in 1933 the feds needed the gold in order to expand the money supply, since gold backed the money system. today, it does not. and very few americans hold any gold, it's really not worth their while to go searching for it. it's like trying to mine gold when the ore grade is 0.1g/ton, sure you can get a little gold but it's too small a result for too much effort.
what they will target, however, is pensions and 401k accounts, there are enormous sums of wealth tied up there. obama has already set up the "myRA" system. during the next substantial market crash people will see the value of their 401k holdings plummet, the politicians will pretend to play the part of heroes (we've got to do something about this! there oughtta be a law!), and force retirement accounts to be held in long-term government treasuries (guaranteed safe!). what they won't tell you is that while your treasuries are generating returns of 3%, inflation will be running at 10%+, effectively eroding the purchasing power of your life savings by 7% every year, which is a wealth transfer to the government.
I agree with reflector. They’ll go to where the money is. Right now, thats $25 trillion in total retirement assets. This is what Poland did just recently; they snatched all the retirement cash, and swapped it out for promises to pay you later once you actually retire.
Here’s a graph that shows total “retirement assets” in the US vs the total value of all the gold in the entire world @ 1290/ounce. Say the US owns 25% of that. Even with gold at $5000/oz, that is still dramatically less than the total retirement assets. And the nice thing about all those assets are, they’re entirely digital. Swiping them is really, really easy. There is no need to break down any doors.
I suspect this is how they’ll fix the “pension crisis.” No more pension - you get “Social Security Plus.”
Source: https://www.ici.org/research/stats/retirement/ret_16_q4
Even with gold at $5000/oz, that is still dramatically less than the total retirement assets.
And don't forget a sizable chunk of that gold is already in the vaults of the world's central banks and the IMF.
Just one more reason for them to come after the much larger retirement pile of money first.
Dave,
I’m in Europe and hadn’t heard about the polish pension grab. It would seem very likely that this could be a blueprint for other governments in the next financial crisis.
Why hasn’t there been uproar in Poland about this? Why isn’t this getting more media attention?
The tax savings available in pension schemes seem fantastic, but how safe are the funds going to be? I’m in Ireland, which is still highly indebted, so I’m wary of putting money in a pension. The government introduced a ‘pension levy’ here in 2011 during the last crisis, where they took 0.75% of the total pension assets per annum. It has since been abolished, but the precedent has been set.
