Tag: gold

Treasure Hunter Claims to Have Found Legendary Lost Nazi Gold Train

An anonymous treasure hunter claims to have found the location of the legendary ‘Nazi gold train’ said to have been filled with riches from World War II and hidden in Poland. The subject of countless searches in the past, the apocryphal cache of pilfered priceless pieces is thought to have been buried in the Polish city of Wałbrzych. Talk of the treasure has been rekindled this week after a local media outlet revealed that community officials received a mysterious missive earlier this year wherein a man asserted that he found three WWI railroad cars hidden in a sizeable tunnel in a forested area of the city.

Sharing details on the letter, Wałbrzych spokeswoman Kamila Świerczyńska described the man’s claims as “substantive and concrete.” She also noted that the missive included several attachments with maps, geodetic data, and a witness account from a resident who lived in the area when the train was allegedly hidden. While the treasure hunter asked that his name be withheld from the public, Świerczyńska noted that city officials met with the man, who explained how he determined the location of the lost gold train by “analyzing various sources and documents.”

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Biden Illegally Snatched Up Public Land, But SCOTUS Can Give It Back

There’s something undeniably American about searching the American Southwest for gold. As a young man, Mark Twain traveled to the Nevada Territory and, among other adventures, became a gold and silver prospector.

He wrote about the thrill of a strike: “You sweat and dig and delve with a frantic interest — and all at once you strike it! Up comes a spadeful of earth and quartz that is all lovely with soiled lumps and leaves and sprays of gold.”

Like so many throughout history, Twain’s search for gold wasn’t about the riches—it was about adventure. One of Twain’s contemporaries, Ralph Waldo Emerson, put it this way: “The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.”

If you ask Dan Torongo, that’s it exactly. 

Most of the time, Torongo is an engineer with his own firm in Brighton, Michigan. He specializes in gas and diesel aftertreatment systems and components, in clean air. But his family caught the gold bug as far back as the 1970s and has long held claims in the Chuckwalla Mountains of California.

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The Danger of Traveling with Gold

Two men were pulled over while driving on I-20 in Texas, carrying $250,000 worth of gold bars. US law permits and encourages law enforcement to confiscate assets. Civil asset forfeiture enables the government to simply seize assets and declare that the owner is guilty of money laundering before any due process occurs.

“We have to be able to prove what that criminal activity was, in other words how they got the money that they laundered. A lot of times that’s hard when your case starts with a traffic stop,” DA Tonda Curry said. Officers and drug sniffing dogs searched the men and their vehicle but found nothing aside from the gold. Curry initially attempted to pin the men with money laundering charges but could not make a case. The DA then determined that the men were involved in some criminal organization “that defrauds the elderly with investment-type scams.”

Since they were instantly charged with a crime, the law permitted the officers to confiscate the gold. “So he can’t give it back to them and let them go on down the road, it’s not theirs,” the DA explained, saying that charging the men with a civil case would be easier to prove than an actual criminal investigation.

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The Gold At Fort Knox Was Stolen From Americans

In recent days, President Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Senator Rand Paul, and some others have pressed for an audit of the US gold reserves, with a special focus on the gold at Fort Knox. This is perfectly reasonable given that the US gold reserves – which are the property of the US Treasury and not the Federal Reserve – have not undergone even a partial audit in at least forty years.

Part of the reason for the audit is to discover if any of the gold has been stolen. The US Mint, the government agency that acts as custodian of the gold, has reported for many years that the official size of the gold reserve is 8,133.46 metric tons of gold. Since there has been no audit in so many decades, though, the Mint’s position is essentially “trust us, bro.” Trusting federal bureaucrats has never been a particularly wise policy, and this is why there are ongoing demands for some sort of transparent audit.

If the total size of the US’s gold holdings is revealed to be a number below the official number, then it will just be the latest reminder that there a great many thieves and incompetents among the people running the US federal government. After all, if there is less gold than reported in the US gold reserves, it was presumably stolen at some point.

This would be a fitting destiny for the US government’s gold since much of that was stolen to begin with. When I say “stolen,” I don’t even mean in the sense that “taxation is theft” and that the US bought the gold using tax dollars. In truth, the way the US Treasury acquired much of its gold hoard is even more underhanded than ordinary taxation.

Rather, it is likely that most of the gold at Fort Knox, as with the US regime’s gold in general, is gold stolen from ordinary Americans as a part of Franklin Roosevelt’s efforts to end the gold standard and confiscate private gold holdings in the United States. That is, the US gold reserves are a legacy of the way the US government reneged on its promises to redeem US dollars in gold. Rather than pay out the gold that was owed to holders of US dollars, the US government hoarded it instead. That stolen gold is what the auditors will be counting if the US government ever allows an honest accounting of the Treasury’s gold reserves.

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Shell Game: How America’s Money Devolved from Gold to Fiat

Imagine a street performer standing behind a small table, moving three shells around at lightning speed, concealing a pea beneath one of them. As the audience watches closely, they try to follow the pea’s location, only to realize that no matter how well they track it, they’ve been fooled.

Now, replace that street performer with the Federal Reserve and the U.S. government, the shells with gold, silver, and paper money, and the pea with real value.

This, dear reader, is how the public got tricked into believing in fiat currency—a shell game of epic proportions.

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What Do They Know? Russia Increases Daily Gold Purchases by 700%

In a significant move, Russia’s Finance Ministry has announced plans to allocate 8.2 billion rubles ($92 million) each day for gold and foreign currency purchases until October 4, the nation’s Finance Minister announced.

“The amount of funds allocated for purchases of foreign currency and gold totals 172.9 billion rubles,” the ministry said in a statement. “Transactions will be carried out from September 6 to October 4, 2024, respectively, daily volume of purchase of foreign currency and gold will equal 8.2 billion rubles.”

This marks a sevenfold increase in purchases of physical precious metals over the previous spend, which has already been much higher for the last year. The Finance Ministry also projected “windfall” oil and gas revenues of 162 billion rubles in September, noting that actual oil and gas revenue in August exceeded initial expectations by 10.9 billion rubles ($129 million).

These revised figures “make it possible to estimate the volume of operations conducted by the Bank of Russia on the currency market related to the replenishment and use of the National Wealth Fund,” the ministry added.

With the new transaction volumes set for the September 6 to October 4 period, the Central Bank is expected to sell 0.2 billion rubles per day during the previous period.

After an 18-month hiatus, Russia’s finance ministry resumed gold and currency purchases in August 2023, capitalizing on higher oil prices. The country had previously paused foreign exchange interventions in January 2023, selling yuan reserves as part of a budgetary strategy to shield the economy from commodity market volatility. This program was initially suspended following the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

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The Federal Reserve Does Not Own Gold

Historically—as during the days of the classical gold standard—central banks maintained stocks of gold to facilitate the conversion of gold-backed national currencies. Those days are long gone, but in modern times, many central banks continue to own gold, and many central banks buy gold as part of their open-market operations. For example, in his article last week— ”Central banks purchase gold to offset their own money destruction“—Daniel Lacalle writes:

The rising purchases of gold by central banks are an essential factor justifying the recent increase in demand for the precious metal. Central banks, especially in China and India, are trying to reduce their dependence on the dollar or the euro to diversify their reserves.

The US’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, is not among these banks buying gold. Obviously, the Fed has no interest in buying up gold as a means of “de-dollarization.” Moreover, the Fed is presently concerned with purchasing more dollar-denominated government debt to keep interest rates low on the Federal government’s huge deficits.

But we must also note that another reason the Fed isn’t buying gold is that the Fed hasn’t been in the gold-owning business for a very long time.

That is, the Fed has owned no gold since 1934, when the Fed handed over all its gold in exchange for gold certificates. This is how the Fed’s Board of Governors summarizes the situation:

The Federal Reserve does not own gold.

The Gold Reserve Act of 1934 required the Federal Reserve System to transfer ownership of all of its gold to the Department of the Treasury. In exchange, the Secretary of the Treasury issued gold certificates to the Federal Reserve for the amount of gold transferred at the then-applicable statutory price for gold held by the Treasury.

Gold certificates are denominated in U.S. dollars. Their value is based on the statutory price for gold at the time the certificates are issued. Gold certificates do not give the Federal Reserve any right to redeem the certificates for gold.

The statutory price of gold is set by law. It does not fluctuate with the market price of gold and has been constant at $42 2/9, or $42.2222, per fine troy ounce since 1973. The book value of the gold held by the Treasury is determined using the statutory price.

Although the Federal Reserve does not own any gold, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York acts as the custodian of gold owned by account holders such as the U.S. government, foreign governments, other central banks, and official international organizations. No individuals or private sector entities are permitted to store gold in the vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York or at any Federal Reserve Bank.

A small portion of the gold held by the U.S. Treasury (roughly $600 million in book value)–about five percent–is held in custody for the Treasury by the Federal Reserve Banks, as fiscal agents of the United States. The vast majority of this gold is located in the vault at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and a very small portion is on display in several Federal Reserve Banks. The remaining 95 percent of U.S. Treasury gold ($10.4 billion in book value) is held in custody for the Treasury by the U.S. Mint.

It is possible to imagine that the Fed could start buying gold, but it’s hard to see why the Fed would be motivated to do so.

Moreover, given that the Fed’s gold certificates have essentially no connection to the actual market price of gold, changes in the price of gold have virtually no effect on the value of the Fed’s assets.

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Kentucky Governor Plans To Collect Sales Tax On Gold And Silver Despite New Law

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear has decided he’s going to continue collecting sales tax on the sale of gold and silver despite a new law repealing the levy and an attorney general opinion calling his line-item veto of the provision unconstitutional.

Only five other states levy a sales tax on gold and silver.

Initially, Rep. Steven Doan and Rep. John Hodgson introduced a standalone bill to repeal the sales and use tax on gold and silver bullion. The provisions were later inserted into House Bill 8 (HB8), an omnibus revenue and tax bill. 

The provisions in HB8 define “bullion” as “bars, ingots, or coins, which are made of gold, silver, platinum, palladium, or a combination of these metals, valued based on the content of the metal and not its form and used, or have been used, as a medium of exchange, security, or commodity by any state, the United States government, or a foreign nation.” Currency is defined as “a coin or currency made of gold, silver, platinum, palladium, or other metal or paper money that is or has been used as legal tender and is sold based on its value as a collectible item rather than the value as a medium of exchange.”

The House passed the bill 87-9 and the Senate approved the measure 34-0.

Gov. Beshear signed the bill but used a line-item veto to strike out the sales tax exemption for gold and silver. 

“If you own gold, you can afford to pay sales tax,” Beshear wrote in his veto message. “Tangible goods are the primary basis of the sales tax.”

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No, Africa Is Not Moving Toward a Gold-Backed Currency, and Neither Is Anyone Else

Speculation has long existed that nations like China or Russia, or groups such as BRICS, ASEAN, OPEC, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), or the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), might start using gold for trade or establish a common gold-backed currency to dethrone the dollar and impoverish America. However, gold cannot function as currency, and with the US holding the most gold, it would remain the richest country, unraveling this narrative quickly.

The countries with the largest gold reserves are the United States (8,133 metric tons), Germany (3,352 metric tons), Italy (2,452 metric tons), France (2,437 metric tons), Russia (2,336 metric tons), and China (2,264 metric tons). Even in a gold-based world, the US still has the most.

The issue with using physical gold as currency is that every point of purchase would need the ability to weigh the gold and evaluate its purity. Additionally, creating small enough gold coins for minor purchases is impractical. For instance, the average price of a pack of gum in the US is $1 to $2, equating to 0.061% of an ounce of gold. This is less than a single grain of sand, making it an almost imperceptible amount.

Since gold is not viable as a currency, the next option is a gold-backed currency. However, no country or group has enough gold to support its GDP.

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FDR’s Other ‘Day of Infamy’: When the US Government Seized All Citizens’ Gold

December 7, 1941 will forever be remembered as, in the words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “a date that will live in infamy.” Another infamous date is April 5, 1933—the day that FDR ordered the seizure of the private gold holdings of the American people. By attacking innocent citizens, he bombed the country’s gold standard just as surely as Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.

On this 90th anniversary of the seizure, it behooves us to recall the details of it, for multiple reasons: It ranks as one of the most notorious abuses of power in a decade when there were almost too many to count. It’s an example of bad policy imposed on the guiltless by the government that created the conditions it used to justify it. And the very fact of compliance, however minimal, is a scary testimony to how fragile freedom is in the middle of a crisis.

Suddenly on April 5, 1933, FDR told Americans—in the form of Executive Order 6102—that they had less than a month to hand over their gold coins, bullion and gold certificates or face up to ten years in prison or a fine of $10,000, or both. After May 1, private ownership and possession of these things would be as illegal as Demon Rum. After Prohibition was repealed later the same year, the sober man with gold in his pocket was the criminal while the staggering drunk was no more than a nuisance.

Hoarding gold was preventing recovery from the Great Depression, FDR declared. Government (which caused the Depression in the first place) had no choice, if you can follow the logic, but to seize the gold and do the hoarding itself. But of course, the big difference was this: In the hands of the government, huge new gold supplies could be used by the Federal Reserve as the basis for expanding the paper money supply. The President who had promised a 25 percent reduction in federal spending during his 1932 campaign, could now double spending in his first term.

What evidence suggested Americans were “hoarding” gold? Roosevelt pointed to a run on banks that immediately preceded his April 5 seizure decree. Indeed, people were showing up at tellers’ windows with paper dollars demanding the gold that the paper notes promised. But Roosevelt had prompted the bank run himself!

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