Fort Knox is audited regularly, and in 1974 cogress sent a delegation to verify it. One can easily imagine nefarious actors siphoning some off; how many tungsten bars are in there? They’d have to test every bar to know for sure. Has this been done?
I have to laugh though - it would be trivial for someone in the executive hierarchy there to walk off with them and cover it up. The whole thing is intentionally opaque.
And even better - that gold was mostly gold seized by the gov’t from private citizens when private ownership of gold was banned and all circulating coinage and other gold was seized!
It truly is an attractive nuisance for the corrupt.
There are some great historical nuggets in that archive, I liked this appeal to people to stop hoarding pennies and get them back into circulation.
> Creating a shortage where it does not exist can adversely affect every public spirited citizen, taxpayer and conservator of the earth’s resources. It is inflationary should merchants start to round off sales to the next nickel due to lack of pennies to make change.
> Again, I’d like to emphasize. There are plenty of pennies. But they are in the wrong places.
> It is estimated that over 30 billion pennies are in circulation—doing the job for which they were intended. Somewhere in this vast country of ours, however, in excess of 30 billion pennies are in hiding. These are the pennies I’m looking for. They are in dresser drawers, shoe boxes, pickle jars; most anyplace you can think of that will get them out of pocket and out of sight. They are unwanted, unused and unappreciated.
And even better - that gold was mostly gold seized by the gov’t from private citizens when private ownership of gold was banned and all circulating coinage and other gold was seized!
It truly is an attractive nuisance for the corrupt.