With all the attention of late on the remarkable price moves in gold and silver, it is surprising that the question of a comprehensive audit of the U.S. government’s gold reserves, a headline issue one year ago, has been conveniently memory-holed.
For a time in early 2025, both President Trump and Elon Musk, in his semi-official capacity as head of DOGE (the so-called Department of Government Efficiency), were vocal advocates of a comprehensive accounting of U.S. gold reserves. President Trump announced plans to audit Fort Knox. Musk offered to video record it. But then something happened. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave the public assurances that “all the gold is present and accounted for.” President Trump and Elon Musk suddenly stopped talking about it. The squirrel-like memory of the media grew tired of the subject. Soon they and the equally attention-deprived public forgot about it.
Yet the question remains important for the United States’ credibility among its creditors, both foreign and domestic, and for our country’s competition in the currency and monetary facet of the broader cold war we find ourselves in. This is not to mention the right of Americans for government transparency.
In recent years, the speculation has grown, moving from the periphery into mainstream media, that perhaps the gold is not actually there, at least not all of it. It would seem, at least on the surface, that this would be an easy concern to address.
Since the mid-1970s, the U.S. gold reserve has been reported as stable at 8,133 tons. The gold currently held by the U.S. Treasury is still accounted for at the 1973 statutory price of $42.22. The accounting value of $11 billion had, at the end of January 2026 with gold at around $5000, a market value of some $1.3 trillion, perhaps enough to give creditors some comfort. That is, if the gold is still there. This is not an unreasonable question about an asset that hasn’t been audited in over seventy years (the last full audit was done in 1953).
Seeking to address the concerns, in 2025 Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY) introduced the “Gold Reserve Transparency Act,” to shed some light on the situation. His bill proposed an independent comprehensive audit that would require physical assay and inventory of all U.S. gold reserves, repeated every five years. A similar bill in the Senate proposed an accounting of any transactions in the government’s gold reserves from over the past fifty years.
An audit of U.S. gold reserves would not be easy. For Fort Knox alone, such an undertaking would require an estimated 18-24 months and 44,400 man-hours to complete the verification. A lot of work to be sure, but not a sufficient reason to not to perform the audit.
Other voices in the administration likely reminded President Trump of the need for continued security around Fort Knox, rendering a video production impractical and unwise. The explanation may be simple and benign. But the questions remain.
Jim Rickards, a leading expert on gold and currency markets, offers another possible explanation. One of Rickards’ theories is that even if the gold is indeed there, some meaningful portion of it may be legally encumbered through leases on the physical asset. Because these are paper contracts, the same physical gold may have been used as collateral for multiple contracts. This means that the gold is not “free and clear of liens,” and that someone other than the U.S. government has a valid legal claim on it.
This is plausible, as is an explanation centered around protecting national security. It is not like China would open up its vaults for inspection, either. But the sudden silence and unanswered questions from the administration may point to greater problems. There are times for secrecy, but, given the current metastasized lack of trust in both government and financial institutions, this doesn’t feel like one of them. Even if there is a problem it should be disclosed and preemptively addressed now, not in the midst of a financial crisis.
Rep. Massie’s and a similar Senate proposal are still alive in Congress, but no one is holding their breath. Whatever the reason may be, the administration has no interest in pursuing the question further. This is troubling. Just as with the so-called “Epstein files,” the lack of transparency provides little comfort but rather allows conspiracy theories, and in this case, investor doubts, to thrive.
The history of the U.S. government’s handling of its gold reserves is not comforting.
I recently described how, in 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Congress made it illegal for Americans to hold more than a token amount of gold. A generation (40 years) would pass before gold ownership became legal again for U.S. citizens.
But legalization of gold ownership made the U.S. Treasury nervous. Officials were concerned that rising retail demand would stimulate gold prices and lead to a further weakening of the U.S. dollar, already under pressure from President Nixon’s closing of the gold window in 1971 and the OPEC-led oil embargo in 1973. In order to keep gold prices down, the U.S. Treasury intervened in the market to the detriment of retail investors.
President Nixon’s move to close the gold window (which had allowed foreign governments and other holders to exchange their U.S. dollar paper claims for gold bullion) in 1971 came after several years of draining of U.S. gold reserves by foreign governments. After World War II, the U.S. held as much as 21,000 tons of gold. By 1971, the reserve had fallen in half, to somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000 tons, depending on the source. The outflow had accelerated in the 1960s due to a coordinated effort by France, Britian, and other European nations. Seeking to shore up their own gold reserves, these countries were concerned about the U.S. fiscal position as a result of inflationary deficit spending on the Vietnam War and President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. By 1971, trade deficits were rising to unprecedented levels, and there were three times as many foreign claims than there were gold reserves to back them. Either the gold reserves would be completely depleted or convertibility suspended. Either course risked substantial U.S. dollar devaluation and economic chaos.
So, President Nixon simply removed the gold backstop. The U.S. dollar would never again be supported by anything other than the “full faith and credit” of the increasingly indebted U.S. government.
After a period of currency instability and monetary disruption, all major currencies eventually floated against the U.S. dollar, which lost over one-third of its value in the 1970s. Rampant inflation ensued in the U.S.
We have never really stabilized. Today’s dollar is worth about 12.5 cents in 1971 purchasing power. In other words, the dollar has lost 87.5 percent of its value since losing its convertibility into gold. Today, we’re in the middle—not the end—of another inflationary round akin to the 1970s.
I mention this long history because the rapidly rising prices in metals tell us that another fundamental shift is occurring, and Americans should pay attention. Something is changing in the monetary world. The rising price of gold is warning that, notwithstanding what the Consumer Price Index may say, inflation and dollar debasement are coming. Central banks around the world are stacking gold and silver, not U.S. dollars, as reserves. Currency exchange rates and monetary pressure will once again prove to be part of a broader panorama of Great Power conflict between the U.S. and China.
In the midst of this environment, it would be a modest comfort to receive confirmation that the U.S. indeed still holds what it reports on paper.