Why Uncle Sam is Hoarding Gold

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Uncle Sam holds it so they can engage in swaps with foreign entities for expedient banking / accounting purposes. Maybe also for a little leverage in PPT shenanigans.

Oh, and... Tradition! /obligatory
 
As long as it never gets audited, it really doesnt matter how much is claimed to be stored nor who it might really belong to .........

And if China, India, Russia etc are doing the same, then it all becomes a bit confusing for my little brain.

Good job I can believe in tradition eh ?
 
I was surprised by how small the value of the gold is in relation to the size of our government expenses. It makes me think that small gold owners will be more likely to stay under the radar and less likely to have it confiscated since there isn't enough of it to make much of a dent with the massive debt we've built, or maybe there is?
 
Depends upon what price gold is valued at. Of course, current prices wouldn't support it. Things can change though...
 
@ Aubuy

Like I have to tell you that gold is worth far more than $1310 or so / oz...

:)

***

Tracking one of FOFOA's ideas, "let's say" [begin thought experiment] that really scary times are upon us. Our debts, internal and external become too much for our .gov to cope with. "Let's say" that China decides it only wants real stuff (not Treasuries) with all of those dollars, so they might want our farmland, oil companies, etc. The US$ becomes rejected...

FOFOA thinks that one route out of such a mess is by a Really Big Buyer (and Seller, but the Buyer matters more) is for the Treasury to just put out the call to buy any and all gold at an arbitrarily high price, say $10,000 per oz. Would seller of gold appear? Yes. But, how many? FOFOA's guess (and I concur, though he knows his gold far better than lil ol moi) is that they would not get too much...

But what would also happen is that worldwide you would see a new floor for the price of gold. And the price would not hang around 10k. He expects to see gold in the range of $25,000 - $100,000 per oz! After all, the Treasury could just tell the Federal Reserve to print up whatever FRNs they needed to buy gold at 10k! No problem!

So, "let's say" that the price of gold winds up at $20,000 per oz. Then those 8100 tonnes are worth some $5 trillion. Much better, no? But, then you would have to ask yourself:

Would I trade our 8100 tonnes of gold just to cancel our debts?

Well, would you? I sure as hell would not!

[end thought experiment]

fofoa.blogspot.com
 
"The amount of gold held worldwide by individuals exceeds the amount held by governments and institutions. Of the 140,000 to 160,000 tonnes of gold ever produced, it is estimated that about 100,000 of these tonnes are held by individuals".

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/3525066

We think we know how much gold the US Government has. I wonder how much gold is being held by individual citizens? In other words does anyone have any idea what the total really is that the government could end up with if they gathered it all together to pay their bills?
 
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