decided once again to steal that gold and simply said "tough luck" to everyone who had a legal claim on the gold. Or, as Treasury Secretary John Connally said at the time, the dollar "is our currency, but it's their problem."
U.S. gold reserves: a legacy of theft and lies
The gold reserve was never meant to be a static, untouchable treasure of the U.S. federal government, as it is now. It was supposed to be there for Americans and other dollar users who exchanged their dollars for gold. Gold was supposed to flow in and out. Then, the U.S. government slammed the doors of the federal gold vaults shut and declared that "the gold is all ours forever."
Like almost everything else that is "owned" by the U.S. government, the gold in the U.S. gold reserves is there thanks to many years of lies, manipulation and deception. The gold is there because the U.S. regime defaulted on its debts and failed to keep its promises to back the dollars in gold.
If a real team of auditors came to examine America's gold, they would examine the evidence of crimes committed long ago. The auditors would count the gold stolen from our ancestors to enrich the State and its friends.
Ryan McMaken , Money Metals