U.S. Treasury Refuses to Answer Questions about Disposition of Its Own Gold

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Chris Powell
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Recent correspondence between U.S. Rep. Alex X. Mooney, R-West Virginia, and the U.S. Treasury Department suggests that the department has given the Federal Reserve and International Monetary Fund unfettered control of a portion of U.S. gold reserves.

In a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on June 9 this year, Mooney posed many questions about the U.S. gold reserves, which are owned by the Treasury.

A reply from the Treasury Department’s deputy assistant secretary for appropriations in the department’s Office of Legislative Affairs, Angel Nigaglioni, was released this week.

The U.S. Treasury declined to answer most of Mooney’s questions, suggesting that the congressman instead pose them to the Fed and the IMF, though the gold belongs to the Treasury Department itself.

Particularly, Nigaglioni replied, the Treasury Department won’t say:

1. How much of its gold is kept at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (although there is a government document here that discloses some information).
2. Why Treasury gold is kept at the New York Fed.
3. Whether any of the Treasury gold at the New York Fed has recently been audited, assayed, or inventoried.
4. Whether the Treasury gold held at the New York Fed is segregated from gold vaulted there by other nations.
5. How much Treasury gold is part of the IMF’s gold holdings, nor where Treasury gold assigned to the IMF is kept and won’t explain the purpose of the assignment of Treasury gold to the IMF.

Nigaglioni did say that the Treasury Department and U.S. Mint to not engage in gold or gold derivatives transactions through the Bank for International Settlements, other central banks, or governments. But this did not exclude the Federal Reserve’s use of Treasury gold for such transactions.

Since Mooney’s questions involved the Treasury’s own gold, the Treasury surely knows or should know the answers, or else the Treasury is a negligent custodian of national assets.

That the Treasury won’t answer Mooney’s questions is more evidence that it and the Federal Reserve are likely using U.S. gold reserves for surreptitious interventions in the gold market.

Rep. Mooney is sponsor of the Gold Reserve Transparency Act of 2021 (H.R. 3526) to require the first true audit of America’s gold in decades.

About Chris Powell

He is a political columnist and former managing editor at the Journal Inquirer, a daily newspaper in Manchester, Connecticut, USA, where he has worked since graduating high school in 1967.

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