Fort Knox empty?

This is no flounder as the information dates to 1974, so all are to blame, or is it just another scare tactic?

The following is lifted from the iNtRaWeB, because everything on the internet is true.

Fort Knox is Empty (the Gold's Missing)...

Dear concerned American,

I have a troubling situation to discuss.

Whispers are swirling around Capitol Hill that Fort Knox is empty....

That all the gold is gone...

That the U.S. government has been shipping gold to nations like China (as collateral for a weak dollar).

Scary isn't it?

Without any gold in Fort Knox, the United States has nothing backing the dollar but faith.

Here's what Wall Street Daily analysts have confirmed...

The U.S. government has NOT done a public audit of the gold in Fort Knox since 1974. Policymakers have ignored all requests for a new audit, too.

Worse yet, $982 million worth of gold has left JFK International Airport in New York since the year began.

The destination? Somewhere in South Africa.

The gold shipment was confirmed by the U.S. Census Bureau's foreign trade division.

That begs the following question...

Do you think Fort Knox is empty?

Yes or No.

I've seen the poll results, and they're shocking.

Your vote will also trigger the entire investigation Wall Street Daily recently conducted on Fort Knox being empty, including an exclusive interview with JIM ROGERS.

Expect the investigative email, with a link to the Jim Rogers interview, to hit your inbox a few minutes after you vote.

Thank you for your time on this urgent matter,

Robert Williams
Publisher, Wall Street Daily

I think that one has been disproved many times.

Snopes says nothing, submitted it though

something to consider.

if this was true, we've been without gold for almost 40 years. We seem to be capable of going pretty well based on that. That's also 16% of the time the US has been the US.

Then again, I've seen some shows about ft. knox showing the gold in an audit in the mid 70s.

We all trade with a piece of paper. Why is a rock more valuable?

The US dollar has not been gold backed since the 60's. Tempest in a teapot.

BREAKING NEWS!
This man E36 M3s gold.No worries then...

...Without any gold in Fort Knox, the United States has nothing backing the dollar but faith....

Yup, that's how it works. A bit freaky when you think about it, but as noted, using gold as a basis is also a bit silly. The primary reason gold has been valuable (historically, obviously more recent electronics uses are valuable) is because it is very easy to work / shape, and it's pretty.

Fortunately, although shiny and pretty, aluminum is not the basis, so there is plenty left for the rest of us:

The wife and I have been marathoning The West Wing on Netflix. We never saw it in its first run, so we've been having a good time with it.

A season 2003 episode had a nutjob visit the White House that said the above almost verbatim. Art imitating life or life imitating art?

"The Word on Teh Intr4w3bz, y0" is that anything you see in Ft. Knox is Tungsten plated gold. Weighs the same as Gold.

Money today is 1's and 0's on a hard drive. Want more? Add a zero to a cell on the spreadsheet. That's how it's done today.

Nathan JansenvanDoorn wrote: The US dollar has not been gold backed since the 60's. Tempest in a teapot.

Given that gold isn't being used to back the dollar, "US government has enormous gold stash, does absolutely nothing with it" seems like it should be a more alarming headline than "Fort Knox empty."

Have this chick been there?

With Abrams tanks, we don't even need gold.

Didn't Nixon take us off the gold standard ?

Yeah, Nixon took us off the gold standard completely. The US was printing so much paper money (or paper money equivalents, like book keeping entries, not sure how much was by computer then) to pay for "the war" that the rest of the world was starting to get pissed. Only foreigners could exchange dollars for gold, as us peons were forbidden to hold it. The French were taking all their funny money dollars and exchanging them for gold at the going rate, rapidly depleting the US gold reserve. In response, Nixon ordered that dollars were no longer convertible into gold for anyone, including foreigners, thus removing us completely from the gold standard. Roosevelt had done the same thing to us peons 4 decades before. Johnson removed silver from coin money. Now The O will remove copper plated zinc, because copper plated zinc discs are worth more than a penny.

All economy is faith based.

You have to believe gold is worth something to have it "back" your paper.

Maybe we are backing the dollar with nukes now.

"This piece of paper I just printed is worth some food"

"No it isn't"

"I will shoot you in the face if you don't take this paper and give me food"

"Right then, here is some food"

:)

In reply to Giant Purple Snorklewacker:

backed with bullets then?

N Sperlo wrote: In reply to Giant Purple Snorklewacker: backed with bullets then?

They have been buying up a lot of them lately

In reply to N Sperlo:

Tactical WMD's......

hell, even currency based on precious metals is faith based.....how do you know it'll be worth anything after 2 hours?

MadScientistMatt wrote:

Nathan JansenvanDoorn wrote: The US dollar has not been gold backed since the 60's. Tempest in a teapot.

Given that gold isn't being used to back the dollar, "US government has enormous gold stash, does absolutely nothing with it" seems like it should be a more alarming headline than "Fort Knox empty?"

FTFY Matt, after all the question mark really is what I was asking.

Is the dollar actually worth anything, sure its backed by the Federal Government, but what is that worth?

Dr. Hess wrote: Now The O will remove copper plated zinc, because copper plated zinc discs are worth more than a penny.

Pennies cost more than a penny to make, but they only briefly had a scrap value higher than $0.01. That happened a decade ago during the runup in commodities values when China was expanding like crazy.

The half cent coin was discontinued in 1857 because it was had too little value to be useful, at which point it was worth more than a dime is today.

The right answer to get rid of pennies, nickels, and dimes and round everything to the nearest quarter. I mean, really, does anyone think of coins that small as actually valuable today?

Australia eliminated the 1 cent coin years ago, then the 2 cent, now everything rounds off to the 5 cent, or nickel for you yanks.

The 1 dollar and 2 dollar notes are now coins

aussiesmg wrote: Australia eliminated the 1 cent coin years ago, then the 2 cent, now everything rounds off to the 5 cent, or nickel for you yanks. The 1 dollar and 2 dollar notes are now coins

It's funny that the govt can take your taxes, your privacy, and your livelihood, but they are afraid that if they axe the penny and replace the dollar bill with a coin, it will trigger a revolt.

Although gold isn’t “worth” its current price, it does intrinsically resist being valued below its replacement cost. The same is true of currency but since you can create a vast amount of it with a few computer key strokes, its replacement cost is basically zero.

Our current system will work fine until it doesn’t…human nature assures that manipulation will continually escalate to the point where confidence is lost resulting in a precipitous crash with no floor of intrinsic value to provide support.

We just aren’t as smart as we think we are…we keep replacing what works with what sounds good and there will be a price to pay.