➡ The discussion revolves around the possibility of auditing Fort Knox to confirm the existence of $700 billion worth of gold. The process of auditing is complex and would take years to complete properly. There are concerns about the lack of transparency in the handling of the gold reserves, including the breaking and resealing of vaults without proper re-auditing. The Gold Reserves Transparency Act, currently proposed legislation, aims to provide a complete inventory and accounting of all transactions involving the US gold reserves.
➡ The U.S. gold reserves may not be as ready for market as we think. Most of it is not refined to the current global standard, and with only two refineries in the U.S., it could take 20-30 years to refine it all. Other countries like France and Germany have already upgraded their gold to the current standard. The U.S. government needs to create a multi-year plan to upgrade its gold reserves to meet global standards.
➡ Many central banks are involved in gold transactions, but the U.S. government has not publicly admitted to participating in the gold market. The main question is not whether the gold exists, but who owns it. Stefan, a large gold and silver dealer in the U.S., notes that retail demand for gold and silver has slowed down, but transaction volume remains higher than a year ago. He also mentions that moneymetals.com is a great resource for learning about gold and silver, and they are actively working to remove taxes on these precious metals.
➡ The speaker praises the alignment of Money Metals with its customers and the US Precious metals investor. They appreciate the company’s approach, pricing, and the value they provide. They also mention the availability of gold and silver purchase plans. The speaker looks forward to future updates and interactions with Stefan, a representative from Money Metals.

Although, Stefan, let’s put you right under the hot seat. If the US And Trump goes in and they do, let’s say they actually did an appropriate audit of Fort Knox, what do you think they would find? Well, hello there, my friends, Chris Marcus here with you for Arcadia Economics on our now weekly show. And fortunately, since we have a little more time to plan and think, what could really provide some insight into a lot of the wild things that are happening in the gold and silver world these days, including, amongst other things, G. Trumpshire, I’ll give him that.

He’s got a busy schedule because now he wants to crack open the Fort Knox vault to personally confirm that $700 billion worth of gold has not been stolen. This came out on May 10, so that was just a week ago. And to comment on that and some other issues that if they actually did check in there or perhaps had to sell some of the gold, people are not yet thinking about. Although fortunately, my dear guest and friend today, Stefan Gleason of Money Metals, Gold and Silver Dealer, one of the largest and certainly the ones I feel most comfortable with, joins me on the show who’s been researching into these matters and other gold and silver shenanigans.

And Stefan, great to see you again. How are you today? Yeah, hey, great to be on again, Chris. Good to see you too. Yeah. So it’s kind of funny, I mean, you know, the frivolous, frivolous nature of at least the way this topic has been addressed over the last couple years. I mean, on one hand, yeah, raised the issue of the concern around Fort Knox and the lack of audits, but the idea that we’re going to turn it into some sort of fun field trip for President Trump or Elon Musk or whoever else is really doing a disservice, you know, in terms of what is needed to restore confidence and frankly, what a proper audit is.

You know, I run one of the largest depositories in North America and I know how to do auditing. We know how to do auditing. And it’s, it’s, first of all, it’s not a one and done affair and it’s a very serious and very long sort of process with many steps. And frankly, it would take years to properly do an audit of the US Gold reserves. And, you know, going and bringing in the cameras like they did in 1974 and doing a little publicity stunt is, you know, yeah, there’s probably plenty of gold there, but that tells you nothing.

You know, a stack of gold bars or what appear to be gold bars that’s not what an audit’s all about, so we can get into that, but it’s, it’s really alarming how frivolously this topic is discussed. Well, I mean, I think a lot of people have been wondering because we, you know, it seems like ages ago when Elon Musk was doging around and although somehow he’s popped back in, I didn’t, wasn’t he in China at the recent meeting, which I don’t know how that works, but I mean, we heard he was saying they should live stream it, which I think you and I would have bought a ticket to watch.

Yet we didn’t hear much about that until even in the gold and silver community. But yet here it is a week ago. First of all, what, why, why is he saying right now, I mean, I won’t, I won’t go Trump bashing today, but I mean, the guy is certainly never short of a microphone to begin with yet, you know, running the Iran war, a whole bunch of other stuff. And here he says we wanted to go and knock on the door of Fort Knox. Clarifies. Fortunately, that’s a very thick door to see whether or not we have any gold in there.

Yeah. Why are you bringing this up now, Stefan? Well, maybe it’s useful to come up with other issues to talk about. And it certainly gets a lot of attention whenever, whenever the Fort Knox issue comes up because it’s, it’s just one of those issues that’s captured the imagination of the American people over the years. And you know, a year ago when they talked about this during the Doge thing and, you know, we, we actually did, we published an article, actually it was an open letter to President Donald J. Trump. It was from Jan Newenhaus, who does, or Jan Newenhaus, who does research for Money Metals.

And he’s basically chapter and verse gone through in this article that moneymetals.com and talked about all the problems with the auditors or with the audits that have occurred, if you want to call them that. And you know, at the time, I guess about, about, you know, a few days into that whole thing, the Treasury Secretary said, oh, you know, it’s, it’s audited. I see the audit every year. You know, it’s, and it’s so, so dishonest because what there is a process every year and what that process consists of is it’s an audit of the schedule of the seals of the vault compartments.

So it’s basically a paperwork audit. And it doesn’t necessarily even involve going and checking the seals on the vault compartments. It’s basically an audit of the schedule of seals. And to call that an audit is kind of, kind of ludicrous. But really, I mean, what an audit involves is not just opening everything out and inventorying it, but testing it. And actually in the case of, you know, non pure gold, it might include upgrading the gold to, to purity standards, which is another topic that we can talk about. But then once you seal a compartment, you have to never disrupt that compartment again.

And one thing that the letter from Jan Newenhaus says is it goes through the history from 1974 to 2008 of the processes that were done. And there’s very obvious gaps and issues around removing seals from compartments that had been sealed, you know, which may have been a proper process. But then when you break that seal, whenever you break a seal of an audited container, it has to be re audited. And the US Mint apparently that kind of defeat the purpose of having the seal in the first place. Otherwise you literally have no confidence once that seal is broken and then replaced with a new seal if there wasn’t a new audit.

But there were many inexplicable episodes where seals were broken, bars were removed, bars were moved, seals were reaffixed without proper re auditing. And so you know that that is fundamentally just dishonest. It’s not an audit. It basically spoils the entire audit. And so that is completely safe as far as we can tell. If you just ignore all of that. Right? Well, it’s a normal event apparently for the US Government. It’s not a normal event in my vault. Whenever, whenever a seal is broken, everything in that container, whether it be a massive saf or a small container, has to be re audited and signed off by multiple parties.

It’s done under cameras. It’s a very controlled process. So that’s proper auditing. The other thing is audits are not one and done. It’s an ongoing process. You can’t necessarily fall back on something decades old, even if it was done properly at the time, and consider that to be a reliable audit. You know, certainly if the seal has not been broken, you have some assurance. But you know, the fact of the matter is maybe many things have happened with seals being reaffixed. So I mean the whole thing is out the window, as Jan Newenhaus letter points out.

But really there’s bigger issues beyond just whether all the bars are there. There’s also the question of who owns them, you know, and that, and that’s something there’s never been an actual disclosure or at least publicly of any transactions that the US Government has undertaken using the US Gold reserves. And so there’s actually legislation right now introduced by Senator Lee in the U.S. senate and four congressmen in the House called the Gold Reserves Transparency act that would actually provide for a not just a complete inventory and assaying of the US Gold reserves, but actually an accounting of all of the transactions that have occurred using those reserves.

And in addition to that, upgrading the quality of the gold to current day good delivery standards. And Chris, I think you know this, but most people have no idea that virtually all of the US Gold reserves is non pure gold that would not be readily accepted on the global market. And so, you know, we actually had a conversation with the US treasury very recently about this problem with a couple big refineries who would actually be potentially the refineries that would do the good delivery refining of the US Gold reserves. And they are completely clueless to this problem and the practical problem that it presents.

And maybe that like decades ago it was perfectly fine to have 90% gold bars or 88% gold bars or 92% gold bars, but if you’re trying to mobilize the US gold reserves in some sort of financial emergency and you go out with large amounts of gold that is not pure, it would not be accepted readily on the global market. And if it were accepted, it would be discounted dramatically. And if you think about the idea that this might be done in a period of financial stress to have a bank finance or somehow take on what could be literally years worth of refining before they get pure gold out of it in some emergency, I mean that’s a significant problem.

So we had a conversation with the U.S. treasury and the U.S. mint. They’re not aware of the practical problem that presents. They fall back on some small sale. Yeah, I know this is very shocking to you, Stephan. May I add in that I know they’re trying to build a refinery in Tennessee actually, although the majority of the refining capacity is in China. So in the event of some sort of division or global war, which kind of seems like we’re in the middle of right now, even if we did need to sell our gold, we’d still be dependent upon China’s refining capacity to be able to do so.

There are only two refineries in the US who are what are considered good delivery gold refineries. They’re foreign owned, but they’re here in the US So there’s only two options and we and had them on the call. It was Very interesting because they were calculating how long it would take to refine the US Gold reserves without disrupting the market. And the answer, meaning with those two refineries going without kicking out all their other clients or not taking other work, it would take 20 to 30 years for them to refine the US gold reserves to good delivery standard because about 7,000 of the 8,000 tons is, is 90% ish pure.

And so you know, in a pinch, in an emergency, I mean it would, it would take years just straight full on refining with no other work happening in those refineries to upgrade the gold. So the scale of that problem is, is actually kind of alarming. And not that we want the US government to be selling the gold or doing something with it if they haven’t already, in case they have to, they’re probably going to bungle it. Yeah. And so to do something proactively now, and this is part of what they could do, they could go and do a multi year plan and this is something that Mike Lee’s bill would require, would be a multi year plan to upgrade the gold reserves to good delivery standards.

And you know what’s interesting is you know, the attitude that we see from our government officials are, you know, no big deal, we sold, we’re told we sold some gold in 1978, we did a small auction, everything went fine, we shouldn’t have a problem. And it’s like, well that was like, you know, 45 years ago and good delivery standards are different, number one. Number two, they only sold 300,000 ounces of gold and they sold it at a 10% discount. And so that’s not some big success. So there’s actually a bit of a problem there. And you know, ultimately if the US gold reserves had to be put into play in some sort of market event, whether it be to defend the dollar or some other crazy thing, who knows.

There’s a problem there. And you know, the US isn’t ready for it, but other countries are. And that’s what’s interesting. Other countries on the other hand, such as France, very recently they had some gold at the US at the Fed in New York, I think it was 119 tons and it was or 129 tons and it was non standard, non pure gold. What did they do? They sold it and bought pure gold. In France, they didn’t even bother to ship it over because they don’t want that gold. You know, they, they want pure gold because that’s the current global standard.

So they have actually both removed or expatriated their gold from the US and simultaneously upgraded the quality of it to four nines pure, which is the same thing Germany did about 10 years ago. And that’s really any new gold that say Asian foreign central banks are buying is almost certainly going, going to be the four nines pure gold that is the current standard. And so other countries seem to be recognizing that they want pure gold. The US government, not yet. So we’ll see. But that, that’s a very interesting, you know, reaction that we got. It was kind of a whistling past the graveyard attitude, frankly.

And we were sort of laughing about it after the fact. But, you know, maybe it’ll take some education, maybe they’ll be receptive. We’ll see. Sounds like it’s going well. And Stefan, just for context, can we have confirmed that you’re not just some YouTube bro who’s out running his mouth? I mean, that’s your vault, which actually point out here is larger than Fort Knox in the early 2000s. And we got the whole video there. So, I mean, you also, I believe you said you have been in contact with the treasury explaining to them the issues which they, I mean they.

Good thing you called, otherwise nation might have a problem. So, I mean, you’re someone who’s actually one of the few people on the planet might actually be qualified to comment on what would be the proper audit procedures. And you mentioned Jan’s reports. I mean, I remember there were like all sorts of conflict of interest. It’s like exactly what I can say I, as a gold and silver customer and investor would feel comfortable with. Am I capturing the essence of this properly? Yeah, I mean there’s, there’s a sort of a standard for auditing and frankly, just about every private.

Well, I don’t, I can’t speak for other private depositories except that I know it’s not uncommon to have rigorous audit standards. And there’s sort of a way to do things and it involves dual controls, it involves controlled environments, it involves testing, it involves seals, it involves independent parties and experts coming in and verifying. So all of these things are sort of, you know, SOP for a responsible depository. But the U.S. government, you know that they have their own standards. They hold themselves to a lower standard, you know, pretty much across the board. You know, that’s as far as money Metals Depository goes.

It, you know, our vault is twice the size of the vaults at Fort Knox. It’s about 8,300 square feet of Class 3 vault space. The Fort Knox vaults are only about 4,000 square feet. But of course, we have a lot of silver. I’m not suggesting we have more gold in our, in our vaults, but we have a lot of silver, which is very bulky, as you, as you obviously know, it’s a, you know, 100 times over, 100 times more bulky than gold for the same value. So in a lot of spaces needed. But, you know, we know a little bit about auditing and, you know, we’re happy to provide that input.

We’re working with, like I said, members of Congress on their bill, and we’re willing to consult with the US Government as they tackle these issues. I mean, all these things are really coming up and becoming more pressing and important. You see how gold is being hoarded by central banks at record rates. The price is obviously a big part of it, but the de dollarization trend, these are becoming much more prominent assets again. And I think a lot more thinking needs to happen on our end of things here in the United States. But unfortunately, that’s not something we can normally count on from the U.S.

government. Yeah, typically not. Although, Stefan, let’s put you right under the hot seat. If the US And Trump goes in, and they do, let’s say they actually did an appropriate audit of Fort Knox, what do you think they would find? Well, you know, we have, we cannot count on the audits they’ve done, of course. So I really don’t know. I, I would not be surprised if there has been metal that’s been mobilized in the market. Whether it’s physically moved is maybe another question. And so that’s really, I think the biggest part of what needs to happen is a full accounting of what’s been done, like what transactions have been undertaken.

So I had a conversation with Kevin Warsh a few years ago. He’s now the Fed chairman, and I asked him, we had a conversation, a private reception, and then I asked him a public question during the big dinner, the Gold Dinner in New York. And I asked him the question, you know, Mr. Warsh, is the US government involved in the gold market? And if so, what are the purposes of those transactions? And it was funny because his answer was, well, you know, it’s not as much as you would think, but it’s really important to defend the dollar.

And we have to, you know, make sure that through the exchange stabilization fund, that the dollar is sacrosanct, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, wait a minute, did he just say it’s not as much as we think? It’s not that big of a deal? That’s a yes so, you know, I took that as a yes, and I think that’s the big question, you know, because, I mean, every other central bank, or virtually every, has gotten involved in gold transactions, leasing, leases, swaps, and so forth. You know, the US Government seems to be willing to admit that it’s involved in many markets.

You know, it owns public companies, obviously the bond market, it intervenes. You know, they’re willing to intervene in every market, but not the gold market. But what’s interesting, of course, is there’s never been a public admission of that, at least not since, I think, some actions by the Exchange Stabilization Fund in the early 70s. So I would be. I think that’s the bigger question, is not so much, is the gold there? Is it all there? And there’s certainly a question of that. But I think the more interesting question is, is it encumbered and who owns it? Yeah.

Well, Stefan, we got to get you to the Fed press conference, see what you can find out. Somebody should ask him that question again, actually, the question of, you know, the gold. The gold transactions of the US Government, because he is certainly somebody who would know, and he has tacitly admitted on more than one occasion, not just when I asked him, but he’s written an article that seemed to acknowledge that the US Government’s involved in gold transactions, whether it be leases or swaps. If you go to gata.org I’m sure they’ve written about that. And this is also at the same time where we’ve heard Besson confirm that they’ve been taking action to direct the oil price lower.

So I agree with you. It’d be fascinating if we ever got an understanding what was going on there. Stefan, I know you have a call coming up, so we’ll keep this short, but two quick questions. Obviously, you are one of the largest gold and silver dealers in the U.S. so anything you can talk about the order flow, I know it’s died down a little bit over the past couple months. And secondly, I see you have a tab here with Michael Oliver, who I’ll be talking with next week. Week. So hit that subscribe button and notification bell at home.

See that? Yeah. He was a great guest. He was a great guy. He’s out calling for 300 to $500 silver, which I’m looking forward to hearing more about. My thought would be it might take a more severe shortage and a financial crisis to get there, although could make a good case we’re on track for both. So, anything about retail and Michael Oliver and supply chain? Yeah, I find his, his, he’s got some interesting thoughts and he looks at things in a different way with the momentum and techn. That, you know, not, not everybody pays attention to the momentum indicator.

So I mean, he, he did call since last summer, the huge rally that we saw that took us to 120. He thought it would continue maybe more quickly than it has. He talked about a squiggle in the middle, which maybe, you know, arguably is what’s happening now. So I’m, I’m very intrigued by what he has to say. I would not discount it. But it, you know, I think, I think it probably takes the Fed throwing in the towel and you know, getting, getting dovish again, probably maybe that or a reaction to a stock market problem that we never seem to have.

But, you know, that’s going to the topic of retail demand. It has slowed down quite a bit since the January, February period of time, which was really intense. And I think that there’s a little bit of complacency, especially with the sideways move after that huge, you know, very exciting, you know, price rally, but also just the stock market. You know, you can look at the lack of fear, the lack of concern, the complacency in the market, at least among U.S. investors. Investors. I think that that carries over into the demand for gold and silver. So I think, you know, we had a lot of excitement around price a few months ago.

More recently, I think it’s just wait and see. And there’s, you know, we’re seeing transaction volume come down a fair bit, but not, you know, not to the levels that it was say a year ago. It’s still higher than that. What’s interesting, we seem to have a lot of sort of traditional Americans selling silver and a lot of Asian Americans buying gold. So that, that’s interesting. We’ve been seeing more Asian Americans come in and buy gold and sometimes in large amounts. So I don’t know if you know that you’re starting to see a bleeding over of that sort of cultural affinity or maybe a greater recognition of the role that gold and silver, especially gold, plays as savings as.

And you know, obviously in Asia there’s bigger problems happening right now. The oil impact is having more, more of a, more a problem creating more of a ripple effect there in the economy. And so I don’t know if that’s stimulating, you know, the demand among Asians who are maybe paying attention to that more closely, but I’ve noticed that. So that said, I think, you know, we’re just in this wait and see period around what’s going to happen with prices. And you know, we’ve had some very, very big months as a company and as an industry, but it’s definitely a little softer right now.

And there’s a lot of people selling silver still that, you know, we’re still selling more silver than we’re buying, but it’s, it’s a lot of selling back to us as compared to say a year or two ago. Well, I’m not surprised by that. Especially with the elevated silver price where if somebody did want to sell silver, I mean you could make a good real quick are the premiums. I know the sales prices for silver had been quite a bit under spot. Is that recovered at all? The premiums are still are coming down. I mean we’re selling certain types of silver well you know, at spot or below spot.

Especially the 90%, 90% silver we’re selling for at spot or a dollar below spot depending on, on which type. So you know, the premiums on silver eagles are still high. Those are, those are coming down. But it’s a good time to buy, you know, 10 ounce silver bars, 100 ounce silver bars, 1 ounce rounds and junk silver. Those are a great deal right now. That’s still the case and that’s a reflective, that’s reflective of a lot of secondary market coming back people selling and so we’ve seen a lot of selling back over the last six months and that’s still the case.

So I think for people wanting to position in, in silver in particular, premiums are nice and low and the gold premiums are always, always relatively low. Frankly that gold doesn’t have that, you know, flex up on premiums in the same way silver does when things get tight because gold is just a bigger market. So yeah, we’re, we’re excited to see all the new people coming in the last six months. Huge amount of new people. It’s just slowed down a little bit lately. But I think, you know, the next shoe to drop, you know, any. Who knows what it’ll be but it’ll, it’ll, it’ll rise again.

I mean it’s, this is definitely a growing market. Yeah. And I personally think things have been distorted by. It’s kind of confusing to really understand what’s going on in the war. And I think Wall Street’s been pricing a lot of things yet. I’m personally expecting somewhat of a snapback rally at some point. But we will see how that goes. And Stefan, perhaps just in wrapping up, you can let people know about money metals where I love right Pops up right away. And of all the bullion dealers, I think you guys really do provide a lot of helpful things.

Here’s the precious metals buying guide that people can get with their email address up here. Like mentioned some silver at Spot. If people buying or selling. I know you take good care of people either way. Anything you could just say about Money metals. Yeah, so we’re, we’re trying to be the leader in not just the, you know, dealer aspect, the depository. We also are really, you know, one of the only places to, to borrow against your gold and silver. We provide that service. But, but more than anything, we’re trying to expand the market by educating people about not just the products, but also the reasons why and the things that are happening in the market that impact gold and silver.

So moneymetals.com is a fantastic news website as well, and we have several pieces of original content every day. And so that’s really part of our mission is to educate people about gold and silver, expand the market. And we’re also fighting on the public policy side to expand, you know, or I should say remove taxes on gold and silver or to encourage states to hold gold as a reserve asset and basically to promote the gold and the gold and silver policy that’s, that’s good for both the industry, but also the country. And so we’re trying to be a leader there and I would say we’ve achieved that.

We’re very active on the public policy front as well. And so I think we’re very well aligned with our customers and, and the interests of basically the, the US Precious metals investor in general. Yeah, I think you guys do a great job. I’ve actually been talking to the great JP Cortez who helps with the Sound Money index, and we’ll have him on in a couple of weeks. But again, I appreciate all that, Stefan, and certainly I really like the way you guys also go about things. And happy to recommend Money Metals. You get great pricing, you know, you’re getting what you pay for.

And also, oh, we got gold and silver purchase plans, so. Yep. Anyway, Stefan, thank you so much for the update as always. And sir, we’ll catch up and do this again soon, my friend. Thank you. Thanks again, Sam.
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