Following through counts for a lot.
On Monday, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) announced he was visiting the United States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox, Kentucky. He took to his X account to make the announcement:
At Fort Knox, we've come to see the gold!
— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) August 10, 2026
Our country has about a hundred and forty-seven million ounces of gold, and about half of it is stored here at Fort Knox.
We're gonna be going deep underground to see the gold, but more importantly, we're gonna be talking today about… pic.twitter.com/qNtHkVMQzg
In the post, Senator Paul writes:
At Fort Knox, we've come to see the gold!
Our country has about a hundred and forty-seven million ounces of gold, and about half of it is stored here at Fort Knox.
We're gonna be going deep underground to see the gold, but more importantly, we're gonna be talking today about what happened to our dollar when we separated from gold in 1971.
I'm going underground, and I'll let you know what I see in a little bit.
In matters such as this, first you say it, then you do it, then you say it again. That's what Senator Paul did after the visit to the gold.
I visited Fort Knox today.
— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) August 10, 2026
The dollar has lost 97% of its purchasing power since the Fed opened in 1913. $100 then is worth just over $3,300 today.
This is no accident. Congress spends without limit, while the Fed prints the difference. https://t.co/TmeJw3ZkJv
Well, he's not wrong. At least we have another assurance that the gold is actually there, or, at least, that there is gold in there. My colleague Nick Arama, writing in July, also brought us the assurances of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who also verified that yes, there is gold in that thar fort.
In the letter to the Treasury that Senator Paul sent announcing his intention to visit the Depository, he also expresses his desire to see an independent audit done of the gold contained there. Is there really as much as the Treasury says is there? Is it, as they say, all three nines fine? What about the United States' bullion stored elsewhere? I'm suspecting it's all there and accounted for; stealing gold from under the noses of the American government from the very facilities meant to keep it secure would be a major task even for a certain James Bond villain. But it is our gold, technically speaking, and it wouldn't be the worst idea to have someone go through and tally it up now and then. I mean, we all were taught to balance our checkbooks periodically. Shouldn't the nation do likewise?
Of course, we have to balance our personal and family budgets, as well. Washington? Not so much, and sooner or later, that's going to come back and bite us.
This has been a concern since President Nixon took the United States off the gold standard. It's inflationary, but worse, it means our money only serves as a medium of exchange as long as we believe it does. There's no metal behind it; nothing solid, just the full faith and credit of the United States. That's worth more than the full faith and credit of, say, Zimbabwe, but in the end, it's all just paper. Fiat currencies will come and they will go, but gold will always be money.
Right now, right here in Alaska, we are mining gold even today - literally digging money out of the ground. That's certainly worth doing. It's liable to be worth doing even more in decades to come.
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