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All the Gold In Fort Knox: Meh · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of five
0:03
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
0:12
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant and
0:16
Speaker 1: Jerry's out there somewhere, and this is Stuff you should Know.
0:21
Speaker 1: Carrot plated Gold Edition gold plated didn't know what happens?
0:27
Speaker 1: Like if you put a bunch of gold together, it
0:29
Speaker 1: means more carrots, I think. So I'm afraid to doubt you, though,
0:33
Speaker 1: because I had a movie crushers say that. I'm all
0:37
Speaker 1: I do lately is say you're wrong? Do you What
0:41
Speaker 1: do they mean lately? I know, I don't know. He
0:44
Speaker 1: must be a newcomer to the podcast. Slightly distressing, says,
0:48
Speaker 1: Josh's is all the time lately. Josh makes really good points,
0:52
Speaker 1: and all Chuck does his poopa it by just saying no,
0:55
Speaker 1: you're wrong. It's like, does that even happen once? If
0:59
Speaker 1: it may, I'm sure it's happened more than once. But
1:01
Speaker 1: if it makes you feeling better, I haven't noticed, and
1:04
Speaker 1: that's what really counts, don't you think? Yeah, I guess,
1:07
Speaker 1: although there are like a million plus people listening, so
1:10
Speaker 1: I guess their opinions count as well. Oh, man, you
1:15
Speaker 1: know it's funny, is I didn't even see that coming chuck. Yeah,
1:19
Speaker 1: that was good, good stuff. And I almost just said
1:21
Speaker 1: the s wort, that was good stuff. You're wrong, it
1:25
Speaker 1: was mediocre. Let's just do this Fortes. Yeah, no, let's
1:32
Speaker 1: do a real podcast episode. This, uh, this is interesting.
1:35
Speaker 1: All I could think about was heist movies. Oh really,
1:40
Speaker 1: I don't know what I thought about. I think I
1:42
Speaker 1: was kind of stuck in the thirties. I just thought
1:44
Speaker 1: of everything is kind of old timey and quaint because
1:48
Speaker 1: it's kind of in a way where the story really
1:50
Speaker 1: kicks off the story of Fort Knox. In case anybody's
1:55
Speaker 1: listening and didn't check the title, Oh, I thought we
1:58
Speaker 1: were doing an episode on the United States Bullion Depository, Buddy.
2:02
Speaker 1: That is the same exact thing in a lot of ways.
2:06
Speaker 1: But actually they're different too. Let's talk about this, right. So,
2:09
Speaker 1: But for anybody who is outside of the United States,
2:11
Speaker 1: and I would wager that a lot of you, I'd
2:13
Speaker 1: wager all the Golden Fort Knox that a lot of
2:16
Speaker 1: you are very familiar with Fort Knox, because it does
2:20
Speaker 1: seem to be kind of like this world famous place
2:22
Speaker 1: where the United States hoards its gold and it's just
2:26
Speaker 1: totally impenetrable, so don't even try. Um. But there's also
2:31
Speaker 1: like a lot of conspiracy theories too that there's no
2:33
Speaker 1: gold in there, and we'll talk about all this and
2:35
Speaker 1: why there's golden there too, But I feel like we
2:37
Speaker 1: should at least give like a background on Fort Knox
2:40
Speaker 1: and the ins and outs of it, don't you. Yeah.
2:43
Speaker 1: In nineteen o three, this is where it all started. Um,
2:46
Speaker 1: the U. S Army said, you know what, I think
2:49
Speaker 1: we need some training ground out here in Kentucky, in
2:52
Speaker 1: West Point, Kentucky. And everybody said, why, Yeah, I don't
2:56
Speaker 1: know good at places any I guess, and use that
3:00
Speaker 1: area they got, Um, they got a few counties to
3:04
Speaker 1: kindly hand them over some land, and they use that
3:07
Speaker 1: area for training and stuff. Made it a permanent training
3:11
Speaker 1: camp in nineteen eighteen and then named it after Henry Knox,
3:16
Speaker 1: a Revolutionary War officer, as Camp Knox. And someone very
3:20
Speaker 1: quickly said, that doesn't sound at all tough. It sounds
3:23
Speaker 1: like children belong here and people roasting smores about Fort Knox.
3:31
Speaker 1: It sounds like all the best forts started out as camps. Yeah,
3:34
Speaker 1: So they said Shure in Ny two, it became officially
3:37
Speaker 1: Fort Canucks right, nice one. Um. So yeah, so it
3:43
Speaker 1: started out as a legit army base. Um. But then
3:46
Speaker 1: eventually in the thirties, which is why I've been stuck
3:48
Speaker 1: in the thirties because so much of the story takes
3:50
Speaker 1: place there. Um, the United States Mint said, hey, we
3:54
Speaker 1: could use a new spot to store some gold, because
3:57
Speaker 1: we got a lot of gold. I this isn't even
4:00
Speaker 1: all of it, but we need a new spot to
4:02
Speaker 1: store some gold. And they actually took possession of part
4:07
Speaker 1: of Fort Knox um and built what's known as, like
4:10
Speaker 1: you said, the United States bully On Depository. Um, they're
4:15
Speaker 1: in Kentucky and it is legitimately Fort Knox is now
4:19
Speaker 1: not just the army camp. Even more famously, it is
4:22
Speaker 1: really what you officially would call the United States Bullyon Depository. Yeah.
4:26
Speaker 1: And the camp is still there, and some say it
4:28
Speaker 1: is Um there is sort of a means of maybe
4:34
Speaker 1: intimidation maybe back up, like hey, there's an army camp
4:36
Speaker 1: right next door. But they you know, also asked to
4:41
Speaker 1: borrow that name because it sounded tougher than the Bullion Depository,
4:45
Speaker 1: and they said, sure, you can go ahead and just
4:47
Speaker 1: call that building Fort Knox as well, and that's where
4:51
Speaker 1: we moved um, well, not all of it, but we
4:54
Speaker 1: had a lot of gold at the time, as you
4:55
Speaker 1: were saying, and it was, um it was a little unnerving,
5:01
Speaker 1: I think, to have most of the gold and the
5:04
Speaker 1: country stored in Philadelphia, the ment there and in New
5:07
Speaker 1: York because it was so close to the coast, and
5:10
Speaker 1: if some warring nation wanted to invade us and grab
5:14
Speaker 1: our gold, then they wouldn't have far to go to
5:17
Speaker 1: get it onto a boat. Yeah, truly, which is you know,
5:21
Speaker 1: pretty sensible, really, and I never really thought about that.
5:23
Speaker 1: But New York is not very far from water, and
5:26
Speaker 1: neither as Philly, so why not. So they decided to
5:29
Speaker 1: move um as much as they could. And there was
5:32
Speaker 1: silver moved too. There's a lot of stockpiles of silver
5:34
Speaker 1: that we're not even gonna bother within this story because
5:37
Speaker 1: silver we're talking gold here, and they moved a lot
5:40
Speaker 1: of it to Denver, and they very quickly said, well,
5:43
Speaker 1: the Denver met's a great place because it's protected from
5:46
Speaker 1: the from the Pacific Ocean by the rocky mountains, which
5:49
Speaker 1: would make that makes it much more difficult for an
5:52
Speaker 1: invading army. To come in from the Pacific and steal it.
5:55
Speaker 1: But we're we've run out of space and we need
5:57
Speaker 1: some some more space for all the spillover gold. And
6:00
Speaker 1: that's when they decided to build a Fort Knox, which
6:03
Speaker 1: in Kentucky is protected from the Atlantic Ocean by the
6:07
Speaker 1: Appalachian Mountains. So it's pretty pretty clever. Why they why
6:10
Speaker 1: they chose Fort Knox. Yeah. So the Treasury, like you said,
6:14
Speaker 1: took control of that land in thirty six and then
6:17
Speaker 1: in thirty seven, and they, I mean they started building
6:20
Speaker 1: you know there. You know, they couldn't just keep it
6:22
Speaker 1: intense even though those intimidating Appalachian Mountains were right there.
6:27
Speaker 1: They're like, we need a building here. So they built
6:30
Speaker 1: a building over um just a few months. Cost about
6:33
Speaker 1: it impressive, Yeah, UM cost about a half a million bucks.
6:36
Speaker 1: In the nine seven they said we're open for business, Um,
6:40
Speaker 1: bring that gold from New York City. They did, and
6:44
Speaker 1: they they did it the way, exactly the way that
6:46
Speaker 1: you would think they would do it. They had um
6:48
Speaker 1: a lot of um. They had a secret location where
6:51
Speaker 1: they were loading it. They sent a bunch of trains
6:53
Speaker 1: out um that were decoys, UM. And it didn't all
6:58
Speaker 1: happen at once. It wasn't one ship mint that made
7:01
Speaker 1: its way from New York and Philadelphia over to U Kentucky.
7:05
Speaker 1: It would have been in the movie, I think exactly. Yeah,
7:09
Speaker 1: But um it happened like actually in in many shipments
7:12
Speaker 1: over several years. But supposedly they did it like sometimes
7:15
Speaker 1: darkness of nights and there was decoys, um. And they
7:18
Speaker 1: were always protected by a number of groups from the
7:23
Speaker 1: post Office um uh, inspectors that are licensed to carry guns.
7:28
Speaker 1: Which would I hate to say it, everybody, but that's
7:31
Speaker 1: the one that you would try to hijack if you
7:33
Speaker 1: were going to hijack like yeah right, um yes, chuck
7:40
Speaker 1: all the way to the army, you know, which I
7:42
Speaker 1: would I would probably not try to hijack that one.
7:45
Speaker 1: If I were going to hijack one, which I wouldn't do,
7:48
Speaker 1: it would probably be the postal inspector one. Yeah. And
7:52
Speaker 1: you know, I'm sure that they've someone has written a
7:55
Speaker 1: movie treatment at some point for a nine seven try
8:00
Speaker 1: on the Way to Fort Knox heist type of thing, right,
8:03
Speaker 1: and they surely would have cast those poor post office
8:07
Speaker 1: gun slingers. Is the the likely train that's poor guys?
8:14
Speaker 1: Um So we've got the gold shown up at Fort Knox.
8:18
Speaker 1: And the thing is is like this was like people
8:21
Speaker 1: knew about this. It wasn't done in secret, Like this
8:23
Speaker 1: was this is known about UM And I think I
8:26
Speaker 1: get the impression that the reason that it was talked
8:28
Speaker 1: about and discussed, and they were like little tidbits here
8:31
Speaker 1: there in the in the um, in the popular media,
8:34
Speaker 1: um to give this idea like Okay, yes we're moving
8:37
Speaker 1: this gold, but like, don't even try it, Like here's
8:41
Speaker 1: just enough that you need to know to not even
8:43
Speaker 1: come anywhere near this place. And over the years, little
8:47
Speaker 1: tidbits have kind of been released here there that give
8:49
Speaker 1: a pretty complete picture of what you would be dealing
8:52
Speaker 1: with if you did, in fact try to uh impregnate
8:57
Speaker 1: for Knox. Oh pretty sexy. So uh, first of all,
9:04
Speaker 1: you can't just take a tour. I mean you can
9:06
Speaker 1: tour almost anything in this country except for Fort Knox.
9:11
Speaker 1: Even if you're sitting congress person, the chances are you're
9:14
Speaker 1: probably not going to get a tour. Yeah, I mean,
9:17
Speaker 1: if ed is correct here who helped us put this together,
9:21
Speaker 1: there have only been three official tours, Is that right? Yeah,
9:24
Speaker 1: that's what I saw. So there's there was one from
9:27
Speaker 1: FDR himself, which is pretty understandable. UM. There was one
9:32
Speaker 1: in the seventies, which we'll talk about, UM, which made sense,
9:36
Speaker 1: but it was a congressional delegation. And then I think
9:39
Speaker 1: in two thousands seventeen, Stephen Minusian and a delegation toured it.
9:44
Speaker 1: So there's at least three, but those are the three
9:47
Speaker 1: that we know about. There may have been more, but
9:50
Speaker 1: I would think they would kind of publicize that because
9:52
Speaker 1: the whole point of being a delegate to tour Fort
9:55
Speaker 1: Knox is to basically reassure the public there's there's a
9:58
Speaker 1: lot of golden there. Don't even more about it. Yes,
10:00
Speaker 1: the gold's there. That's pretty much the reason why anybody
10:03
Speaker 1: gets a tour of Fort Knox. I wonder if they
10:05
Speaker 1: let FDR in just to say, hey, you might as
10:09
Speaker 1: well just urinate on this golden person, because that's what
10:12
Speaker 1: you're about to do with policy. That's that's probably what happened.
10:18
Speaker 1: We'll get to that later with the gold standard. Uh.
10:21
Speaker 1: And of course you didn't urinate on it. Even with policy,
10:24
Speaker 1: you don't know. You can't ever tell what that FDR.
10:27
Speaker 1: So here's a bunch of things, and this this next
10:29
Speaker 1: bit is going to be just sort of a lot
10:32
Speaker 1: of the facts and figures that we know and we've
10:35
Speaker 1: gleaned over the years. Some comes from official releases, some
10:39
Speaker 1: comes from an old nineteen thirties issue of Popular Mechanics,
10:43
Speaker 1: which is kind of cool. Uh, but should we take
10:46
Speaker 1: a break first? Oh? Sure, man, Yeah, I think that's
10:50
Speaker 1: a great cliffhanger. All right, great, we'll be right back. Alrighty,
11:23
Speaker 1: So we promised you stats and figures about Fort Knox
11:27
Speaker 1: and issues of Popular Mechanics. I know, how's this for you?
11:32
Speaker 1: The vault requires, of course, multiple people to open it up,
11:36
Speaker 1: and each person nobody knows the entire combination. Each person
11:40
Speaker 1: it knows only a part of it. And even if
11:43
Speaker 1: you got it open, there's a one d hour time
11:46
Speaker 1: delay locks, so you gotta wait. If you have them
11:49
Speaker 1: at gunpoint and you all force and you force them
11:52
Speaker 1: all to open it, you gotta sit around and wait
11:53
Speaker 1: for four days, no matter what. That's my favorite one.
11:56
Speaker 1: It's pretty great. Mm hmm. That in the fact that
12:00
Speaker 1: it's really just artificial intelligence from the future is the
12:03
Speaker 1: only one that has the entire combination in its possession.
12:06
Speaker 1: What else, Um, well, let's see, they're the the vault
12:11
Speaker 1: itself is actually inside a building. So you remember in
12:14
Speaker 1: our Alcatraz episode where the cell Blox where buildings inside
12:17
Speaker 1: of the larger prison building. That's exactly the same thing,
12:21
Speaker 1: and not coincidentally they're built around the same time. UM,
12:25
Speaker 1: So I think there was that kind of you know,
12:28
Speaker 1: impenetrable building within an impenetrable building in the Zeitgeist kind
12:32
Speaker 1: of thing going on. Um. And the only way, the
12:35
Speaker 1: only place the vault and that building are connected is
12:38
Speaker 1: on the floor. But don't even think of coming up
12:41
Speaker 1: from under the floor because, um, the flooring is two
12:44
Speaker 1: ft thick of granite um, which you are not going
12:47
Speaker 1: to get through even if you successfully dug under. And
12:51
Speaker 1: I'll just go ahead and tell you why you would
12:53
Speaker 1: not be able to successfully dig under the building from
12:55
Speaker 1: the outside is because you have barrier after barrier after
12:58
Speaker 1: fence after razor I are separating you from the building.
13:02
Speaker 1: There's a huge blank field around the building, so it's
13:06
Speaker 1: not very easy to kind of walk up to it.
13:09
Speaker 1: And they apparently have said that the field around the
13:14
Speaker 1: building is a mine field, which means that they apparently
13:18
Speaker 1: studied cartoons to design Fort Knock, which I love. You're
13:24
Speaker 1: like what would while e coyote do exactly? Um, yeah,
13:28
Speaker 1: it is, I mean it's it's it's definitely worth googling
13:31
Speaker 1: a uh like an aerial image of this building. It's
13:34
Speaker 1: it's pretty interesting. I mean it it does. It sits
13:37
Speaker 1: out in the middle of nothing, uh, in this big
13:40
Speaker 1: flat area, and there's like a circular driveway around it.
13:45
Speaker 1: And you know, it's made of what you think it's
13:48
Speaker 1: made of, which is granite and concrete and steel. They
13:52
Speaker 1: said that the walls are also two feet in thickness,
13:56
Speaker 1: and inside those walls are fabricated steel hills that are
14:00
Speaker 1: so closely smushed together that they say a human hand
14:04
Speaker 1: can't even get between them. Right. Uh, So you need
14:08
Speaker 1: a baby or a child. You need a baby hand.
14:11
Speaker 1: So you got to bring a baby. You have to
14:13
Speaker 1: bring diapers and food to last the baby four days
14:16
Speaker 1: until the time lock. Yeah. Of course, don't forget a
14:19
Speaker 1: gun to hold people off with. Ye and probably some
14:22
Speaker 1: people you don't like to send through the minefield the
14:24
Speaker 1: clear path for you. Yeah, and you've got to get
14:26
Speaker 1: one of those diaper genies to put the diaper in,
14:28
Speaker 1: otherwise it's gonna smell in there. Oh man, it would
14:31
Speaker 1: smell so bad in that little building. Uh here's another
14:34
Speaker 1: cool thing. Well, the whole the whole building isn't huge.
14:37
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's not small. It's ten thousand square feet,
14:40
Speaker 1: but it's not I don't know. You think of Fort
14:42
Speaker 1: Knox and you think of, um, something the size of
14:45
Speaker 1: like a maximum security prison or something like that. Um,
14:50
Speaker 1: it's not huge. But um the building inside the building,
14:54
Speaker 1: so the vault inside has an eighteen inch space clear
14:58
Speaker 1: on every side and have all these mirrors everywhere. And
15:02
Speaker 1: of course now they have real cameras. I guess this
15:05
Speaker 1: was from the popular mechanics pre camera. You just use
15:09
Speaker 1: mirrors to make sure that you could see every square
15:11
Speaker 1: inch of this thing. Yeah. So if you did somehow
15:14
Speaker 1: manage to get inside the vault, the people who whose
15:17
Speaker 1: job it is is to watch the vault would see
15:20
Speaker 1: you immediately and they post yeah yeah. They would just start,
15:26
Speaker 1: you know, lobbying dead letter office packages at you until
15:30
Speaker 1: you got annoyed and left. And of course there's heavy artillery.
15:33
Speaker 1: There are um four corner machine gun turrets essentially on
15:39
Speaker 1: the outer building. Looking so, I'm sorry, I was confused.
15:44
Speaker 1: Is that on the outer building or is that part
15:46
Speaker 1: of the vault. I think that's outside. Okay, I don't know.
15:51
Speaker 1: I couldn't quite tell. I didn't and I didn't see
15:53
Speaker 1: it outside. Did you see him outside? Well, I mean
15:56
Speaker 1: I saw, I mean I didn't see any really close ups.
15:58
Speaker 1: Everything was kind of an area all and I did
16:01
Speaker 1: see what looked like corner turrets, but maybe they are inside. Okay.
16:05
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'd be shooting up machine guns
16:07
Speaker 1: inside a granite room. Yeah, that's actually probably a pretty
16:11
Speaker 1: bad idea. I I mean, I've seen wildly condy too.
16:14
Speaker 1: Those bullets bounced all over the place, that's right. Um,
16:18
Speaker 1: So you've also got a door to contend with. So
16:20
Speaker 1: so so far, you've got two ft thick everything to
16:22
Speaker 1: get through. Um, which means that your best bet is
16:26
Speaker 1: to go through the door because rather than twenty four inches,
16:29
Speaker 1: it's only twenty one inches thick. But you should probably
16:33
Speaker 1: be dissuaded by the fact that it's blast, drill and
16:35
Speaker 1: torch proof, said the US Mint director from back in
16:39
Speaker 1: two thousand and sixteen, Philip Deal. Yeah, and again this
16:43
Speaker 1: is all under the banner of don't even think about it, buddy. Right, Um,
16:47
Speaker 1: between the uh, there's a corridor that encircles the vault
16:51
Speaker 1: and then the outer wall of the building. They do
16:53
Speaker 1: have some offices. I guess that's where Dottie the secretary
16:56
Speaker 1: has been since nineteen fifties something, or Danny or Danny,
17:01
Speaker 1: that's true. I don't think they gave jobs like that
17:04
Speaker 1: to Danny in the nineteen fifties. Okay, maybe not in
17:06
Speaker 1: the fifties. That's fine. But I got called out for
17:09
Speaker 1: letting that Stooges comment pass, and I'm not gonna I'm
17:11
Speaker 1: not going on the grill again for you, pal what
17:14
Speaker 1: that ladies don't like the Three Stooges. We got not one,
17:18
Speaker 1: not two, but thrice emails about that, and most of
17:22
Speaker 1: them were not happy. Well, actually two of the three
17:25
Speaker 1: were very fun about it and said that they love
17:28
Speaker 1: the Three Stooges. But yes, but they weren't happy. One
17:30
Speaker 1: I couldn't tell. And I even wrote her back and
17:32
Speaker 1: I was like, I can't tell if you're really mad. Well,
17:35
Speaker 1: and I said, but I said, I was just if
17:39
Speaker 1: you google women don't like Three Stooges. It's a it's
17:42
Speaker 1: a trope. I mean, it's a familiar trope. I wasn't
17:45
Speaker 1: like inventing some sexist thing. I was just kind of
17:48
Speaker 1: funding around with it. Yeah, it's like everybody not liking
17:51
Speaker 1: Detroit or Kentucky like Google that right, or Google women
17:55
Speaker 1: don't like Rush the band. Hey, hey, hey, let's just
18:00
Speaker 1: let's bail out of this while we still have our limb. No,
18:03
Speaker 1: people can likelyly like. But trust me, have been to
18:05
Speaker 1: a Rush concert and there was there was a lot
18:07
Speaker 1: of masculinity in that room. What year was that, because
18:11
Speaker 1: I'll bet I was at the same concert depending I
18:14
Speaker 1: went to it must have been eight or eighty nine. No, No,
18:19
Speaker 1: I wasn't not that one. This would have been It
18:22
Speaker 1: would be like, m we just missed each other. Yeah,
18:28
Speaker 1: just by a few years. Had I just hung out
18:30
Speaker 1: at the Omni for three or four more years or
18:32
Speaker 1: had you, we would have passed each But you're right, women,
18:35
Speaker 1: like all sorts of things have been like all sorts
18:37
Speaker 1: of things, that's right. And Danny and Dottie can both
18:40
Speaker 1: be secretary, that's right. And we don't even call him
18:42
Speaker 1: secretaries anymore, Chuck, we should just stop podcasting all together.
18:47
Speaker 1: We have aged out of it. So to me, the
18:50
Speaker 1: only way in would be, uh, the escape tunnel, yes,
18:56
Speaker 1: which they thought of that they realized that they actually
18:59
Speaker 1: put a tunnel underground that you could use to get
19:02
Speaker 1: into the UM, the depository, the actual vault UM, which
19:07
Speaker 1: they installed in case somebody got locked in there, which
19:10
Speaker 1: I'm really surprised they even installed that um or design
19:14
Speaker 1: that in there. I would think like, if you have
19:16
Speaker 1: people guarding it as closely as it's being guarded all
19:19
Speaker 1: the time, that if you got locked in there, they
19:22
Speaker 1: could let you out and just give you food or
19:24
Speaker 1: something through those those slots that for the four days, yeah,
19:29
Speaker 1: or just in the Yeah, that's an even better idea. Actually,
19:33
Speaker 1: now that now that you mentioned it, but now they
19:36
Speaker 1: didn't do that. They actually put an escape tunnel in
19:38
Speaker 1: so that you can crawl out. It's not like a
19:41
Speaker 1: pleasant walk or anything. You crawl like through this tunnel
19:44
Speaker 1: and then out into the minefield basically. But the door
19:47
Speaker 1: that you reach that lets you outside UM only opens
19:50
Speaker 1: from the inside. It's impossible to open from the outside,
19:53
Speaker 1: which I take to mean it doesn't have a door
19:56
Speaker 1: knob on the outside, and then UM that's it guarded
20:01
Speaker 1: by people who are ready to just shoot you up.
20:04
Speaker 1: If you try to approach this door with your own
20:06
Speaker 1: door knob that you brought to open it from the outside, right,
20:09
Speaker 1: because you're not gonna come in here with a presumably
20:13
Speaker 1: a freight train to steal all this gold. Where are
20:16
Speaker 1: you gonna put the tracks? You can't do it. Are
20:19
Speaker 1: you gonna get that gold out of there? I just
20:22
Speaker 1: love the fact that we're trying to you know, we're
20:24
Speaker 1: doing a podcast in explaining in dissuading people from trying
20:29
Speaker 1: to get into Fort Knox. I mean, it's just so
20:33
Speaker 1: like seventies to me, your thirties or you know. The
20:36
Speaker 1: other cool thing is is that it can go off grid,
20:40
Speaker 1: has its own water and power. So if you you know,
20:44
Speaker 1: in the movie version, of course, once again, I would
20:47
Speaker 1: think you would try and knock it off the line somehow,
20:51
Speaker 1: get those cameras down, but they say, no, no, no,
20:52
Speaker 1: we have those generators. We can live off grid. There's
20:56
Speaker 1: a gun range in the basement, so if you want
20:58
Speaker 1: to brush up on your machine gun down there, you
21:00
Speaker 1: can do that. No, that's kind of like a little
21:03
Speaker 1: little lan yacht to the whole thing. Like, by the way,
21:07
Speaker 1: these guys are training um with guns downstairs in the
21:10
Speaker 1: basement for fun because they've got nothing else to do.
21:13
Speaker 1: They're just waiting for you to come who is guarding
21:15
Speaker 1: it though, Um, from what I understand, their treasury agents
21:18
Speaker 1: right and the army um can be called in if needed,
21:21
Speaker 1: because again it's like right there, Yeah, the U S.
21:24
Speaker 1: Met Police Force, Yeah, which I imagine is a it's
21:29
Speaker 1: probably a pretty cool gig to have. I don't know
21:32
Speaker 1: where they would have come up, but I swear we've
21:34
Speaker 1: mentioned that they exist before. It seems familiar to me.
21:38
Speaker 1: Have we done this all before? No, we haven't done
21:41
Speaker 1: this one, but we have talked about money and currency before, um,
21:44
Speaker 1: And I feel like that's where that's where we're at.
21:48
Speaker 1: Don't you like that that maybe we should talk about
21:50
Speaker 1: the goal itself, because I mean, yes, it's cool that
21:53
Speaker 1: there's a twenty one in blast door and there's a
21:56
Speaker 1: door that only opens from the inside and these ape tunnel.
22:00
Speaker 1: But I think what everybody's really fascinated with as much
22:02
Speaker 1: as anything is the fact that there is a lot
22:05
Speaker 1: of gold inside of four knocks. Yeah. And this will
22:09
Speaker 1: um kind of hit home too. If you've ever seen
22:12
Speaker 1: movies where you're bringing gold out of a place in
22:14
Speaker 1: a duffel bag, those gold bars weigh almost twenty eight
22:18
Speaker 1: pounds apiece, just one, yeah, just one of those things.
22:22
Speaker 1: So if you see people throwing them around in a
22:24
Speaker 1: movie or putting ten of them fifteen of them in
22:28
Speaker 1: a duffel bag and slinging it over their shoulder, that
22:31
Speaker 1: is not realistic at all. They're seven inches long, three
22:34
Speaker 1: and five eights inches wide, one in three quarters inches thick.
22:37
Speaker 1: And wait, twenty seven point five pounds each, yeah, or
22:41
Speaker 1: four hundred troy ounces. If you know what that means.
22:44
Speaker 1: I have no idea. Um, and I think it's what
22:47
Speaker 1: about ten twelve kilos a piece for those of you
22:51
Speaker 1: who aren't listening in the US and the weird thing.
22:54
Speaker 1: I didn't realize this, but as far as the Treasury
22:57
Speaker 1: is concerned, and to me, this really kind of goes
22:59
Speaker 1: to men straight, like how little the actual value of
23:04
Speaker 1: maintaining this gold horde is that just for bookkeeping, they
23:09
Speaker 1: they assign like an arbitrary value, the statutory value of gold.
23:13
Speaker 1: It's what it's called at forty two dollars and forty
23:16
Speaker 1: four cents and ounce, so that they can keep track
23:19
Speaker 1: using that dollar amount of how much gold is in
23:23
Speaker 1: uh Fort Knox, rather than you know, tracking it as
23:26
Speaker 1: it as it relates to, like the international gold market. Yeah,
23:30
Speaker 1: and so I did the math this time. I did too.
23:33
Speaker 1: Let's see if we came up with the same thing.
23:35
Speaker 1: So the supposedly there are forty metric tons of gold,
23:39
Speaker 1: which by the way, is about two point five percent
23:41
Speaker 1: of all the gold ever mind in the world in
23:44
Speaker 1: human history. That's pretty impressive. And if we're just going
23:47
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make sure we use the same numbers here
23:49
Speaker 1: for metric tons, can use that forty two point four
23:54
Speaker 1: four since per ounce. Okay, I did it differently, But
23:58
Speaker 1: let's see if we came up with the same figure. Well,
24:00
Speaker 1: what what what value did you use? Like? Oh, no,
24:02
Speaker 1: you go first, Mr Jear, wrong guy. So using the
24:08
Speaker 1: statutory value of gold that the US is set, I
24:12
Speaker 1: came up with six point eight billion dollars worth of gold.
24:15
Speaker 1: Close for mine. Close for mine. I used a different method.
24:19
Speaker 1: And this is one of the great joys of math
24:21
Speaker 1: is there are different approaches to the same problem. What
24:23
Speaker 1: did you do? UM? I took that forty s hundred
24:26
Speaker 1: metric tons of gold and UM divided it by pounds
24:32
Speaker 1: seven point five pounds. So I came up with the
24:35
Speaker 1: number of individual bars that I multiplied that number of
24:38
Speaker 1: individual bars, which is three sixty eight thousand and seven
24:42
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy three bars. By that sixteen thousand, eight
24:47
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty eight dollars per bar I came up
24:50
Speaker 1: with in the neighborhood of six point to five six
24:53
Speaker 1: billion dollars worth of gold. Well, first of all, there's
24:57
Speaker 1: a psychologist that's listening to this, that is really yeah,
25:01
Speaker 1: looking at what that means for both of our personalities.
25:04
Speaker 1: For sure, I say a lot. You know, did you
25:07
Speaker 1: use Are you sure you use metric tons and not
25:09
Speaker 1: just tons? Yeah? I I did um pound to metric
25:14
Speaker 1: ton conversion. You know how you can go on the
25:16
Speaker 1: internet and just say pound metric ton and like it
25:19
Speaker 1: brings up a little conversion thing for you. Yeah, I
25:22
Speaker 1: was just I was just making sure because at first
25:24
Speaker 1: I didn't do metric ton and that was different. And
25:26
Speaker 1: did a short time that is short ton, and that
25:28
Speaker 1: came to about six closer to your number. Okay, Yeah, No,
25:33
Speaker 1: I and I actually rounded a little bit because I
25:35
Speaker 1: was like, e, what the heck is that when the
25:38
Speaker 1: total came up, So I went back and redid it.
25:41
Speaker 1: And I didn't feel like plugging in all the same
25:42
Speaker 1: numbers round. What I wonder. What I did was I
25:46
Speaker 1: just took how many ounces or in forty six in
25:50
Speaker 1: a ton in a metric ton, multiplied that by and
25:54
Speaker 1: then multiplied that by two. Right, Well, I proposed that
25:59
Speaker 1: move along because I just suddenly rose. There's probably people
26:01
Speaker 1: who's like their fingertips of Doug under their eyeballs. They're
26:05
Speaker 1: so they're in such agony hearing us discuss math like this. Well,
26:10
Speaker 1: what's what's important is that the Fed in New York
26:13
Speaker 1: actually has more gold in their Manhattan vault, which was
26:16
Speaker 1: in a movie six thousand tons of gold that would
26:20
Speaker 1: have been die Harder, die Hard three. I believe it
26:24
Speaker 1: may have die another day. I don't know, but it
26:26
Speaker 1: was a good one. That was the one with Sam Jackson. Yeah,
26:29
Speaker 1: that was pretty good. Um. And by the way, I
26:32
Speaker 1: need to say something. I realized that I said, Event
26:35
Speaker 1: Horizon is a good movie and holds up. I went
26:39
Speaker 1: back and saw it again again, and I was like,
26:42
Speaker 1: this is way jokier than I remember from last time. Yeah,
26:47
Speaker 1: and sadly there's a there's a sheen or a coating
26:50
Speaker 1: of hokey nous that I guess maybe they brought in
26:54
Speaker 1: somebody to punch up the script or something, and that
26:56
Speaker 1: was their contribution, but it's not so it doesn't hold
26:58
Speaker 1: up anymore. No, And it's a great galactic love crafty
27:04
Speaker 1: and horror movie and concept and in some parts, but no,
27:08
Speaker 1: it's unfortunately rather hokey. I'm I'm a little gutted to
27:11
Speaker 1: say that. As our British friends would say, maybe you
27:14
Speaker 1: should watch it again in like three years and it
27:16
Speaker 1: might be back on truck for you. Well maybe, you know,
27:18
Speaker 1: maybe it's me that's the problem. Well, you know, taste
27:22
Speaker 1: waxes and waynes. Yeah, that's true. Uh, there's another there's
27:27
Speaker 1: some other stuff in Fort Knox, and there has been
27:29
Speaker 1: other stuff through history in Fort Knox because it's just
27:32
Speaker 1: a great place to keep stuff if you don't want
27:33
Speaker 1: to lose it or have it stolen. They have some
27:36
Speaker 1: rare coins in there. These are coins that were not
27:39
Speaker 1: released to the public. They may have been promotional coins
27:43
Speaker 1: or test pressings. Um. And so there's some of that stuff,
27:47
Speaker 1: including uh, the Chicago Way dollars coins that flew on
27:51
Speaker 1: the Space Shuttle. Is that funny? Yeah, that's soccer juwiyah. Yeah,
27:57
Speaker 1: that's like the American bastardization. It's Chicago Way. Oh, well,
28:01
Speaker 1: maybe we should keep this in okay, because I've never
28:06
Speaker 1: heard anybody say that. I really thought you'd just pronounced
28:09
Speaker 1: that other people say it like that. Yeah. I think
28:12
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where like the native pronunciation
28:15
Speaker 1: is Chicago Way, and Americans were like saka jaweeah. No,
28:18
Speaker 1: oh my god, my, I've got so much egg on
28:21
Speaker 1: my face. Maybe we won't keep this part in. You
28:23
Speaker 1: have to say it. You said it wrong, though, you
28:25
Speaker 1: have to be like, that's wrong, that's wrong. Okay, thank you.
28:30
Speaker 1: So it is Chicago Way? Huh? Is it Chicago? I
28:33
Speaker 1: think it's just Chicago Way. And I only learned that
28:36
Speaker 1: from Ken Burns. God bless Kimmer and you man, Thank
28:42
Speaker 1: you for setting me straight in front of a million people. Uh.
28:45
Speaker 1: Let me see here in nineteen thirty three gold double
28:49
Speaker 1: eagle twenty dollar coin. That's kind of cool. Yeah. Sure,
28:52
Speaker 1: there's an aluminum dime no penny, an aluminum penny from
28:57
Speaker 1: four which I'd love to see that thing. I would too,
29:00
Speaker 1: but it just strikes me as a little sad. Sure, um,
29:03
Speaker 1: the the they're there have also been because Fort Knox
29:06
Speaker 1: is just so well known as this I pregnable place
29:08
Speaker 1: and it really is, you know, legitimately you cannot get
29:11
Speaker 1: into it no matter how hard you try. Um. It's
29:14
Speaker 1: actually served as the site the storehouse for some like
29:17
Speaker 1: truly valuable stuff, um, like the Declaration of Independence, the
29:22
Speaker 1: Bill of Rights, um, the Gettysburg Address, a Guttenberg Bible, um. Uh,
29:28
Speaker 1: the Magnet Card. Actually during World War two, England's like, hey,
29:30
Speaker 1: can you hang onto this force because the Germans are
29:33
Speaker 1: really like up our butts right now? Yeah, so they
29:36
Speaker 1: so we held that at Fort Knox during World War two. Um.
29:40
Speaker 1: Which is I mean, that's just fascinating to the idea
29:43
Speaker 1: that some apparently some secret service agent traveled secretly with
29:49
Speaker 1: a bunch of these documents from Washington, d C. And
29:52
Speaker 1: put him on a train out to Kentucky to go
29:54
Speaker 1: to be held in Fort Knox during World War two.
29:57
Speaker 1: I love it. That's really cool. And that was temporary area.
30:00
Speaker 1: Think didn't they return them right afterwards? Oh yeah, for sure.
30:03
Speaker 1: Apparently they dedicated the Jefferson Memorial in ninety three and
30:06
Speaker 1: they're like, we need to get the um the Declaration
30:09
Speaker 1: of Independence out there. And they found out that the
30:11
Speaker 1: guards were using it as a place mat to eat
30:14
Speaker 1: their dehydrated foods. You know, they'd swapped it with with
30:18
Speaker 1: something that they only use crayon to forge, kept the
30:22
Speaker 1: original themselves. So should we break now before conspiracies or
30:27
Speaker 1: wait and break before gold standard? We'll break now, And
30:30
Speaker 1: I'm not a hard percent sure I'm going to be
30:31
Speaker 1: able to come back from the Chicago Way thing. Okay,
30:34
Speaker 1: So it might just be you when we come back
30:36
Speaker 1: from from break No never, okay, Chuck. So one of
31:08
Speaker 1: the things, one of the favorite things Americans love to
31:11
Speaker 1: do is to suggest quite seriously in a lot of cases,
31:15
Speaker 1: that there is no such thing as a gold in
31:20
Speaker 1: Fort Knox, and that there hasn't been golden there for
31:22
Speaker 1: a very long time. And if you went there and
31:24
Speaker 1: you saw gold, well you're a fool, because the best thing,
31:26
Speaker 1: the best possible scenario, is that you saw something like
31:30
Speaker 1: tongue sten that was spray painted or plated in gold,
31:34
Speaker 1: and that the golden Fort Knox is not there and
31:36
Speaker 1: hasn't been there for a very long time, and not
31:38
Speaker 1: only that it was sold for the most nefarious, outrageous
31:43
Speaker 1: purposes we can possibly come up with. Yeah, So they
31:47
Speaker 1: audit Fort Knox and they count the gold allegedly supposedly,
31:53
Speaker 1: Dotty and Danny get in there with their adding machine
31:57
Speaker 1: and they type everything out. Um, and I love how
32:00
Speaker 1: Ed put this. He said that all the conspiracy theories
32:03
Speaker 1: rely on quote, some fundamental misunderstanding of how currency works,
32:08
Speaker 1: how the gold standard worked, or just outright nonsense. But
32:11
Speaker 1: it's kind of true. Yeah, I know, it totally is,
32:14
Speaker 1: because there's this call for which we'll talk about the
32:17
Speaker 1: gold to be used again the way originally was, which
32:20
Speaker 1: is a back our currency. If that's the If that's
32:24
Speaker 1: really the basis of your problem with the idea that
32:27
Speaker 1: the gold was secretly sold off in Fort Knox, then
32:30
Speaker 1: then yeah, you you misunderstand how currency works or how
32:33
Speaker 1: economies work, and you probably don't fully understand how the
32:36
Speaker 1: gold standard was not really great and that America actually
32:40
Speaker 1: blew up and the whole world blew up after we
32:43
Speaker 1: switched off of the gold standard. That's how the the
32:46
Speaker 1: global economy really started to take off was when we
32:49
Speaker 1: decoupled our currency from being pinned to gold. So that's
32:52
Speaker 1: another seems to be another um factor in in in
32:56
Speaker 1: kind of banding about conspiracy theories about Fort Knox gold too. Yeah,
33:00
Speaker 1: and a lot of these conspiracy theories are anti Semitic. Yeah, Um,
33:04
Speaker 1: there are believe it or not. There are some really
33:06
Speaker 1: smart people who think who who may or may not
33:10
Speaker 1: believe in some of these theories, and some that believe
33:13
Speaker 1: we should go back to the gold standard, including Alan Greenspan.
33:17
Speaker 1: UM woman named Judy Shelton who Trump tried to push
33:21
Speaker 1: for appointment to the FED to the Federal Reserve UM
33:25
Speaker 1: and I'm not sure if she believes in the conspiracy
33:28
Speaker 1: theories or she just wants to go back to the
33:29
Speaker 1: gold standard. Yeah, they're not. I mean, it's not hand
33:32
Speaker 1: in hand. It's just if you do think we should
33:34
Speaker 1: go back to the gold standard, it's basically impossible for
33:37
Speaker 1: your attention not to follow on Fort Knox. And then
33:40
Speaker 1: you may be like, well is there even gold there? Yeah? True,
33:44
Speaker 1: but there are some truly whay could do things out there. Uh,
33:47
Speaker 1: this Peter Better guy? Oh is that how you're saying
33:51
Speaker 1: his name? What is it? If his Yeah, if his
33:55
Speaker 1: name is not Peter Beater, then I'm sad I am
33:59
Speaker 1: to be your beater the E T E. R. That's
34:02
Speaker 1: what I'm gonna call him at least. Yeah, it's like
34:03
Speaker 1: Peter with a B. Yeah, but his first name is Peter.
34:07
Speaker 1: It's magnificent, it's perfect. So he has thrown a lot
34:12
Speaker 1: of conspiracies out there since the seventies, uh, including a
34:16
Speaker 1: popular one that we sold off all the gold to
34:19
Speaker 1: these global elites for next to nothing so they could
34:23
Speaker 1: hoard that gold and then one day just destabilize the
34:26
Speaker 1: economy of the world and uh and you know, a
34:30
Speaker 1: sin to power basically, yeah, because they would have all
34:34
Speaker 1: the money and they sunk the value of the money
34:37
Speaker 1: so they could buy everything else at rock bottom prices
34:40
Speaker 1: like they bought the gold. Apparently this involves the Rothchilds,
34:43
Speaker 1: which automatically makes the whole thing anti Semitic, because the
34:47
Speaker 1: roth Child's started out and you know, are still around
34:49
Speaker 1: as far as I know, UM as a Jewish banking family,
34:53
Speaker 1: uh many many centuries ago. UM and rose to power
34:57
Speaker 1: and wealth pretty quickly and actually had a huge um
35:01
Speaker 1: role in a lot of world affairs, like we're able
35:04
Speaker 1: to bail out entire nations like France after they went
35:07
Speaker 1: into debt over war, like this family could do that.
35:11
Speaker 1: And it started a lot of conspiracy theories. So um,
35:14
Speaker 1: they're kind of like one of the o G conspiracy theories.
35:17
Speaker 1: And usually it was based on a combination or it
35:21
Speaker 1: was based on suspiciousness of a combination of them being
35:23
Speaker 1: Jewish and then being extraordinarily wealthy. Yeah, there's this other guy.
35:28
Speaker 1: Is his name is yan nieven Huis. I'm sure that's wrong. Um,
35:35
Speaker 1: he had an alias named KU's Jansen ko O s.
35:39
Speaker 1: And I listened to and read some interviews with this
35:42
Speaker 1: guy and he did you check into him? He seems
35:46
Speaker 1: he seems like a pretty level headed economist, right, that
35:50
Speaker 1: just seems to think that these audits aren't correct and
35:54
Speaker 1: there is something kinky going on. He didn't seem really
35:57
Speaker 1: out there though. No, it's it seems like a case
36:01
Speaker 1: of paying too much attention to details and and starting
36:05
Speaker 1: to see things that aren't necessarily there. Or if you
36:09
Speaker 1: do turn up a discrepancy, assuming that it does reveal
36:12
Speaker 1: some larger plot rather than just being a mistake or
36:14
Speaker 1: an accounting error or somebody forgot to carry the one.
36:17
Speaker 1: That's my impression. I could be wrong. I don't know
36:20
Speaker 1: much about cous Jansen. Yeah, but the interview just seemed
36:23
Speaker 1: very level headed. Um, he wasn't talking about um robotsoids,
36:28
Speaker 1: which is what Peter Peter talks about, right, literally talks
36:34
Speaker 1: about stuff like that. Well, that's what makes it believable.
36:37
Speaker 1: Is the OIDs on the end. If there were just robots,
36:39
Speaker 1: it would just seem rather far fat. What about Ron Paul?
36:42
Speaker 1: His is a little out there. He thinks it's all fake, right,
36:45
Speaker 1: so Ron Paul. I can't tell if Ron Paul is
36:48
Speaker 1: the source of a lot of this or was an
36:50
Speaker 1: amplifier for a lot of it, But he's tapped into
36:54
Speaker 1: or is part of one of the larger um kind
36:58
Speaker 1: of follow wings of of conspiracy theories as far as
37:02
Speaker 1: Fort Knox is concerned, which is that that either like
37:05
Speaker 1: I was saying earlier, there's either no gold there really,
37:08
Speaker 1: or the goal that is there is fake and the
37:11
Speaker 1: real goal has been sold, And that the US has
37:13
Speaker 1: been doing this for a very long time for all
37:17
Speaker 1: sorts of uncertain reasons. Um Like that, and that usually
37:22
Speaker 1: these days that China has been the big recipient of
37:25
Speaker 1: cheap gold, and maybe we've been doing that because if
37:27
Speaker 1: we sell China bunch of cheap gold, it will actually
37:30
Speaker 1: keep the dollar low and we'll strengthen our exports. I'm
37:34
Speaker 1: not quite sure how that works. Um. There also seems
37:38
Speaker 1: to be a certain amount of like national pride associated
37:41
Speaker 1: with it, where like, no, that's our goal, that's the
37:44
Speaker 1: people's goal that can't be sold off secretly by the government.
37:47
Speaker 1: And here's to me where it's like, even if there
37:51
Speaker 1: is it any gold in Fort Knox at some point
37:54
Speaker 1: in in the not too distant past, but the past,
37:57
Speaker 1: for sure, we've gone so far are beyond that having
38:02
Speaker 1: any importance whatsoever based on the dollar value of the
38:05
Speaker 1: golden Fort Knox that it legitimately doesn't matter. But that's
38:10
Speaker 1: why I think some people are like, no, it doesn't matter.
38:12
Speaker 1: That is our goal. That's America's gold. Um. I've seen
38:15
Speaker 1: it referred to I think ed said somebody referred to
38:17
Speaker 1: it as the equity of our national wealth. Um. And
38:20
Speaker 1: there seems to be like a certain amount of like
38:22
Speaker 1: American pride or patriotism in in being really mad about
38:27
Speaker 1: the idea that Fort Knox doesn't have any gold anymore,
38:29
Speaker 1: that the American people were duped by, you know, whatever
38:33
Speaker 1: elites are running the show at the behest of whatever
38:36
Speaker 1: Jewish people are running the elites. Uh. Because here's the deal,
38:40
Speaker 1: and this is where we kind of get in more
38:42
Speaker 1: to the of the gold standard, and we talked about
38:45
Speaker 1: this in currency and how both of us are kind
38:47
Speaker 1: of consistently blown away that money all money is. It's
38:52
Speaker 1: just something that everyone has agreed on has value. Yeah,
38:55
Speaker 1: and that's what we've been doing forever. But yeah, since
38:58
Speaker 1: there has been a little ingets and trinkets, as long
39:02
Speaker 1: as you agree, I mean, it could be a well,
39:05
Speaker 1: it could be a stick. It has to be something
39:07
Speaker 1: that you can't just go out and forage, although you
39:09
Speaker 1: can with gold, which is a problem you can. I mean,
39:12
Speaker 1: like think about womp them that was extensively used and
39:15
Speaker 1: I believe the Pacific Northwest by more than one Um
39:18
Speaker 1: tribe and nation. Um womp them was where they were
39:22
Speaker 1: like little little seashells that you could go and collect
39:24
Speaker 1: if you wanted to, and they were considered valuable currency
39:27
Speaker 1: and were for a very long time too. So it
39:29
Speaker 1: could conceivably be a stick as far as humanity is concerned. Right,
39:33
Speaker 1: But in our case and in the case of paper
39:35
Speaker 1: money these days, it is uh, we've had to make
39:39
Speaker 1: make it incredibly hard to recreate and counterfeit. You can
39:42
Speaker 1: also listen to our counterfeiting episode. But what really struck
39:45
Speaker 1: me kind of with that thought experiment this time is
39:49
Speaker 1: that gold really doesn't have much value either as a commodity.
39:53
Speaker 1: It's it's nice for making pretty trinkets. But uh, and
39:57
Speaker 1: they use it in some electronics and stuff like that.
40:00
Speaker 1: It we've also just sort of agreed that gold is
40:02
Speaker 1: valuable and the only thing that really has true value
40:07
Speaker 1: is food, air, and water, if you, if you think
40:11
Speaker 1: about it, and love, and the irony is is that
40:14
Speaker 1: we're doing our best to kill all that stuff away,
40:17
Speaker 1: you know, the stuff that really matters. Man, pravo, pravo.
40:23
Speaker 1: I wanna give you a hand to help you down
40:25
Speaker 1: from your soapbox, and I'm gonna put a king robe
40:27
Speaker 1: around you. Okay, it's goldflecting. It's got like the little
40:32
Speaker 1: white leopard, um like like caller, yeah, whatever that is.
40:37
Speaker 1: You look great, And that was wonderful. No, it's just
40:40
Speaker 1: it's just so funny. These things that we've agreed have
40:42
Speaker 1: value really don't. And the things that really truly have
40:45
Speaker 1: valued are really just the things that keep people alive,
40:48
Speaker 1: right right, But even like taking that hippie stuff out
40:51
Speaker 1: of the equation, there was a time where people said, um, no, gold,
40:56
Speaker 1: gold actually is valuable. People of value gold for eons now,
41:00
Speaker 1: Like it's one of the first things humans agreed had
41:02
Speaker 1: inherent value, even though it doesn't really have inherent value
41:05
Speaker 1: because it was yeah, and so it made sense that
41:09
Speaker 1: we we would say, Okay, gold is really hard to
41:13
Speaker 1: lug around and like, um, it's you just you don't
41:16
Speaker 1: want to actually trade gold. How about we make paper
41:19
Speaker 1: that represents a certain amount of gold and um. So
41:23
Speaker 1: that's kind of where we got paper currency in the world,
41:26
Speaker 1: and that's what we've been using for a very long time.
41:28
Speaker 1: But over time the problems, the issues that can arise
41:32
Speaker 1: from pinning your your currency to gold, um, they became apparent.
41:38
Speaker 1: For one, you're very you're limited to the amount of
41:41
Speaker 1: gold that exists in the world, which is substantial. I
41:44
Speaker 1: mean all the golden Fort Knox is only two and
41:46
Speaker 1: a half percent of the all the gold that was
41:48
Speaker 1: ever mine. So there's a lot of gold in the world,
41:51
Speaker 1: but that's a finite amount, which is why some people
41:53
Speaker 1: are like, yeah, that's why we should pin our currency
41:56
Speaker 1: to gold. It prevents it from getting out of hand
41:58
Speaker 1: and you can't just print how over much you want. Um.
42:01
Speaker 1: The problem is that it's like you were saying, like
42:03
Speaker 1: with a stick, you can go in the forest and
42:05
Speaker 1: go get a bunch of sticks. Conceivably, you a private
42:09
Speaker 1: company could go mine a bunch of gold that you found,
42:12
Speaker 1: you found a horde and um you you can mind it.
42:16
Speaker 1: And that will affect the value of not just gold,
42:20
Speaker 1: but of entire national economies in the global economy as
42:24
Speaker 1: a whole. If everybody's pinning their currency to gold. Yeah.
42:27
Speaker 1: And the thing is it also like, if your economy
42:30
Speaker 1: is backed only by gold, it's really tough to make
42:34
Speaker 1: adjustments to the economy as a government, which is something
42:38
Speaker 1: as things have become more complicated over the years with
42:41
Speaker 1: finance throughout the world, we've relied upon UM and I
42:45
Speaker 1: don't think we even mentioned that. The reason we did
42:47
Speaker 1: this to begin with is because when we first had
42:50
Speaker 1: the idea of paper currency, people are like, I don't
42:54
Speaker 1: trust that at all, Like coins that people were kind
42:57
Speaker 1: of used to because they've been using trinkets and gets
43:00
Speaker 1: coins for many, many years. But when they brought out
43:02
Speaker 1: paper dollars, and part of this was because understandable because
43:06
Speaker 1: private banks and I think we talked about this in
43:08
Speaker 1: currency UM and especially in the South pre Civil War South,
43:13
Speaker 1: there were all kinds of values for their paper currency,
43:17
Speaker 1: so none of it really meant anything. Yeah, a bank,
43:20
Speaker 1: a company of a town could print their own money.
43:23
Speaker 1: There was no federal monopoly on printing money in the
43:26
Speaker 1: United States until some time after the Civil War. I think,
43:29
Speaker 1: so people just said, yeah, we don't like this paper
43:31
Speaker 1: currency thing. So we came along and said, all right, well,
43:33
Speaker 1: what if we back it by gold and in theory
43:37
Speaker 1: all the money as a real gold value attached to it,
43:40
Speaker 1: and you can even come traded in for gold if
43:42
Speaker 1: you want to. Right. So that's that's how we went
43:45
Speaker 1: forward for a very long time, and then kind of
43:48
Speaker 1: slowly but surely we started to move away from it,
43:51
Speaker 1: particularly starting UM in nineteen where the Federal Reserve was
43:56
Speaker 1: established UM, which a lot of people, especially ones who
44:00
Speaker 1: think we should go to the gold standard and people
44:02
Speaker 1: who think that we shouldn't have UM, that there's no
44:04
Speaker 1: golden fort Knox believe, kind of ruined the world when
44:09
Speaker 1: we established the Federal Reserve UM. And one of the
44:13
Speaker 1: first steps that said was like, okay, we need to
44:16
Speaker 1: maintain of the value of all of our currency in
44:20
Speaker 1: circulation in gold as a as a country, which was
44:24
Speaker 1: a lot different from that's a huge amount of money
44:28
Speaker 1: that can can now be printed, and more money that's
44:31
Speaker 1: out there, more things can be bought because that money
44:34
Speaker 1: can be traded for services and goods, and you can
44:36
Speaker 1: employ people with it, and all of a sudden, your
44:39
Speaker 1: economy can start getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And
44:41
Speaker 1: that's exactly what happened. And as that became more and
44:44
Speaker 1: more evident, UM, we started moving further and further away
44:47
Speaker 1: from from UM the gold standard. Yeah. And like I
44:50
Speaker 1: said earlier, kind of joke that Roosevelt, they allowed him
44:53
Speaker 1: to urinate in person on the gold Uh. He really
44:57
Speaker 1: led the charge in the thirties because of World War
45:00
Speaker 1: One and the in the Great Depression, and said, you
45:02
Speaker 1: know what, we really kind of need to get away
45:04
Speaker 1: from this gold standard officially. And I'm gonna take a
45:07
Speaker 1: series of actions weakening that link between gold dollars being
45:12
Speaker 1: backed by gold, and you can't exchange it anymore. Everyone,
45:16
Speaker 1: So don't even think about that. And not only that,
45:20
Speaker 1: you can't hoard gold like we we basically want all
45:23
Speaker 1: the gold and all that we want to hang onto it. Yeah.
45:26
Speaker 1: And so for a very long time, the only reason
45:29
Speaker 1: people maintain gold, or countries maintained gold, or the United
45:34
Speaker 1: States maintained gold was to UM to pay off foreign
45:38
Speaker 1: debts if need be. Uh. And then Nixon said nuts
45:42
Speaker 1: to that in one and from that moment on, the
45:45
Speaker 1: United States currency and economy was decoupled from gold and
45:49
Speaker 1: it has been ever since. UM. And you again, you
45:53
Speaker 1: can look, I'm not a roth child robot oid. I
45:57
Speaker 1: just believe in progress, basically. And if you go back
46:00
Speaker 1: and look at the world economy and the United States
46:02
Speaker 1: economy since nineteen seventy one, it's made some pretty impressive
46:05
Speaker 1: gains since then, UM. And that's largely due to decoupling
46:10
Speaker 1: from golden being able to print money. Now that said,
46:13
Speaker 1: and this is an entirely different podcast that I think
46:15
Speaker 1: we need to do. Sometimes there are massive problems with
46:19
Speaker 1: paper money, paper currency, what's called fiat currency UM, or
46:23
Speaker 1: a fiat system of currency where by fiat by proclamation,
46:27
Speaker 1: we say our currency is worth this amount, and that's
46:31
Speaker 1: what we do now, which is totally made up and
46:33
Speaker 1: totally in the air. But as long as people have
46:35
Speaker 1: faith in in the government, in the economy, and the workforce, UM,
46:40
Speaker 1: we can survive those ups and downs through that that
46:43
Speaker 1: that sense of faith not just among our citizens but
46:48
Speaker 1: also people around the world. Understand. Yeah, I mean, let's
46:53
Speaker 1: let's just all keep agreeing. Let's keep that pinky swear
46:55
Speaker 1: going exactly, so why do well, why do we still
47:00
Speaker 1: have Fort Knox? Then if we don't need the gold, well,
47:04
Speaker 1: I mean they're not just gonna give it away. You
47:08
Speaker 1: still gotta keep it in one in a couple of places, right,
47:12
Speaker 1: That's I mean, that's one thing I think there is
47:14
Speaker 1: a certain amount of that national pride to even among
47:16
Speaker 1: the governments, Like we got we got a bunch of
47:18
Speaker 1: gold and it's in Fort Knox, and it's almost like
47:20
Speaker 1: symbolic of America's wealth and strength. UM. One thing I
47:23
Speaker 1: did see is there are like lots of other countries
47:26
Speaker 1: have lots of other gold hordes themselves. And although the
47:30
Speaker 1: gold market is basically separate, it's like its own thing.
47:33
Speaker 1: That's you know, it responds and reacts to the UM,
47:38
Speaker 1: the stock exchanges, UM and other markets, but it's not
47:42
Speaker 1: it's not you know, entangled with It's its own thing.
47:44
Speaker 1: So really, if you UM released a bunch of gold,
47:47
Speaker 1: you're really going to mess with the gold market. But
47:49
Speaker 1: it's gonna have a ripple effect through the through the world, UM,
47:53
Speaker 1: then the other markets in the global economy. So it
47:57
Speaker 1: would be really foolish to release a bunch of gold
48:00
Speaker 1: old onto the market for the US to sell or
48:02
Speaker 1: any country to sell its gold hordes off. It would
48:04
Speaker 1: be a real big problem that you don't need to have.
48:07
Speaker 1: It's easier to just keep the gold in Fort Knox. Instead, agreed,
48:13
Speaker 1: that's why it's still around. You're not. This turned out
48:15
Speaker 1: to be a pretty good aside from Socca juwillyah, And
48:18
Speaker 1: now I'm wondering if I even pronounced wampum correctly. Well,
48:23
Speaker 1: how humiliating Chuck Wampum was the real thing? You know? Uh,
48:27
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about Fort Knox and
48:29
Speaker 1: start looking at pictures of it, you'll you'll see what
48:31
Speaker 1: we're talking about. And since I said you'll see what
48:33
Speaker 1: we're talking about, it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna
48:38
Speaker 1: call this wet Lands follow up uh from Donna. Hey, guys,
48:43
Speaker 1: been listening for many years and always enjoy the shows
48:45
Speaker 1: in the banter. Today, out of my morning walk, I
48:48
Speaker 1: was listening to Wetlands, Wetlands, Wetlands, and serendipitously came upon
48:53
Speaker 1: cat tails just as you brought them up. Wow, we
48:57
Speaker 1: love this stuff, these coincidences. And She's like, no, I'm
49:00
Speaker 1: listening to the Four Knocks episode, so laid on me
49:03
Speaker 1: I'm tunnel I'm tunneling in as we speak. It was
49:07
Speaker 1: one of those weird coincidence moments that I just had
49:09
Speaker 1: to record. I walked off the path into the grasses
49:12
Speaker 1: and took a quick cat tail selfie, which I included
49:15
Speaker 1: in this email. Lovely picture. Growing up in New Jersey
49:18
Speaker 1: in the eighties, cat tails were called punks, and my
49:22
Speaker 1: dad would take the dried out plants and light them
49:25
Speaker 1: to keep away mosquitoes. That's where the punk is. Yeah,
49:28
Speaker 1: I've never heard of that. Have you heard of that?
49:30
Speaker 1: Uh huh? I never heard of that. Back then, it
49:33
Speaker 1: seemed like a normal thing to do. But having grown
49:35
Speaker 1: up moved away from New Jersey, who I have never
49:38
Speaker 1: come across anyone that ever partakes in this practice anymore.
49:42
Speaker 1: It was such a huge part of my childhood summers.
49:43
Speaker 1: I'd forgotten about it until now until listening to the episode,
49:47
Speaker 1: and then I happened to walk upon some in the
49:50
Speaker 1: adjacent Mark Marshes in That moment truly delighted me. Mosquito
49:54
Speaker 1: season is over where I live now in d C.
49:56
Speaker 1: But on next summer's to do list is to cut
49:58
Speaker 1: some cat tails from the park end and introduce my
50:01
Speaker 1: two teen sons to that distinctive punk smell that made
50:05
Speaker 1: me against federal law. Now though, oh, really taking punks
50:10
Speaker 1: from the park land it seems like against the law. Well,
50:14
Speaker 1: i'll tell you what, Donna H. Look into that. We
50:16
Speaker 1: don't want you to get in trouble, that's right, or
50:19
Speaker 1: to do anything you shouldn't do. But I get the
50:21
Speaker 1: urge to want to introduce things to your children that
50:25
Speaker 1: you did back then that weren't necessarily proper. But the
50:28
Speaker 1: nanny state will say no and throw you in jail.
50:31
Speaker 1: So don't try it, Donna. Yeah, maybe, I mean where
50:34
Speaker 1: I saw the wetlands recently where I was hiking here
50:36
Speaker 1: in Arabia Mountain. You can't beautiful granite outcroppings part of
50:39
Speaker 1: Stone Mountain actually, and you can't. My daughter wanted to
50:43
Speaker 1: take those rocks. As if you can't take the rocks,
50:44
Speaker 1: we get thrown in jail by the nanny state. You
50:47
Speaker 1: can't do it. You gotta leave those rocks. Um, what
50:51
Speaker 1: else did Donna say anything else? Now? That's it. That's
50:53
Speaker 1: from Donna H. That was great, Donna, thank you very much.
50:56
Speaker 1: Be careful with the cattails. We won't tell if you do,
50:58
Speaker 1: but we just don't want you to get in trouble. Um.
51:01
Speaker 1: We're no snitches. Uh. If you want to get in
51:04
Speaker 1: touch with us like Donna did, Uh, we want to
51:06
Speaker 1: hear from you, and you can send us an email
51:08
Speaker 1: to Stuff podcast at i heeart radio dot com. Stuff
51:15
Speaker 1: you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radios How
51:17
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51:22
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