The only question that concerns me is, What if Fort Knox is not what it seems? What if the building itself is just a "face piece", and actually hides a bigger secret? My reasoning for this is the lack of pre-build, and actual build, construction evedence, things like dirt removal, building supplies, to and off the site. Could this be a real query, or is it just another "ghost-chaser" query?

A bit of trivia. The gold in Ft. Knox represents (represented?) the tangible wealth of the American people. The US was on the gold standard (where one dollar was redeemable for so many grams of gold or silver) until the Rederal Reserve Act of 1913. This was a beautiful system, because it limited government spending to only what they could back with their gold or silver at a fixed rate of exchange. The Fed progressively lowered the amount of gold you could redeem for your dollar (inflation) then eliminated any gold or silver connection whatsoever under Nixon in 1971. Once free of any connection to finite precious metals, our government was free to print as much currency, or sell as many Treasury bills and bonds as needed to run their wars and other government programs, all backed by nothing more than the 'good faith' effort of our nation to honor its debt.

Fast forward to today and Ron Paul. He based his assumption that the gold was missing from Ft. Knox when, a few years back, he headed up a congressional committee specifically tasked with making a physical inventory of the gold there-- they were denied access! Let that one sink in for a moment. Instead, they were handed paperwork 'showing' how much gold was stored. If not mistaken, I think there were supposed to be over 250,000,000 ounces or 8 tons.

Dr, Paul goes further to explain in his best seller 'Revolution A Manifesto' that he suspects the gold has been used to prop up the massive overprinting of the dollar by secretly dumping large quantities of it on the world market. How that works is precious metals function as the canary in the coal mine-- when gold and silver prices increase, it's an indication of overcreation of money and its end result- inflation. Glut the gold and silver markets, and prices stay low, while dollar stays 'strong'. Of course, this only works as long as you have gold to spend, which I suspect explains the reluctance to have any independent verification of exactly how much (if any) remains in Ft. Knox.

We are now in the heretofore unknown situation of very high demand for precious metals as a hedge against inflation, but very little physical inventory to be had. Most suppliers have a waiting list for the more popular coins with backorders common. For this reason, I would not advise investing in gold or silver mining shares, but in the metal itself, with your taking physical delivery.

For the first time in history, we have a situation where we 'know' the Federal Reserve

[edit on 2-2-2009 by h5mind]