Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's me Josham. For this week's select I've
Speaker 1: chosen our episode on All the Golden Fort Knox from
Speaker 1: November of twenty twenty. One of the most surprising things
Speaker 1: we learned to this episode isn't that there might not
Speaker 1: be any gold left in Fort Knox. There most likely
Speaker 1: is plenty in there, but that because of the size
Speaker 1: of our economy, it doesn't really matter at this point
Speaker 1: if it's there or not. Hope you enjoy this brainbuster
Speaker 1: of an episode.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
Speaker 1: there's Charles w Chuck Bryant and Jerry's out there somewhere,
Speaker 1: and this is stuff you should know. Carrot plated gold edition.
Speaker 2: Gold plated.
Speaker 1: Isn't that what happens? Like if you put a bunch
Speaker 1: of gold together, it means more carrots?
Speaker 2: I think so. I'm afraid to doubt you, though, because
Speaker 2: I had a movie crusher say that. All I do
Speaker 2: lately is say you're wrong to you.
Speaker 1: What do they mean lately?
Speaker 2: I know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: They must be a newcomer to the podcast.
Speaker 2: It's dressing is Josh is all the time lately, Josh
Speaker 2: makes really good points, and all Chuck does is pupu
Speaker 2: it by just saying, no, you're wrong. It's like, has
Speaker 2: that even happened once?
Speaker 1: If it makes you I'm sure it's happened more than once.
Speaker 1: But if it makes you feeling better I haven't noticed,
Speaker 1: then that's what really counts, don't you think. Yeah, I guess,
Speaker 1: although there are like a million plus people listening, so
Speaker 1: I guess their opinions count as well.
Speaker 2: You're wrong.
Speaker 1: Oh man, you know what's funny is I didn't even
Speaker 1: see that coming, Chuck.
Speaker 2: Oh see there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was good, good stuff. And I almost just
Speaker 1: said the ES word. That was good stuff.
Speaker 2: You're wrong, it was mediocre.
Speaker 1: Let's just do this for forty five minutes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, let's do a real podcast episode. This is interesting.
Speaker 2: All I could think about was heist movies.
Speaker 1: Oh really, I don't know what I thought about. I
Speaker 1: think I was kind of stuck in the thirties. I
Speaker 1: just thought of everything's kind of old timey and quaint,
Speaker 1: all right, because it's kind of in a way where
Speaker 1: the story really kicks off the story of Fort Knox.
Speaker 1: In case anybody's listening, and didn't check the title.
Speaker 2: Oh, I thought we were doing an episode on the
Speaker 2: United States Bullion Depository, Buddy.
Speaker 1: That is the same exact thing in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: but actually they're different too. Let's talk about this, right, So,
Speaker 1: for anybody who is outside of the United States, and
Speaker 1: I would wager that a lot of you, I'd wager
Speaker 1: all the golden Fort Knox, that a lot of you
Speaker 1: are very familiar with Fort Knox, because it does seem
Speaker 1: to be kind of like this world famous place where
Speaker 1: the United States hoards its gold and it's just totally impenetrable,
Speaker 1: so don't even try. But there's also like a lot
Speaker 1: of conspiracy theories too that there's no gold in there.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk about all this and why there's golden
Speaker 1: there too, but I feel like we should at least
Speaker 1: give like a background on Fort Knox and the ins
Speaker 1: and outs of it, don't you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. In nineteen oh three, this is where it all started.
Speaker 2: The US Army said, you know what, I think we
Speaker 2: need some training ground out here in Kentucky, in West Point, Kentucky.
Speaker 1: And everybody said, why, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't know good as place as any I guess, okay,
Speaker 2: And they use that area. They got a few counties
Speaker 2: to kindly hand them over some land, and they use
Speaker 2: that area for training and stuff. Made it a permanent
Speaker 2: training camp in nineteen eighteen, and then named it after
Speaker 2: Henry Knox, a Revolutionary War officer, as Camp Knox. And
Speaker 2: someone very quickly said, that doesn't sound at all tough.
Speaker 2: It sounds like children belong here and people are roasting s'mores.
Speaker 1: So that's always going to say.
Speaker 2: How about Fort Knox.
Speaker 1: It seems like all the best fort started out as camps.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they said short. In nineteen thirty two, it
Speaker 2: became officially Fort Canucks.
Speaker 1: Right, nice one. So yeah, so it started out as
Speaker 1: a legit army base. But then eventually in the thirties,
Speaker 1: which is why I've been stuck in the thirties because
Speaker 1: so much of the story takes place there, the United
Speaker 1: States Mint said, hey, we could use a new spot
Speaker 1: to store some gold, because we got a lot of
Speaker 1: gold and this isn't even all of it, but we
Speaker 1: need a new spot to store some gold. And they
Speaker 1: actually took possession of part of Fort Knox and built
Speaker 1: what's known as, like you said, the United States Bullion
Speaker 1: Depository there in Kentucky, and it is legitimately Fort Knox
Speaker 1: is now not just the Army Camp. Even more famously,
Speaker 1: it is really what you officially would call the United
Speaker 1: States Bullion Depository.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the camp is still there, and some say
Speaker 2: it is there as sort of a a means of
Speaker 2: maybe intimidation maybe back up, like, hey, there's an army
Speaker 2: camp right next door. But they know also asked to
Speaker 2: borrow that name because it sounded tougher than the Bullion Depository,
Speaker 2: and they said, sure, you can go ahead and just
Speaker 2: call that building Fort Knox as well. And that's where
Speaker 2: we moved, well not all of it, but we had
Speaker 2: a lot of gold at the time, as you were saying,
Speaker 2: and it was it was a little unnerving, I think,
Speaker 2: to have most of the gold and the country stored
Speaker 2: in Philadelphia, the mint there and in New York because
Speaker 2: it was so close to the coast, and if some
Speaker 2: warring nation wanted to invade us and grab our gold,
Speaker 2: then they wouldn't have far to go to get it
Speaker 2: onto a boat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh truly, which is you know, pretty sensible, really,
Speaker 1: and I never really thought about that. But New York's
Speaker 1: not very far from water, and neither is Philly, so
Speaker 1: why not. So they decided to move as much as
Speaker 1: they could, and there was silver moved too. There was
Speaker 1: a lot of stockpiles of silver that we're not even
Speaker 1: going to bother with in this story because silver we're
Speaker 1: talking gold here. Yeah, And they moved a lot of
Speaker 1: it to Denver, and they very quickly said, well, the
Speaker 1: Denver Mint's a great place because it's protected from the
Speaker 1: from the Pacific Ocean by the Rocky mountains, which make
Speaker 1: that makes it much more difficult for an invading army
Speaker 1: to come in from the Pacific and steal it. But
Speaker 1: we've run out of space and we need some more
Speaker 1: space for all the spill over gold. And that's when
Speaker 1: they decided to build a Fort Knox, which in Kentucky
Speaker 1: is protected from the Atlantic Ocean by the Appalachian Mountain.
Speaker 1: So it's pretty pretty clever. Why they why they chose
Speaker 1: Fort Knox.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the Treasury, like you said, took control of
Speaker 2: that land in thirty six, and then in thirty seven
Speaker 2: they I mean, they started building you know there. You know,
Speaker 2: they couldn't just keep it intense even though those intimidating
Speaker 2: Appalachian Mountains were right there. They're like, we need a
Speaker 2: building here. So they built a building over just a
Speaker 2: few months.
Speaker 1: It's impressive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, cost about a half a million bucks. And in
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty seven they said, we're open for business, bring
Speaker 2: that gold from New York City.
Speaker 1: They didn't. They they did it the way, exactly the
Speaker 1: way that you would think they would do it. They
Speaker 1: had a lot of they had a secret location where
Speaker 1: they were loading it. They sent a bunch of trains
Speaker 1: out that were decoys. And it didn't all happen at once.
Speaker 1: It wasn't one shipment that made its way from New
Speaker 1: York and Philadelphia over to Kentucky.
Speaker 2: It would have been in the movie, I think, exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But it happened like actually in many shipments over
Speaker 1: several years. But supposedly they did it like sometimes darkness
Speaker 1: of nights, and there was decoys and they were always
Speaker 1: protected by a number of groups from the Post Office
Speaker 1: inspectors that are licensed to carry guns. Which would I
Speaker 1: hate to say it, everybody, but that's the one that
Speaker 1: you would try to hijack if you were going to hijack.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean all the way to be honest.
Speaker 1: I like, yeah, right, yes, chuck, all the way to
Speaker 1: the army, you know, which I would I would probably
Speaker 1: not try to hijack that one. If I were going
Speaker 1: to hijack one, which I wouldn't do, it would probably
Speaker 1: be the Postal inspector one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, I'm sure that they've someone has
Speaker 2: written a movie treatment at some point for a nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty seven train on the way to Fort Knox heist
Speaker 2: type of thing, right, and they surely would have cast
Speaker 2: those poor post office gun slingers is the likely train,
Speaker 2: those poor guys.
Speaker 1: So we've got the gold shown up at Fort Knox,
Speaker 1: and the thing is is, like this was like people
Speaker 1: knew about this. It wasn't done in secret, Like this
Speaker 1: this is known about and I think I get the
Speaker 1: impression that the reason that it was talked about in discussed,
Speaker 1: and there were like little tidbits here there in the
Speaker 1: in the popular media to give this idea like Okay,
Speaker 1: yes we're moving this gold, but like, don't even try it,
Speaker 1: Like here's just enough that you need to know to
Speaker 1: not even come anywhere near this place. And over the years,
Speaker 1: little tidbits have kind of been released here there that
Speaker 1: give a pretty complete picture of what you would be
Speaker 1: dealing with if you did, in fact, try to impregnate
Speaker 1: Fort Knox.
Speaker 2: Oh, pretty sexy. So first of all, you can't just
Speaker 2: take a tour, and you can tour almost anything in
Speaker 2: this country except for Fort Knox.
Speaker 1: Even if you were a sitting congress person, the chances
Speaker 1: are you're probably not going to get a tour.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, if ed is correct here who helped
Speaker 2: us put this together? There have only been three official tours,
Speaker 2: Is that right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I saw. So there's there was one
Speaker 1: from FDR himself, which is pretty understandable. Sure, there was
Speaker 1: one in the seventies, which we'll talk about, which made sense,
Speaker 1: but it was a congressional delegation. And then I think
Speaker 1: in twenty seventeen, Steven Mnusan and a delegation toured it.
Speaker 1: So there's at least three, but those are the three
Speaker 1: that we know about. There may have been more, but
Speaker 1: I would think they would kind of publicize that because
Speaker 1: the whole point of being a delegate to tour of
Speaker 1: Fort Knox is to basically reassure the public there's a
Speaker 1: lot of gold in there. Don't even worry about. Yes,
Speaker 1: the gold's there. That's pretty much the reason why anybody
Speaker 1: gets a tour of Fort Knox.
Speaker 2: I wonder if they let FDR in just to say, hey,
Speaker 2: you might as well just urinate on this golden person,
Speaker 2: because that's what you're about to do with policy.
Speaker 1: That's probably what happened.
Speaker 2: We'll get through that later with the gold standard, And
Speaker 2: of course you didn't urinate on it. Even with policy,
Speaker 2: you don't know.
Speaker 1: You can't ever tell what that FDR.
Speaker 2: So here's a bunch of things, and this next bit
Speaker 2: is going to be just sort of a lot of
Speaker 2: the facts and figures that we know and we've gleaned
Speaker 2: over the years. Some comes from official releases, some comes
Speaker 2: from an old nineteen thirties issue of Popular Mechanics, which
Speaker 2: is kind of cool. But should we take a break first?
Speaker 1: Oh? Sure, man, Yeah, I think that's a great cliffhanger.
Speaker 2: Right, great, we'll be right back alrighty, So we promised
Speaker 2: you stats and figures about Fort Knox.
Speaker 1: And nineteen thirties issues of Popular Mechanics.
Speaker 2: I know, how's this for you? The vault requires, of course,
Speaker 2: multiple people to open it up, and each person nobody
Speaker 2: knows the entire combination. Each person knows only a part
Speaker 2: of it. And even if you got it open, there's
Speaker 2: a one hundred hour time delay lock, so you got
Speaker 2: to wait. If you have them at gunpoint and you
Speaker 2: all force and you force them all to open it,
Speaker 2: you got to sit around and wait for four days,
Speaker 2: no matter what.
Speaker 1: That's my favorite one.
Speaker 2: It's pretty great, m h.
Speaker 1: That and the fact that it's really just artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: from the future is the only one that has the
Speaker 1: entire combination in its possession. What else, Well, let's see,
Speaker 1: the vault itself is actually inside a building. So you
Speaker 1: remember in our Alcatraz episode where the cell blocks were
Speaker 1: buildings inside of the larger prison building. Yeah, that's exactly
Speaker 1: the same thing, and not coincidentally, they were built around
Speaker 1: the same time, so I think there was that kind
Speaker 1: of you know, impenetrable building within an impenetrable building in
Speaker 1: the zone geist kind of thing going on. And the
Speaker 1: only way, the only place the vault and that building
Speaker 1: are connected is on the floor. But don't even think
Speaker 1: of coming up from under the floor, because the flooring
Speaker 1: is two feet thick of granite, which you are not
Speaker 1: going to get through even if you successfully dug under.
Speaker 1: And I'll just go ahead and tell you why you
Speaker 1: would not be able to successfully dig under the building
Speaker 1: from the outside. Is because you have barrier after barrier
Speaker 1: after fence after razor wire separating you from the building.
Speaker 1: There's a huge blank field around the building, so it's
Speaker 1: not very easy to kind of walk up to it.
Speaker 1: And they apparently have said that the field around the
Speaker 1: building is a minefield, which means that they apparently studied
Speaker 1: cartoons to design Fort Knox, which I love.
Speaker 2: They're like, what would wile E Coyota do?
Speaker 1: Exactly?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is, I mean it's it's definitely worth googling
Speaker 2: a like an aerial image of this building. It's pretty interesting.
Speaker 2: I mean it does. It sits out in the middle
Speaker 2: of nothing in this big flat area, and there's like
Speaker 2: a circular driveway around it. And you know, it's made
Speaker 2: of what you think it's made of, which is granite
Speaker 2: and concrete and steel. They said that the walls are
Speaker 2: also two feet in thickness, and inside those walls are
Speaker 2: fabricated steel coils that are so closely smushed together that
Speaker 2: they say a human hand can't even get between them. Right,
Speaker 2: So you need a baby or a child.
Speaker 1: You need a baby in so you got to bring
Speaker 1: a baby. You have to bring diapers and food to
Speaker 1: last the maybe four days until the time Locke comes.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Of course, don't forget a gun to hold people off with. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and probably some people you don't like to send through
Speaker 1: the minefield the clear path for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you got to get one of those diaper
Speaker 2: genies to put the diaper in, otherwise it's smell in there.
Speaker 1: Oh man, it would smell so bad in that little building.
Speaker 2: Here's another cool thing. Well, the whole building isn't huge.
Speaker 2: I mean it's it's not small. It's ten thousand square feet,
Speaker 2: but it's not I don't know. You think of Fort
Speaker 2: Knox and you think of something the size of like
Speaker 2: a maximum security prisoner or something like that. It's not huge.
Speaker 2: But the building inside the building, so the vault inside
Speaker 2: has an eighteen inch space clear on every side, and
Speaker 2: they have all these mirrors everywhere. And of course now
Speaker 2: they have real cameras. I guess this was from the
Speaker 2: popular mechanics pre camera. You just use mirrors to make
Speaker 2: sure that you could see every square inch of this thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So if you did somehow manage to get inside the vault,
Speaker 1: the people who whose job it is is to watch
Speaker 1: the vault would see you immediately, and they ostal service
Speaker 1: workers yeah. Yeah, they would just start, you know, lobbing
Speaker 1: dead letter off as packages at you until you got
Speaker 1: annoyed and left.
Speaker 2: And of course there's heavy artillery. There are four corner
Speaker 2: machine gun turrets essentially on the outer building, just looking down.
Speaker 1: So I'm sorry, I was confused. Is that on the
Speaker 1: outer building or is that part of the vault?
Speaker 2: I think that's outside?
Speaker 1: Okay, I don't know. I couldn't quite tell, and I
Speaker 1: didn't see it outside. Did you see him outside?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean I saw I mean I didn't see
Speaker 2: any really close ups. Everything was kind of an aerial
Speaker 2: and I did see what looked like corner turrets, but
Speaker 2: maybe they are inside. Okay, I don't know if i'd
Speaker 2: be shooting up machine guns inside of granite room.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's actually probably a pretty bad idea.
Speaker 2: I mean, I've seen Wiley Cody too. Those bullets bounce.
Speaker 1: All over the re place. That's right. So you've also
Speaker 1: got a door to contend with. So so far you've
Speaker 1: got two feet thick everything to get through, which means
Speaker 1: that your best bet is to go through the door
Speaker 1: because rather than twenty four inches, it's only twenty one
Speaker 1: inches thick. But you should probably be dissuaded by the
Speaker 1: fact that it's blast, drill and torch proof, said the
Speaker 1: US MINT director from back in twenty sixteen, Philip Deal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and again this is all under the banner of
Speaker 2: don't even think about it, buddy. Right between the there's
Speaker 2: a corridor that encircles the vault and then the outer
Speaker 2: wall of the building. They do have some offices. I
Speaker 2: guess that's where Dottie the secretary has been since nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty something, answering.
Speaker 1: For Danny or Danny.
Speaker 2: That's true. I don't think they gave jobs like that
Speaker 2: to Danny in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: Okay, maybe not in the fifties. That's fine. But I
Speaker 1: got called out for letting that stooge's comment pass, and
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna I'm not going on the grill again
Speaker 1: for you, pal.
Speaker 2: What the ladies don't like the Three Stages?
Speaker 1: We got not one, not two, but thrice emails about that,
Speaker 1: and most of them were not happy.
Speaker 2: Well, actually two of the three were very fun about
Speaker 2: it and said that they love the three stooges.
Speaker 1: But yes, but they weren't happy.
Speaker 2: One I couldn't tell, and I wrote her back and
Speaker 2: it was like I can't tell if you're really mad. Well,
Speaker 2: and I said, but I said, I was just, uh,
Speaker 2: if you google women don't like three stooges, it's a
Speaker 2: it's a trope. I mean, it's a familiar trope. I
Speaker 2: wasn't like inventing some sexist thing. I was just kind
Speaker 2: of funning around with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like everybody not liking Detroit or Kentucky like google.
Speaker 2: That, right, or google women don't like Rush the band.
Speaker 1: Hey, hey, hey, let's just let's bail out of this
Speaker 1: while we still have our limb.
Speaker 2: No, people can likely like. But trust me, I've been
Speaker 2: to a Rush concert and there was there's a lot
Speaker 2: of masculinity in that room.
Speaker 1: What year was that, because I'll bet I was at
Speaker 1: the same concert depending I went to.
Speaker 2: It must have been eighty eight or eighty nine.
Speaker 1: Oh no, I wasn't not that one.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah you were.
Speaker 1: This would have been maybe like ninety two, ninety three.
Speaker 2: We just missed each other.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just by a few years. Had I just hung
Speaker 1: out at the Omni for three or four more years
Speaker 1: or had you, we would have passed EACHO.
Speaker 2: But you're right, Women like all sorts of things, and
Speaker 2: men like all sorts of things.
Speaker 1: That's right. And Danny and Dottie can both be secretaries,
Speaker 1: that's right. And we don't even call them secretaries anymore, Chuck,
Speaker 1: we should just stop podcasting altogether. We have aged out
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 2: So to me, the only way in would be the
Speaker 2: escape tunnel.
Speaker 1: Yes, which they thought of that. They realized that. They
Speaker 1: actually put a tunnel underground that you could use to
Speaker 1: get into the depository, the actual vault, which they installed
Speaker 1: in case somebody got locked in there, which I'm really
Speaker 1: surprised they even installed that or designed that in there.
Speaker 1: I would think like, if you have people guarding it
Speaker 1: as closely as it's being guarded all the time, that
Speaker 1: if you got locked in there, they could let you out.
Speaker 1: They just give you food or something through those those
Speaker 1: slots that for the four days.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or.
Speaker 1: That's an even better idea, actually, now that you mentioned it,
Speaker 1: but now they didn't do that. They actually put an
Speaker 1: escape tunnel in so that you can crawl out. It's
Speaker 1: not like a pleasant walk or anything. You crawl like
Speaker 1: through this tunnel and then out into the minefield basically,
Speaker 1: but the door that you reach that lets you outside
Speaker 1: only opens from the inside. It's impossible to open from
Speaker 1: the outside, which I take to mean it doesn't have
Speaker 1: a doorknob on the outside, and then it's guarded twenty
Speaker 1: four to seven by people who are ready to just
Speaker 1: shoot you up if you try to approach this door
Speaker 1: with your own doorknob that you brought to open it
Speaker 1: from the outside.
Speaker 2: Right, because you're not going to come in here with
Speaker 2: a presumably a freight train to steal all this gold.
Speaker 1: Where are you going to put the tracks? You can't
Speaker 1: do it?
Speaker 2: Are you going to get that gold out of there?
Speaker 1: I just love the fact that we're trying to you know,
Speaker 1: we're doing a podcast in twenty twenty explaining and dissuading
Speaker 1: people from trying to get into Fort Knox. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just so like seventies to me, or thirties or fifties,
Speaker 1: you know. I love it.
Speaker 2: The other cool thing is is that it can go
Speaker 2: off grid, has its own water and power. So if
Speaker 2: you you know, in the movie version, of course, once
Speaker 2: again I would think you would try and knock it
Speaker 2: off the line somehow get those cameras down, but they say, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: we have those generators. We can live off grid. There's
Speaker 2: a gun range in the basement, So if you want
Speaker 2: to brush up on your machine gunning down there, you
Speaker 2: can do that.
Speaker 1: No, that's kind of like a little line yap to
Speaker 1: the whole thing. Like, by the way, these guys are
Speaker 1: training with guns downstairs in the basement for fun because
Speaker 1: they've got nothing else to do. They're just waiting for
Speaker 1: you to come.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Who is guarding it though, from what I understand their
Speaker 1: treasury agents?
Speaker 2: Right, yeah.
Speaker 1: The army can be called in if needed, because again
Speaker 1: it's like right there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the US Mint Police Force. Yeah, which I imagine is
Speaker 2: it's probably a pretty cool gig to have.
Speaker 1: I don't know where they would have come up, but
Speaker 1: I swear we've mentioned that they exist before.
Speaker 2: It seems familiar to me. Have we done this all before?
Speaker 1: No, we haven't done this one, but we have talked
Speaker 1: about money and currency before. Yeah, And I feel like
Speaker 1: where that's where we're at. Don't you like that? Maybe
Speaker 1: we should talk about the gold itself, because I mean, yes,
Speaker 1: it's cool that there's a twenty one inch blast door
Speaker 1: and there's a door that only opens from the inside
Speaker 1: and the escape tunnel. But I think what everybody's really
Speaker 1: fascinated with as much as anything, is the fact that
Speaker 1: there is a lot of gold inside of four knox.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this will kind of hit home too. If
Speaker 2: you've ever seen movies where you're bringing gold out of
Speaker 2: a place in a duffel bag, those gold bars weigh
Speaker 2: almost twenty eight pounds apiece, just one, Yeah, just one
Speaker 2: of those things. So if you see people throwing them
Speaker 2: around in a movie or putting ten of them fifteen
Speaker 2: of them in a duffel bag and slinging it over
Speaker 2: their shoulder, that is not realistic at all. They're seven
Speaker 2: inches long, three and five eighths inches wide, one in
Speaker 2: three quarters inches thick, and weigh twenty seven point five pounds.
Speaker 1: Each, yeah, or four hundred troy ounces. If you know
Speaker 1: what that means. I have no idea, and I think
Speaker 1: it's what about ten twelve kilos a piece for those
Speaker 1: of you who aren't listening in the US and the
Speaker 1: weird thing, I didn't realize this, but as far as
Speaker 1: the Treasury is concerned, and to me, this really kind
Speaker 1: of goes to demonstrate like how little the actual value
Speaker 1: of maintaining this gold horde is that, just for bookkeeping,
Speaker 1: they assign like an arbitrary value the statutory value of gold.
Speaker 1: It's what it's called at forty two dollars and forty
Speaker 1: four cents an ounce, so that they can keep track
Speaker 1: using that dollar amount of how much gold is in
Speaker 1: Fort Knox, rather than you know, tracking it as it
Speaker 1: as it relates to like the international gold market.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so I did the math this time.
Speaker 1: I did two. Let's see if we came up with
Speaker 1: the same figures.
Speaker 2: So the supposedly there are forty six hundred metric tons
Speaker 2: of gold, which by the way, is about two point
Speaker 2: five percent of all the gold ever mined in the
Speaker 2: world in human history.
Speaker 1: That's pretty impressive.
Speaker 2: And if we're just going I want to make sure
Speaker 2: we use the same numbers here forty six hundred metric tons.
Speaker 2: Can use that forty two point four to four cents
Speaker 2: per ounce.
Speaker 1: Okay, I did it differently, But let's see if we
Speaker 1: came up with the same figure.
Speaker 2: Well, what value did you use?
Speaker 1: Like, no, you go first, mister, you're wrong guy.
Speaker 2: So using the statutory value of gold that the US
Speaker 2: is set, I came up with six point eight billion
Speaker 2: dollars worth of gold.
Speaker 1: Close for mine. Close for mine. I used a different method,
Speaker 1: and this is one of the great joys of math?
Speaker 1: Is there a different approaches to the same proble?
Speaker 2: What did you do?
Speaker 1: I took that forty six hundred metric tons of gold
Speaker 1: and divided it by pounds twenty seven point five pounds,
Speaker 1: so I came up with the number of individual bars.
Speaker 1: Then I multiplied that number of individual bars, which is
Speaker 1: three hundred and sixty eight thousand and seven hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy three bars. Uh huh, by that sixteen thousand, eight
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty eight dollars per bar. Okay, I came
Speaker 1: up with in the neighborhood of six point twenty five
Speaker 1: six billion dollars worth of gold.
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, there's a psychologist that's listening to
Speaker 2: this that is really yeah, looking at what that means
Speaker 2: for both of our personalities.
Speaker 1: For sure, it's gotta say a lot.
Speaker 2: You know, did you use Are you sure you used
Speaker 2: metric tons and not just tons?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I did a pound to metric ton conversion. You
Speaker 1: know how you can go on the internet and just
Speaker 1: say pound metric ton and like it brings up a
Speaker 1: little conversion thing for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was. I was just making sure because at
Speaker 2: first I didn't do metric ton, and that was different
Speaker 2: and did a short ton that is a short ton,
Speaker 2: and that came to about six closer to your number.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, yeah, no, I and I actually rounded a
Speaker 1: little bit because I was like, E, what the heck
Speaker 1: is that when the total came up, So I went
Speaker 1: back and redid it. And I didn't feel like plugging
Speaker 1: in all the same numbers that I rounded it.
Speaker 2: What I wonder what I did was I just took
Speaker 2: how many ounces or in forty six in a metric ton,
Speaker 2: multiplied that by forty six hundred, and then multiplied that
Speaker 2: by forty two forty four.
Speaker 1: Well, I proposed that move along because I just suddenly rose.
Speaker 1: There's probably people who's like their fingertips are dug under
Speaker 1: their eyeballs. They're so they're in such agony hearing us
Speaker 1: discuss math like this.
Speaker 2: Well, what's what's important is that the FED in New
Speaker 2: York actually has more gold in their Manhattan vault, which
Speaker 2: was in a movie six thousand tons of Gold. That
Speaker 2: would have been die Harder, Die Hard three. I believe
Speaker 2: it may die another day. I don't know, but it
Speaker 2: was a good one. That was the one with Sam Jackson.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was pretty good. And by the way, I
Speaker 1: need to say something. I realized that. I said, Event
Speaker 1: Horizon is a good movie and holds up. I went
Speaker 1: back and saw it again again, huh, and I was like,
Speaker 1: this is way jokier than I remember from last time.
Speaker 1: Oh really, Yeah, And sadly there's a there's a sheen
Speaker 1: or a coating of hokiness that I guess maybe they
Speaker 1: brought in somebody to punch up the script or something
Speaker 1: and that was their contribution.
Speaker 2: But it's not so it doesn't hold up anymore.
Speaker 1: No, and it's a great galactic, love crafty and horror
Speaker 1: movie in concept and in some parts, but no, it's
Speaker 1: unfortunately rather hokey. I'm a little gutted to say that.
Speaker 1: As our British friends would say.
Speaker 2: Maybe you should watch it again in like three years
Speaker 2: and it might be back on track.
Speaker 1: Were you, well, maybe, you know, maybe it's me that's
Speaker 1: the problem.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, taste waxes and wains.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. It's true.
Speaker 2: There's another there's some other stuff in Fort Knox, and
Speaker 2: there has been other stuff through history in Fort Knox,
Speaker 2: because it's just it's a great place to keep stuff
Speaker 2: if you don't want to lose it or have it stolen.
Speaker 2: They have some rare coins in there. These are coins
Speaker 2: that were not released to the public. They may have
Speaker 2: been promotional coins or test pressings, and so there's some
Speaker 2: of that stuff, including the Chicago Way dollars coins that
Speaker 2: flew in the Space shuttle. Is that funny?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's sokka juweah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's like the American bastardization. It's Chicago Way.
Speaker 1: Oh well, maybe we should keep this in, Okay, because
Speaker 1: I've never heard anybody say that. I really thought you'd
Speaker 1: just mised pronounced it. Other people say it like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think it's one of those things where like
Speaker 2: the native pronunciation is Chicagoway and Americans were like saka Jowellah.
Speaker 1: No, oh my god, I've got so much egg on
Speaker 1: my face. Maybe we won't keep this part in. You
Speaker 1: have to say it you said it wrong, though, you
Speaker 1: have to be like that's wrong, that's wrong. Okay, thank you.
Speaker 1: So it is Chicagoway. Huh? Is it icagaweya?
Speaker 2: I think it's just Chicagaway. And I only learn that
Speaker 2: from Ken Burns.
Speaker 1: God bless Kim America's teacher cut and you man, thank
Speaker 1: you for setting me straight in front of a million people.
Speaker 2: Let me see here at nineteen thirty three gold double
Speaker 2: eagle twenty dollars coin. That's kind of cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Sure there's an aluminum dime, no penny, an aluminum
Speaker 1: penny from nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 2: Which I'd love to see that thing.
Speaker 1: I would too, but it just strikes me as a
Speaker 1: little sad. Sure there've also been because Fort Knox is
Speaker 1: just so well known as this impregnable place, and it
Speaker 1: really is, you know, legitimately, you cannot get into it
Speaker 1: no matter how hard you try. It's actually served as
Speaker 1: the site the storehouse for some like truly valuable stuff
Speaker 1: like the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the
Speaker 1: Gettysburg Address, a Gutenberg Bible, the Magnet cart. Actually during
Speaker 1: World War Two, England's like, hey, can you hang on
Speaker 1: to this four because the Germans are really like up
Speaker 1: our butts right now? That's kind of cool, yeah, they
Speaker 1: So we held that at Fort Knox during World War Two,
Speaker 1: which is I mean, that's just fascinating to the idea
Speaker 1: that some apparently some secret service agent traveled secretly with
Speaker 1: a bunch of these documents from Washington, d C. And
Speaker 1: put them on a train out to Kentucky to go
Speaker 1: to be held in Fort Knox during World War Two.
Speaker 2: I love it. That's really cool. And that was temporary.
Speaker 2: I think. Didn't they return them right afterward?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, for sure. Apparently they dedicated the Jefferson Memorial
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty three and they're like, we need to
Speaker 1: get the Declaration of Independence out there.
Speaker 2: And they found out that the guards were using it
Speaker 2: as a place mat to eat their dehydrated foods.
Speaker 1: You know, they'd swapped it with something that they only
Speaker 1: used cryon to forge, kept the original themselves.
Speaker 2: So should we break now before conspiracies or weight and
Speaker 2: break before gold standard?
Speaker 1: We'll break now. And I'm not one hundred percent sure
Speaker 1: I'm going to be able to come back from that
Speaker 1: Chicago Way thing, Okay. So it might just be you
Speaker 1: and we come back from brain No never, okay, Chuck.
Speaker 1: So one of the things, one of the favorite things
Speaker 1: Americans love to do is to suggest, quite seriously in
Speaker 1: a lot of cases that there is no such thing
Speaker 1: as a gold in Fort Knox, and that there hasn't
Speaker 1: been golden there for a very long time. And if
Speaker 1: you went there and you saw gold, well you're a fool.
Speaker 1: Because the best thing. The best possible scenario is that
Speaker 1: you saw something like tungsten that was spray painted or
Speaker 1: plated in gold, and that the golden Fort Knox is
Speaker 1: not there and hasn't been there for a very long time,
Speaker 1: and not only that it was sold for the most nefarious,
Speaker 1: outrageous purposes we can possibly come up with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they audit Fort Knox and they count the
Speaker 2: gold allegedly supposedly, Dottie and Danny get in there with
Speaker 2: their adding machine and they type everything out. And I
Speaker 2: love how Ed put this. He said that all the
Speaker 2: conspiracy theories rely on quote, some fundamental misunderstanding of how
Speaker 2: currency works, how the gold standard worked, or just outright nonsense.
Speaker 2: But it's kind of true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, it totally is, because there's this call for
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about the gold to be used again
Speaker 1: the way originally was, which is the back our currency.
Speaker 1: If that's the if that's really the basis of your
Speaker 1: problem with the idea that the gold was secretly sold
Speaker 1: off in Fort Knox, then then yeah, you misunderstand and
Speaker 1: how currency works or how economies work, and you probably
Speaker 1: don't fully understand how the gold standard was not really
Speaker 1: great and that America actually blew up, and the whole
Speaker 1: world blew up after we switched off of the gold standard.
Speaker 1: That's how the global economy really started to take off,
Speaker 1: was when we decoupled our currency from being pinned to gold.
Speaker 1: So that's another It seems to be another factor in
Speaker 1: kind of banding about conspiracy theories about Fort Knox gold too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and a lot of these conspiracy theories are anti Semitic. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there are, believe it or not. There are some really
Speaker 2: smart people who think who may or may not believe
Speaker 2: in some of these theories, and some that believe we
Speaker 2: should go back to the gold standard, including Alan Greenspan,
Speaker 2: a woman named Judy Shelton who Trump tried to push
Speaker 2: for appointment to the FED to the Federal Reserve. And
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if she believes in the conspiracy theories
Speaker 2: or she just wants to go back to the gold standard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're not. I mean, it's not hand in hand.
Speaker 1: It's just if you do think we should go back
Speaker 1: to the gold standard, it's basically impossible for your attention
Speaker 1: not to fall on Fort Knox. And then you may
Speaker 1: be like, well, is there even gold there?
Speaker 2: Yeah? True, But there are some truly wackado things out there.
Speaker 2: This Peter Better guy.
Speaker 1: Oh is that how you're saying his name?
Speaker 2: What is it better? Better?
Speaker 1: If his name's not Peter Beeter, then I'm sad.
Speaker 2: I am too. Peter Beeter, the et e r. That's
Speaker 2: what I'm going to call him, at least.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like Peter with a bee. Yeah, but his
Speaker 1: first name's Peter. It's magnificent, it's perfect.
Speaker 2: So he has thrown a lot of conspiracies out there
Speaker 2: since the seventies, including a popular one that we sold
Speaker 2: off all the gold to these global elites for next
Speaker 2: to nothing so they could hoard that gold and then
Speaker 2: one day just destabilize the economy of the world and
Speaker 2: you know, ascend to power basically.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because they would have all the money and they
Speaker 1: sunk the value of the money so they could buy
Speaker 1: everything else at rock bottom prices like they bought the gold.
Speaker 1: Apparently this involves the Rothschilds, which automatically makes the whole
Speaker 1: thing anti Semitic, because the roth Childs started out and
Speaker 1: you know, are still around as far as I know,
Speaker 1: as a Jewish banking family many many centuries ago and
Speaker 1: rose to power and wealth pretty quickly, and actually had
Speaker 1: a huge role in a lot of world affairs, like
Speaker 1: were able to bail out entire nations like France after
Speaker 1: they went into debt over war, like this family could
Speaker 1: do that, and it started a lot of conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1: So they're kind of like one of the og conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1: And usually it was based on a combination or it
Speaker 1: was based on suspiciousness of a combination of them being
Speaker 1: Jewish and them being extraordinarily wealthy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's this other guy. Is his name is Yan
Speaker 2: even Huis. I'm sure that's wrong. He had an alias
Speaker 2: named kus Janssen Koos And I listened to and read
Speaker 2: some interviews with this guy and he did you check
Speaker 2: into him? He seems he seems like a pretty level
Speaker 2: headed economist, right that just seems to think that these
Speaker 2: audits aren't correct and there is something kinky going on.
Speaker 2: He didn't seem really out there though.
Speaker 1: No, but it seems like a case of paying too
Speaker 1: much attention to details and starting to see things that
Speaker 1: aren't necessarily there. Or if you do turn up a discrepancy,
Speaker 1: assuming that it does reveal some larger plot rather than
Speaker 1: just being a mistake or an accounting error or somebody
Speaker 1: forgot to carry the one. That's my impression. I could
Speaker 1: be wrong. I don't know much about kus Jansen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but the interview just seemed very level headed. He
Speaker 2: wasn't talking about robotoids, which is what Peter Peter talks about, right,
Speaker 2: literally talks about stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Well, that's what makes it believable is the OIDs on
Speaker 1: the end. If there were just robots, it would just
Speaker 1: seem rather far fetch.
Speaker 2: What about Ron Paul, His is a little out there.
Speaker 2: He thinks it's all fake, right.
Speaker 1: So Ron Paul. I can't tell if Ron Paul is
Speaker 1: the source of a lot of this or was an
Speaker 1: amplifier for a lot of it, But he's tapped into
Speaker 1: or is part of one of the larger kind of
Speaker 1: followings of conspiracy theories as far as Fort Knox is concerned,
Speaker 1: which is that either like I was saying earlier, there's
Speaker 1: either no gold there really, or the goal that is
Speaker 1: there is fake and the real gold has been sold,
Speaker 1: and that the US has been doing this for a
Speaker 1: very long time for all sorts of uncertain reasons like that,
Speaker 1: and that usually these days that China's been the big
Speaker 1: recipient of cheap gold, and maybe we've been doing that
Speaker 1: because if we sell China a bunch of cheap gold,
Speaker 1: it will actually keep the dollar low and we'll strengthen
Speaker 1: our exports. I'm not quite sure how that works. There
Speaker 1: also seems to be a certain amount of like national
Speaker 1: pride associated with it, where like, no, that's our goal,
Speaker 1: that's the people's goal. That can't be sold off secretly
Speaker 1: by the government. And here's to me where it's like,
Speaker 1: even if there isn't any gold in Fort Knox at
Speaker 1: some point in the not too distant past, but the past,
Speaker 1: for sure, we've gone so far beyond that having any
Speaker 1: importance whatsoever. Yeah, based on the dollar value of the
Speaker 1: golden Fort Knox that it legitimately doesn't matter. But that's
Speaker 1: why I think some people are like, no, it does matter.
Speaker 1: That is our goal, that's America's goal. I've seen it
Speaker 1: referred to I think Ed said somebody referred to it
Speaker 1: as the equity of our national wealth. And there seems
Speaker 1: to be like a certain amount of like American pride
Speaker 1: or patriotism in being really mad about the idea that
Speaker 1: Fort Knox doesn't have any gold anymore, that the American
Speaker 1: people were duped by you know, whatever elites are running
Speaker 1: the show at the behest of whatever. Jewish people are
Speaker 1: running the elites.
Speaker 2: Right, because here's the deal, and this is where we
Speaker 2: kind of get in more to the of the gold standard,
Speaker 2: and we talked about this in currency and how both
Speaker 2: of us are kind of consistently blown away that money,
Speaker 2: all money is is just something that everyone is agreed
Speaker 2: on has value. Yeah, and that's what we've been doing forever.
Speaker 2: But yeah, since there has been little ingots and trinkets, Yes,
Speaker 2: as long as you agree, I mean, it could be
Speaker 2: a well, it could be a stick. It has to
Speaker 2: be something that you can't just go out and forage,
Speaker 2: although you can with gold, which is a problem you can.
Speaker 1: I mean, like think about wampum that was extensively used
Speaker 1: and I believe the Pacific Northwest by more than one
Speaker 1: tribe and nation. Wampam was They were like little little
Speaker 1: seashells that you could go and collect if you wanted to,
Speaker 1: and they were considered valuable currency and were for a
Speaker 1: very long time too. So it could conceivably be a
Speaker 1: stick as far as you may he's.
Speaker 2: Concerned, right, But in our case, and in the case
Speaker 2: of paper money these days, it is we've had to
Speaker 2: make it incredibly hard to recreate and counterfeit. You can
Speaker 2: also listen to our counterfeiting episode. But what really struck
Speaker 2: me kind of with that thought experiment this time is
Speaker 2: that gold really doesn't have much value either as a commodity.
Speaker 2: It's it's nice for making pretty trinkets, but and they
Speaker 2: use it in some electronics and stuff like that. But
Speaker 2: we've also just sort of agreed that gold is valuable,
Speaker 2: and the only thing that really has true value is food, air,
Speaker 2: and water, if you think about it, and love, and
Speaker 2: the irony is is that we're doing our best to
Speaker 2: kill all that stuff away, you know, the stuff that
Speaker 2: really matters.
Speaker 1: Man, Bravo, Bravo. I want to give you a hand
Speaker 1: to help you down from your soapbox, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to put a king robe around you. Okay, okay?
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 1: It's gold flecked and it's got like the little white
Speaker 1: leopard like.
Speaker 2: Yeah caller, yeah, yeah, whatever that is.
Speaker 1: You look great in it. That was wonderful.
Speaker 2: No, it's just it's just so funny. These things that
Speaker 2: we've agreed have value really don't. And the things that
Speaker 2: really truly have value are really just the things that
Speaker 2: keep people alive.
Speaker 1: Right, right, But even like taking that hippie stuff out
Speaker 1: of the equation, there was a time where people said, no, gold,
Speaker 1: gold actually is valuable. People have value gold for eons now,
Speaker 1: like it's one of the first things humans agreed had
Speaker 1: inherent value, even though it doesn't really have inherent value
Speaker 1: because it was yeah, and so it made sense that
Speaker 1: we we would say, Okay, gold's really hard to lug around,
Speaker 1: and like it's you just you don't want to actually
Speaker 1: trade gold. How about we make paper that represents a
Speaker 1: certain amount of gold. And so that's kind of where
Speaker 1: we got paper currency in the world, and that's what
Speaker 1: we've been using for a very long time. But over time,
Speaker 1: the problems, the issue that can arise from pinning your
Speaker 1: currency to gold, they became apparent. For one, you're you're
Speaker 1: limited to the amount of gold that exists in the world,
Speaker 1: which is substantial. I mean, all the golden Fort Knox
Speaker 1: is only two and a half percent of all the
Speaker 1: gold that was ever mined. So there's a lot of
Speaker 1: gold in the world, but that's a finite amount, which
Speaker 1: is why some people are like, yeah, that's why we
Speaker 1: should pin our currency to gold. It prevents it from
Speaker 1: getting out of hand, and you can't just print however
Speaker 1: much you want. The problem is, it's like you were saying,
Speaker 1: like with a stick, you can go in the forest
Speaker 1: and go get a bunch of sticks. Conceivably, you a
Speaker 1: private company could go mine a bunch of gold that
Speaker 1: you found. You found a horde, and you can mine it,
Speaker 1: and that will affect the value of not just gold,
Speaker 1: but of entire national economies in the global economy as
Speaker 1: a whole, if everybody's pinning their currency to gold.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And the thing is it also like, if your
Speaker 2: economy is backed only by gold, it's really tough to
Speaker 2: make adjustments to the economy as a government, which is
Speaker 2: something as things have become more complicated over the years
Speaker 2: with finance throughout the world we've relied upon and I
Speaker 2: don't eve think we even mentioned that. The reason we
Speaker 2: did this to begin with is because when we first
Speaker 2: had the idea of paper currency, people are like, I
Speaker 2: don't trust that at all, Like coins that people were
Speaker 2: kind of used to because they've been using trinkets and
Speaker 2: gets and coins for many, many years. But when they
Speaker 2: brought out paper dollars, and part of this was understandable
Speaker 2: because private banks and I think we talked about this
Speaker 2: in currency, and especially in the South pre Civil War South,
Speaker 2: there were all kinds of values for their paper currency,
Speaker 2: so none of it really meant anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a bank, a company, a town could print their
Speaker 1: own money. There was no federal monopoly on printing money
Speaker 1: in the United States until some time after the Civil War,
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: So people just said, yeah, we don't like this paper current.
Speaker 2: So we came along said all right, well, what if
Speaker 2: we back it by gold and in theory all the
Speaker 2: money as a real gold value attached to it, and
Speaker 2: you can even come trade it in for gold if
Speaker 2: you want.
Speaker 1: To, right. So that's that's how we went forward for
Speaker 1: a very long time, and then kind of slowly but
Speaker 1: surely we started to move away from it, particularly starting
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirteen where the Federal Reserve was established, which
Speaker 1: a lot of people, especially ones who think we should
Speaker 1: go to the gold standard and people who think that
Speaker 1: we shouldn't have or that there's no golden fort Knox
Speaker 1: believe kind of ruined the world when we established the
Speaker 1: Federal Reserve, and one of the first steps that said
Speaker 1: was like, okay, we need to maintain forty percent of
Speaker 1: the value of all of our currency in circulation in
Speaker 1: gold as a country, which was a lot different from
Speaker 1: one hundred percent. That's a huge amount of money that
Speaker 1: can can now be printed, and more money that's out there,
Speaker 1: more things can be bought because that money can be
Speaker 1: traded for services and goods, and you can employ people
Speaker 1: with it, and all of a sudden, your economy can
Speaker 1: start getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And that's exactly
Speaker 1: what happened. And as that became more and more evident,
Speaker 1: we started moving further and further away from from the
Speaker 1: gold standard.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And like I said earlier, kind of joke that
Speaker 2: Roosevelt they allowed him to urinate in person on the
Speaker 2: gold He really led the charge in the thirties because
Speaker 2: of World War One and the Great Depression, and said,
Speaker 2: you know what, we really kind of need to get
Speaker 2: away from this gold standard officially, and I'm going to
Speaker 2: take a series of actions weakening that link between gold
Speaker 2: dollars being backed by gold, and you can't exchange it anymore. Everyone,
Speaker 2: so don't even think about that. And not only that,
Speaker 2: you can't hoard gold, like we basically want all the
Speaker 2: gold and they all want to hang on to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so for a very long time. The only
Speaker 1: reason people maintain gold, or countries maintained gold, or the
Speaker 1: United States maintained gold, was to pay off foreign debts
Speaker 1: if need be. And then Nixon said nuts to that
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy one, and from that moment on, the
Speaker 1: United States currency and economy was decoupled from gold and
Speaker 1: has been ever since. And you again, you can look,
Speaker 1: I'm not a wroth child robot oid. I just believe
Speaker 1: in progress, basically. And if you go back and look
Speaker 1: at the world economy, in the United States economy since
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one, it's made some pretty impressive gains since then,
Speaker 1: and that's largely due to decoupling from gold and being
Speaker 1: able to print money. Now that said, and this is
Speaker 1: an entirely different podcast that I think we need to
Speaker 1: do sometime. There are massive problems with paper money, paper
Speaker 1: currency what's called fiat currency or a fiat system of currency,
Speaker 1: where by fiat by proclamation, we say our currency is
Speaker 1: worth this amount, and that's what we do now, which
Speaker 1: is totally made up and totally in the air. But
Speaker 1: as long as people have faith in the government and
Speaker 1: the economy and the workforce, we can survive those ups
Speaker 1: and downs through that that that sense of faith not
Speaker 1: just among our citizens, but also people around the world understand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, let's let's just all keep agreeing. Let's
Speaker 2: keep that pinky squear going exactly. So why do we
Speaker 2: still have value? Why do we still have Fort Knox?
Speaker 2: And if we don't need the gold, well, I mean
Speaker 2: they're not just gonna give it away. You still got
Speaker 2: to keep it in one in a couple of places, right.
Speaker 1: That's I mean, that's one thing I think there is
Speaker 1: a certain amount of that national pride to even among
Speaker 1: the governments. Yeah, we got we got a bunch of gold,
Speaker 1: and it's in Fort Knox, and it's almost like symbolic
Speaker 1: of America's wealth and strength. One thing I did see
Speaker 1: is there are like lots of other countries have lots
Speaker 1: of other gold hords themselves. And although the gold market
Speaker 1: is basically separate, it's like its own thing. That's you know,
Speaker 1: it responds and reacts to the stock exchanges and other markets,
Speaker 1: but it's not it's not you know, entangled with it's
Speaker 1: its own thing. So really, if you released a bunch
Speaker 1: of gold, you're really going to mess with the gold market.
Speaker 1: But it's going to have a ripple effect through the
Speaker 1: through the world, in the other markets, in the global economy.
Speaker 1: So it would be really foolish to release a bunch
Speaker 1: of gold onto the market for the US to sell,
Speaker 1: or any country to sell its gold hoards off. It
Speaker 1: would be a real big problem that you don't need
Speaker 1: to have. It's easier to just keep the gold in
Speaker 1: Fort Knox instead, agreed, that's why it's still around.
Speaker 2: You're not.
Speaker 1: This turned out to be a pretty good aside from
Speaker 1: soaka juwiyah and now I'm wondering if I even pronounced
Speaker 1: wamp them correctly. Well, how humiliating, chuck.
Speaker 2: Wampum was the real thing? You know?
Speaker 1: Uh, if you want to know more about Fort Knox
Speaker 1: and start looking at pictures of it, you'll you'll see
Speaker 1: what we're talking about. And since I said you'll see
Speaker 1: what we're talking about, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna call this Wetlands follow up from Donna. Hey, guys,
Speaker 2: been listening for many years and always enjoy the shows
Speaker 2: in the banter. Today, out of my morning walk, I
Speaker 2: was listening to Wetlands, Wetlands, Wetlands, and serendipitously came upon
Speaker 2: Cattails just as you brought them up. Wow, we love
Speaker 2: this stuff, these little coincidences.
Speaker 1: She's like, now, I'm listening to the four Knox episode,
Speaker 1: so lay.
Speaker 2: It on me. I'm tunneling in as we speak. It
Speaker 2: was one of those weird coincidence moments that I just
Speaker 2: had to record. I walked off the path into the
Speaker 2: grasses and took a quick cattail selfie, which I included
Speaker 2: in this email. Lovely picture. Growing up in New Jersey
Speaker 2: in the eighties, cattails were called punks, and my dad
Speaker 2: would take the dried out plants and light them to
Speaker 2: keep away mosquitoes. That's what a punk is. Yeah, I've
Speaker 2: never heard of that. Have you heard of that? Uh huh,
Speaker 2: never heard of that. Back then, it seemed like a
Speaker 2: normal thing to do. But having grown up and moved
Speaker 2: away from New Jersey, who I have never come across
Speaker 2: anyone that ever partakes in this practice anymore. With such
Speaker 2: a huge part of my childhood summers, I'd forgotten about
Speaker 2: it until now until listening to the episode, and then
Speaker 2: I happen to walk upon some in the adjacent marshes
Speaker 2: in that moment truly delighted me. Mosquito season is over,
Speaker 2: where I live now in DC. But on next summers
Speaker 2: to do list is to cut some cat tails from
Speaker 2: the Parkland and introduce my two teen sons to that
Speaker 2: distinctive punk smell.
Speaker 1: That made me against federal law. Now though, oh, really
Speaker 1: taking punks from the Parkland, it seems like against the law.
Speaker 2: Well, I'll tell you what, Donna H. Look into that.
Speaker 2: We don't want you to get in trouble, that's right,
Speaker 2: or to do anything you shouldn't do. But I get
Speaker 2: the urge to want to introduce things to your children
Speaker 2: that you did back then that weren't necessarily proper.
Speaker 1: Yes, but the nanny state will say no and throw
Speaker 1: you in jail. Try it, Donna.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe, I mean where I saw the wetlands recently
Speaker 2: where I was hiking here in Arabia Mountain. You can't
Speaker 2: beautiful granite outcroppings part of Stone Mountain actually, and you can't.
Speaker 2: My daughter wanted to take those rocks.
Speaker 1: If you can't take the rocks, you go get thrown
Speaker 1: in jail by the nanny state.
Speaker 2: You can't do it. You gotta leave those rocks.
Speaker 1: What else did Donna say anything else?
Speaker 2: No, that's it. That's from Donna H.
Speaker 1: That was great, Donna, thank you very much. Be careful
Speaker 1: with the cattails. We won't tell if you do, but
Speaker 1: we just don't want you to get in trouble. We're
Speaker 1: no snitches. If you want to get in touch with us,
Speaker 1: like Donna did, we want to hear from you, and
Speaker 1: you can send us an email to Stuff podcast at
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 2: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.