A closer look
Fort Knox currently holds roughly four thousand metric tons of gold bullion, but the United States government legally values this massive hoard at a statutory rate of exactly forty-two dollars and twenty-two cents per ounce, a price that has not been updated since 1973. While the actual open market value of that shiny metal is well over three hundred billion dollars, the Treasury refuses to revalue the assets on their balance sheet because it would legally require them to issue new gold certificates to the Federal Reserve. It is a fantastic example of how high-level governmental accounting is basically just a complex game of pretend, where rules are arbitrarily frozen in time to avoid doing massive amounts of bureaucratic paperwork. They are sitting on one of the greatest treasures in human history but treat it like a depreciated used Honda Civic
