The reason for this is that while the U.S. government claims to have the largest reserves of gold in the world (supposedly over 8,000 tons) it has not allowed anyone to see this 'gold' in over 50 years.

Would anyone believe the balance-sheet claims of a Wall Street bank, if it had not been audited in over 50 years? If not, how could we put any credence in the gold reserve numbers of a government which is totally subservient to its Wall Street puppet-masters?

The next, most-important point to make is that the U.S. government defaulted on its gold obligations in 1971, roughly a decade after the last time any U.S. gold was actually seen. At this point, I think it would be helpful to view Wikipedia's definition of "default":

failure to satisfy the terms of a loan obligation or to pay back a loan.

The U.S. owed the world ten's of thousands of tons of gold - obligations it racked-up during the Vietnam Decade, and it failed to satisfy those obligations.

Here's a question to test readers. How often does the party defaulting on a loan end up with more money than its creditors? Answer: never. Thus, an obvious observation (yet one which is never made) is that the claims of the U.S. government to still have any gold at all after its gold-default are absurd on their surface - and the only way to rebut that absurdity would be to prove that it still held the gold, by showing it to someone.

Keep in mind that since the world's gold-standard was officially ended at the same time the U.S. defaulted on its gold that there was no reason to leave any gold in the possession of the U.S. except as a "prop" for what had become a "fiat dollar". In the immortal words of former Treasury Secretary, John Connally, "it's our dollar, but it's your problem."

Thus, as of 1971, while the U.S. government no longer needed to use gold, it was convenient for everyone that it was seen to be in possession of significant amounts.

To summarize: we have a government which owed far more gold to other nations than it could ever repay. It defaulted on those obligations, yet after defaulting on the gold it owed, this same government claimed to still have far more gold than anyone else on the planet - at a time when it was in everyone's interest never to challenge that claim. Lastly, the government claiming to hold these vast amounts of gold has not allowed anyone to see any of that gold in 50 years.

Having led readers to this point, the most likely reality is obvious: the other governments in the world have allowed the U.S. to pretend to have a vast stockpile of (its own) gold - because it was in everyone's interests to do so. However, while this is the most likely and most obvious answer, there is one other explanation which also provides a logical coherence with the facts we do know.

In an attempt to keep the fiat-dollar propped-up at a valuation far above its actual worth (and thus all the other fiat-currencies which were indirectly dependent upon the dollar), Western bankers have ruthlessly suppressed the price of gold for the last three decades. I don't have the time or space to re-hash that issue here, so for any who are still not clear on these facts, I recommend a previous commentary ("GATA Battles On").

During this entire span, the U.S. government has claimed that it is completely uninvolved in any of the gold-dumping which has been undertaken in order to suppress the price of gold, but rather it was European governments who supplied all the gold used to prop-up the dollar. We can thus add another element of absurdity to the claims of the U.S. government.

If you believe the U.S. government still has (and owns) the gold it claims, then you have to believe that at the time it defaulted it was allowed to keep the gold belonging to other nations (mostly European), and then for the next thirty years those same European governments squandered all their own gold reserves to prop-up the dollar - while still allowing the U.S. government to keep all of its own gold.

Is there any rational, human being who could actually take such a ridiculous story seriously?

For those readers out there who do cling to their rationality - in a world gone mad - there are thus two scenarios which make sense, regarding the U.S. claims about its "gold reserves". The first scenario is that the U.S. government gave up ownership of all of its gold on the day it defaulted but was allowed to store the gold owned by other nations - because such a sham benefited everyone.

This would also account for the inexplicable failure of the U.S. government in not auditing this gold for 50 years. An audit would require either admitting that none of the gold stored by the U.S. was owned by the U.S., or the U.S. could produce a (phony) audit - claiming that it actually did own all that gold (thus effectively 'stealing' all of that gold back from its rightful owners). This would explain both why there has been no audit of U.S. "gold reserves" and why no other government has been drawing attention to this lapse.

However, as I alluded to earlier, there is a second explanation which is also consistent with the facts. Since it was in the interests of all Western governments that the U.S.'s gold-suppression scheme succeeded in propping-up the dollar, it's possible that on the day of its gold default that it was allowed to keep the gold rightfully belonging to those European nations - but only on the condition that all the gold dumped onto the market to suppress the price of gold would be U.S. gold.

Again, this explanation is consistent with the facts. Allowing the U.S. to keep its gold, but only on condition that such gold was used to prop-up the dollar would have been in everyone's interests - and thus (again) explains why no other nations would be clamoring for an audit of the U.S.'s gold holdings. Thus, while the U.S. may have originally had that 8,000 tons of gold, most or all of it would have been expended in the central bank dumping/leasing "operations".

On yet another day, when market lemmings are allowing the worthless greenback to be bid higher, it seems like a good time to point out that there is obviously no gold backing the unsecured IOU's (i.e. the U.S. dollars) of the biggest dead-beats the world has ever seen.

Disclosure: none

Jeff Nielson is from Canada and is a writer/editor for Bullion Bulls Canada. He has a personal background in law and economics. Bullion Bulls Canada provides general macro-economic and political commentary, since the precious metals markets are among the most complex (and misunderstood) in the world. It also provides basic coverage of Canadian precious metals mining companies. Canada is the global leader in mining exploration, and Canadian-listed mining companies (on the Toronto Stock Exchange and Venture Exchange) are responsible for the majority of the world's most-promising discoveries.

Come see Jeff at the Vancouver World MoneySh

Feb. 17, 2010

www.silverbearcafe.com/private/02.10/reserves.html