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U.S. Treasury Secretary: I Assume Fort Knox Gold Is Still There

August 22, 2017

U.S. Treasury Secretary: I Assume Fort Knox Gold Is Still There

  • US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin visits Fort Knox Gold
  • Later tweeted ‘Glad gold is safe!’
  • Only the third Treasury Secretary to visit the fortified vault, last visit was 1948
  • Last Congressional visit was 1974
  • Speculation over existence of gold in Fort Knox is rife
  • Concerns over Federal Reserves lack of interest in carrying to an audit on gold
  • Gold was last counted in 1953, nine years before Mnuchin was born
  • Mnuchin may be looking to prevent countries and states from worrying about and repatriating their gold

US Treasury Secretary ‘assumes’ the gold is still in Fort Knox, 64 years after it was audited.

The fortified facility is reportedly surrounded by 30,000 soldiers, tanks, armored personnel carriers, attack helicopters, and artillery. Despite this, there is still concern as to whether the gold is there.

As he headed in, Mnuchin told an audience “I assume the gold is still there…It would really be quite a movie if we walked in and there was no gold.”

With a background in Hollywood it was unsurprising that Mnuchin’s imagination appeared to be getting carried away with tales of finding the $200 billion of gold missing.

Missing gold: fact or fiction?

An empty Fort Knox is an issue far removed from the hills of Hollywood  and has far more basis in reality than many give it credit for.

For many decades campaigns have been led for the US Treasury and government to audit the gold and to testify to its existence.

The gold has not been ‘counted’ since 1953. This was less than 20 years after Fort Knox was built. Since then there has been no official count or audit.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Rehypothecation of Gold, and Why It Matters

April 24, 2015

The Rehypothecation of Gold, and Why It Matters

Claiming to own X quantity of gold is one thing, and reporting how many times the gold has been pledged as collateral is another.

When correspondent Scott A. Batten offered to write an explanation of the rehypothecation of gold and why it matters, I quickly accepted. Like many others, I have breezed over the word rehypothecation with the basic understanding that it means assets pledged by counterparties (such as the infamous copper stored in Chinese warehouses) are reused as collateral/repledged–in effect, the same assets are pledged as collateral multiple times.

But beyond this, I have not had a clear understanding of how the rehypothecation of gold reserves threatens the whole shaky edifice of Infinite Greed, oops, I mean neoliberal capital markets.

 

Here is Scott’s commentary:

When introducing a new concept, it is best to start with the definition of the words to be used. In this case, the discussion of rehypothecation and how it places the world at risk with the fun and games played in the stock market.

Rehypothecation:

Rehypothecation occurs when your broker, to whom you have hypothecated — or pledged — securities as collateral for a margin loan, pledges those same securities to a bank or other lender to secure a loan to cover the firm’s exposure to potential margin account losses.

When you open a margin account, you typically sign a general account agreement with your broker, in which you authorize your broker to rehypothecate.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

 

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