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The federal government has quietly been completing an audit of U.S. gold stored at the New York Fed. The effort included drilling small holes in the bars to test their purity.
The Treasury Department has refused to disclose what the audit has revealed so far, saying the results will be announced by year's end. ...
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The audit, which began in January, took place 80 feet below the Fed's limestone and sandstone Italian Renaissance building in Manhattan's financial district. Visitors to the vault make their way through a steel and concrete entrance where a 90-ton door rotates open.
Inside, a massive scale is ringed by 122 blue cages that hold about 530,000 gold bars — 34,021 of which belong to Uncle Sam. The auditing team counted the U.S. stash, selecting more than 350 bars from which to extract samples for assaying.
The process involved about half a dozen employees of the Mint, the Treasury inspector general's office and the New York Fed. It was monitored by employees of the Government Accountability Office, Congress' investigative arm.
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The final results still might not satisfy some. Paul, the Texas Republican and presidential contender, wants an independent audit of all U.S. gold.
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He said he doesn't suspect that anyone has replaced the gold bars with fakes. He's more interested in examining paperwork that would show whether the gold has been used in any transactions that were never disclosed to the public, such as loans to other governments.
He is not alone. In Germany, there have been calls by some politicians to "repatriate" the country's foreign gold reserves and return to a gold standard as the euro common currency faces an uncertain future.
Germany owns the world's second-largest reserve of gold, much of it stored in central banks in New York, London and Paris. The German government keeps close tabs on its domestic gold reserves, but some in Germany are questioning the security and safety of the bullion stored outside the country.
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