Sarcasm and fantasy alert!
Elvis and I had lunch last week. We dined on Sasquatch burgers, fried Unicorn fritters, and we were joined by “the lone gunman.” We had our special luncheon in the main vault room of the Fort Knox Bullion Depository in Kentucky. It was practically empty so converting it to a dining area was relatively easy.
It was a fabulous lunch. It is unfortunate that most of the gold had disappeared, but I suspect that the Chinese value our former gold more than the US ever did.
As a matter of curiosity, I did some quick math regarding Fort Knox gold. The “official” gold is listed as about 147,000,000 ounces – a little less than $200 Billion at today’s prices. For simplicity, round that up to $200 Billion and call it one Fort Knox Equivalent Unit, or one FKEU.
- Wall Street Bonuses for 2014 were about 0.14 FKEU.
- The State of Illinois unfunded liabilities for their pension plans are reported as about 0.4 FKEU.
- The annual expenses for the government of the State of California are about 0.55 FKEU.
- US government official expenses in the last 21 days were about 1 FKEU.
- US government expenses for “food stamps,” the SNAP program, for the past 3 years were about 1 FKEU.
- The 2008 TARP authorization was about 3.5 FKEU.
- The stock market capitalization for Apple Computer stock is about 3.7 FKEU.
- Federal Reserve “printing” of new currency “from thin air” in the various QE programs has been about 15 FKEU.
- The increase in official US national debt from January 2009 to January 2015 was about 37 FKEU.
One FKEU isn’t what it used to be. Perhaps that partially explains why there has been so little media interest regarding Fort Knox gold and why there has been no audit in the past 60+ years. An audit might discover that the gold in Fort Knox is, like the purchasing power of the US dollar, mostly gone.
Times change, gold moves to China, India and Russia, debt increases exponentially, a mighty storm is coming, and, I confess, we really did not … enjoy Sasquatch burgers.
Gary Christenson
The Deviant Investor
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