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Comment by jazzyjackson | Hacker News Reader

My favorite fact I learned just the other day is that gold held by the federal reserve is "on the books" at a value of $42.22 per troy ounce and would represent a sizable sum if valued at market rates. But since we'll never sell it I guess it doesn't matter much what we value it at.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/data/intlsumm/current.htm

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> Zachary Griffiths, head of investment grade and macro strategy at CreditSights Inc., said revaluing gold stocks “might be a viable consideration if we [the United States] had a debt problem, but we really have a deficit problem. It’s kind of crazy to say $800 to $900 billion doesn’t do a whole lot for us over the longer run, but it’s pretty much a fact.”

> Yawning fiscal deficits, currently nearly 7% of US gross domestic product, are one of the reasons investors flock to bullion to seek safety. That has helped drive gold prices to repeated record highs since last year. Total US federal debt held by the public now stands at nearly $29 trillion.

> “To use ‘a trick’ to try to plug at least the near-term deficit, I think the risk associated with that is far greater than any near-term benefit,” Griffiths said. “It seems desperate and shows an unwillingness to address the source of the problem, which is our outlays and revenues are way out of whack.” [1]

[1] “Wall Street Talk of Revaluing US Gold Is Drawing Attention — and Skepticism” by Jack Ryan, Yvonne Yue Li and Saleha Mohsin, February 13, 2025 (Bloomberg) https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wall-street-talk-revaluing-us...

It'd be a hilarious (though unlikely) situation if it turns out they lied about how much gold they had, but do have the value of gold that was claimed in the books.

FTX bankruptcy accounting.

Not sure it is that unlikely. They refuse to do an audit of the gold and have not done one in decades.

Fort Knox was not shown publicly since 1974

> that gold held by the federal reserve is "on the books" at a value of $42.22 per troy ounce

Bizarre. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYiR0Vh8Gjk explores that a bit.

And a bit of history: https://www.bullionstar.com/blogs/koos-jansen/can-pretend-fo...

Huh, interesting. They claim to have $11B of gold but at market rates it's closer to $450B.

It matters a lot, it can make balance sheet look a bit better and therefore can help to reduce interest on treasury bills. I think and I'm almost sure Trump is not okay with the current rates.

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