Tuesday, August 22, 2017

What the Hell is This?: Mnuchin Tweets on Fort Knox Gold

Fort Knox
U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, along with Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell,  paid a rare official visit to Fort Knox on Monday and then tweeted out :

 “I assume the gold is still there,” he quipped to a Chamber of Commerce audience in Louisville, Kentucky, 40 miles north of the Fort before the visit. “It would really be quite a movie if we walked in and there was no gold.”

“We have approximately $200 billion of gold at Fort Knox,” said Mnuchin. “The last time anybody went in to see the gold, other than the Fort Knox people, was in 1974 when there was a congressional visit. And the last time it was counted was actually in 1953.”

The big question here is why did Mnuchin visit now and why did he state the gold hasn't been counted since 1953? Why does he want to bring focus on the fact that there has been no physical count of the gold in decades? I am trying to figure the PR angle.

The carefully scripted life of a top US administration official does not happen by accident---especially the Treasury Secretary.

Does he want to head off a call for Fort Knox gold to be audited or has the US secretly bought back gold that it might have been sold or gold has been returned that might have in the past been
leased out, so that they are now ready for an audit?

Is the Treasury expecting a major run up in the gold price and the Treasury wants to powerfully assert that they have huge reserves?

According to McConnell, who is a guy you can't believe a word he says, stated that the idea to visit Fort Knox "just kind of came up as a result of a casual conversation.”

The Treasury reports that the government has 147 million ounces of gold stored there.

“All I will say is that it is freakishly well secured,” Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin, who also tagged along, said. “The gold is safe.”

I would bet a 10-ounce bar of gold that we will see, within the next six months, some news event that puts this visit into much better perspective.



  1. It's interesting how central bankers and other government officials routinely denigrate gold when the idea of a gold standard, or gold as money, is raised, but none of them want to sell the gold holdings, and apparently we are supposed to take comfort that "the gold is there." Why should we care if dollars are not backed by gold?

    1. "Why should we care if dollars are not backed by gold?"

      I dunno, maybe because gold is actually worth something? The fiat isn't worth anything, not even the paper it's printed on, since in the very printing the paper was ruined for any other use. The oil backed currency we've been working on is dead in the water since no other country wants it and they all want out of the bloodthirsty, war-mongering geopolitics the petrodollar has generated ON OUR PART. A new currency can't be backed by the labor and resources of the country itself, which is itself debt collateral. (That is, unless you consider that the debt the nation owes is not owed by the citizens but by the corporation that has been fraudulently masquerading as "our government." Let them pay their own debt, since it was their lackeys in Congress who were given the job to run up the debt by the banksters who have been in control for at least 150 years, since the first incorporation in 1871.)

      Gold has always held intrinsic value, as have other precious metals. You can actually DO STUFF with them aside from their role as currency. Salt used to be currency because it had an actual worth to humans. Paper? Well, as Chief Seattle or another great chief said, "When the last tree has been cut down, and the last fish has been poisoned; then you will find that you can't eat money."

    2. Absolutely true. Very well put. It does seem rather dumb for the Secretary of the Treasury to let us know that the gold is still there. Did anyone take a drill and see if the bars are gold plated tungsten, like we tried to give to China.

    3. You failed to mention the most important reason for carefully regulated precious metal backing of "official government counterfeit."
      Gold and Silver are both in limited supply which thereby controls the number of paper "receipts" they can print and...thereby controls the inflationary/deflationary credit games they can play.
      The next thing to do is eliminate the control of money by the private banksters and give it back to the people they stole it from...meaning us!!
      Then put all the banksters and their accomplices in Congress behind bars!!

    4. Margaret louise, my apologies, I left out a comma. I should have written "Why should we care, if dollars are not backed by gold?" My sarcasm was directed at the state's contradictions for telling us that gold is irrelevant, then trying to comfort us that the gold is here.

  2. Why do they care if the gold is safe? It's a barbarous relic, no? Our currency is no longer backed by it, so why do they hold it? They should give it back to the people from which they confiscated it.

    1. They should give it back to the people from which they confiscated it......Where it would become currency.

    2. Does anyone have a list of the gold USA owes back to who? How much is Ukrainian gold? How much is Libyan gold? How much is German gold? etc. Return the looted gold and then count what is left.

  3. I'll bet they got wind of what's sitting in the NY Fed basement and who actually "owns" what and decided they better go see if there's any left in Fort Knox, "just in case".

    The fact they had to convince Germany to take delivery over years and that some of the bars that were sent had to be re-cast suggests bad things.

  4. Also very curious that the MSM decided to report on this at all.

    I don't think it comes purely from Trump-hate or schadenfreude.

  5. goods and services , that's a standard. Gold is a good. why are we still having this conversation ? Take that gold and make something out of it. The problems with using a finite source of anything as a currency for an growing population with an expanding consumer base and inflation/deflation cycles is just as problematic as using paper or beans IMO

    1. Seems that would be defined as "the good faith and credit of the people of the United States." After all, it is we and our diligence, hard work and creativity that creates national value, Then if money were spent into existence, instead of loaned out of thin air at tribute - er, ah, interest, things would come into balance. Of course, Constitutionally, that is a Congressional responsibility. Given the gross lack of fiscal responsibility of the Congress, it becomes kinds scary.

    2. I don't follow. A good currency is infinitely divisible yes but it certainly is of no value if it is not limited in volume.

    3. There's a "catch 22" at work here.
      Gold backing limits the quantity of "dollars" that can be printed but it also limits the commerce that can be carried on.
      Ben Franklin said "The colonists would have borne a tax on tea" and that the King taking away their money (colonial scrip)by demanding that all transactions be in gold is what ruined the colonial economy and precipitated the Revolution.
      Read "The Creature From Jekyll Island" or watch "The Money Masters" and everything will become clear.

  6. Have you seen this? Reason to doubt the audits of the Fort Knox gold supply https://www.bullionstar.com/blogs/koos-jansen/us-mint-releases-new-fort-knox-audit-documentation-the-first-critical-observations/