Is Fort Knox still secure?



For over 50 years, Americans have grown accustomed to the sound of cash-printing machines, generating dollars as if our economy were a Monopoly board. Yet, amid the flood of money, a critical question remains unanswered: What about gold? It’s one of the most important and historically trusted assets in the world, and yet it’s often overlooked in the conversation about our financial future.

Last week, I sent a letter to President Trump urging him to conduct a full audit of our nation’s gold reserves, which have been stored at Fort Knox for nearly 90 years. Given the widespread distrust Americans now have for their government, confirming what’s inside Fort Knox could begin restoring much-needed faith in our monetary system.

Revaluing America’s gold reserves to match the current market price could change everything.

History underscores the importance of auditing our gold reserves. From the late 1800s until the start of World War II, the U.S. dollar operated under the gold standard, meaning its value was directly tied to a fixed quantity of gold held by the government.

In 1944, as the Allies moved toward victory in World War II, the United Nations convened the Bretton Woods Conference in New Hampshire to establish a new global financial system. The conference transformed U.S. monetary policy by making the dollar the world’s reserve currency, allowing countries to exchange dollars for gold at a fixed rate of $35 an ounce. Soon after, under the Marshall Plan, the U.S. shipped vast amounts of gold to Europe to aid its recovery, cementing the dollar’s role as the dominant global currency.

By the 1960s, cracks in the system began to show. The Vietnam War and Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” programs drained government coffers, leading to massive spending and excessive dollar printing. The U.S. could no longer maintain the Bretton Woods dollar-to-gold ratio and faced the risk of depleting its gold reserves.

To prevent this, President Richard Nixon took the drastic step in 1971 of severing the dollar’s tie to gold. This officially ended the gold standard, leaving U.S. currency backed by nothing tangible.

This shift created an increasingly unstable financial landscape. Despite that, gold remains a crucial asset in the global financial system — serving as a “fail safe” hedge against inflation and a reliable store of value. Yet for decades, while countries, particularly in Asia, have been amassing gold, the United States has provided little transparency about the status of its own gold reserves.

Why gold matters in 2025

Major shifts are making waves in the global gold market, and the U.S. needs to be part of that conversation.

Countries around the world are buying gold in record amounts — could it be that the United States is doing the same, perhaps in preparation for a major revaluation of gold to stabilize our currency? Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently spoke about “monetizing” the U.S. balance sheet for the American people. Could this include revaluing our gold reserves to better reflect market prices?

The U.S. Treasury’s gold stockpile is currently priced at just $42 an ounce, a value set by law back in 1973. In the real world, gold is worth nearly $3,000 an ounce. What if we revalued America’s gold reserves to match the current market price? That could change everything — maybe even provide a stabilizing force for the dollar, fight inflation, and stop the endless money printing.

Do we really own our gold supply?

But one major roadblock poses a severe risk to gold’s promise: rehypothecation.

Rehypothecation is like borrowing $10,000 from a friend and giving him your motorcycle as collateral and then he uses that same motorcycle to secure his own loan — the practice of using the same asset multiple times as collateral for different debts.

If America’s gold has been used to back multiple loans or obligations, our actual access to gold as a liquid asset might not be as great as we think. That’s why we need a full audit of Fort Knox. The complex hasn’t been fully audited since 1953, and we have no way of knowing how much gold we actually own and how much has been rehypothecated in the global market.

Restoring confidence in our financial system begins with opening the vault and showing the American people what we really have. Moreover, taking stock of our usable gold supply paints an actual picture of the country’s total assets, which is critical if the United States will maintain her role as the leader on the global financial stage — a position that is not guaranteed and can, if it hasn’t already, slip into other hands under our negligence.

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Who doomed the petrodollar: America or Saudi Arabia?



There has been a lot of confusion lately about Saudi Arabia allegedly ending a 50-year-deal with the United States that tied oil sales to the U.S. dollar.

While many have claimed that the deal never actually existed, financial expert Carol Roth is here to clear that up.

“There was a deal put in place, but never once did I come across anything that said we have a specific expiration,” Roth tells Glenn Beck, who notes himself that if the world goes off the petrodollar, “that is the beginning of the end.”

Roth explains that when the United States went off the gold standard, they created a secret delegation that went to Saudi Arabia as part of a diplomatic tour.

“There was an oil embargo put in place by the Arab oil exporters. It sent the price of oil sky-high. So, the big objective was basically the U.S. didn’t want crude oil, you know, energy, which is obviously really what fuels growth around the world to become an economic weapon,” Roth explains.

“They knew, 'Okay, well, now we’re off the gold standard, we’ve got this currency, wouldn’t it be great to have somebody finance our deficits?'” She continues.

In exchange for economic and military support, the Saudis struck a deal with the U.S. to price oil in dollars around the world.

“There was a secret piece of it, and that was that the Saudis did not want everyone to know that they had this huge treasury stockpile,” Roth says, noting that it was because they didn’t want anyone to know how “closely they were in bed with the U.S.”

Now, this deal has ended.

“The FED has managed to hold the dollar not stable either for the world or domestically,” Roth says. “So, it’s not like they even made the tradeoff. They just abandoned it all together.”

“The big issue, if you are these countries around the world that now have everything priced in dollar, all of your major commodities, because it’s not just oil at this point,” she continues, “When you have these huge swings in the dollar, that means that threatens you as a nation, because you now may not be able to afford energy, or you may not be able to afford the food for your country.”

“That’s a national security issue,” she says. “And so, countries were getting sick of that we weaponized the U.S. dollar, and at the end of the day, they’re starting to move away from it.”

This is why it isn’t the Saudis who are to blame for the end of the deal.

“The Saudis did not break a deal. We’ve broken the deal long ago,” Roth says.


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American Bar Association gives Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett its highest rating



The American Bar Association on Sunday announced that it has given Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett its highest rating.

Monday is the start of Barrett's Senate confirmation hearings.

What are the details?

In a Sunday letter addressed to Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and ranking member Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the American Bar Association advised that Barrett is "well qualified" for a position on the Supreme Court.

On Sunday, DC Examiner reporter Jerry Dunleavy shared the letter on Twitter, writing, "The American Bar Association released its determination that Judge Amy Coney Barrett is 'Well Qualified' on the eve of the start of her Supreme Court confirmation hearings."

A portion of the letter reads, "The American Bar Association's Standing Committee on the federal judiciary has completed its evaluation of the professional qualifications of Judge Amy Coney Barrett, who has been nominated by the President to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States."

"As you know, the Standing Committee confines its evaluation to the qualities of integrity, professional competence, and judicial temperament," the letter continues. "A substantial majority of the standing committee determined that Judge Barrett is 'Well Qualified,' and a minority is of the opinion that she is 'Qualified' to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States."

The letter concludes, "The majority rating represents the Standing Committee's official rating."

The American Bar Association released its determination that Judge Amy Coney Barrett is “Well Qualified” on the eve… https://t.co/oCbpWdnzgD
— JERRY DUNLEAVY (@JERRY DUNLEAVY)1602472764.0

What else?

As noted by the Daily Wire, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) in 2001 referred to the American Bar Association's judicial ratings as the "gold standard by which judicial candidates are judged."

On Sunday night, Barrett released the opening statement she plans to issue on Monday morning.

A portion of her remarks read:

Courts have a vital responsibility to enforce the rule of law, which is critical to a free society. But courts are not designed to solve every problem or right every wrong in our public life. The policy decisions and value judgments of government must be made by the political branches elected by and accountable to the People. The public should not expect courts to do so, and courts should not try.

That is the approach I have strived to follow as a judge on the Seventh Circuit. In every case, I have carefully considered the arguments presented by the parties, discussed the issues with my colleagues on the court, and done my utmost to reach the result required by the law, whatever my own preferences might be. I try to remain mindful that, while my court decides thousands of cases a year, each case is the most important one to the parties involved. After all, cases are not like statutes, which are often named for their authors. Cases are named for the parties who stand to gain or lose in the real world, often through their liberty or livelihood.

You can read the remarks in their entirety here and below.

NEW — Amy Coney Barrett’s opening statement. Notable line: “The policy decisions and value judgments of government… https://t.co/0JEGNwWnnE
— Seung Min Kim (@Seung Min Kim)1602424362.0