INSPECTING FORT KNOX
I think if the president wants to go see it, he should go and do it. However...
1. If the gold is all gone, it's going to cause a massive shock to the economy. Maybe we're better off not knowing.
2. It was inspected in Trump-45 by Secretary Mnuchin.
3. It currently holds 147.3 million ounces of gold bullion. This is in 400-ounce bars, most of which are 90% gold. Quick math that's 368,250 bars. Just counting that high could take weeks. This stuff is stacked ten feet deep in 20 or so different sub-vaults and just physically moving these 35-pound bars so you can count the stack against the back wall could take months.
4. How many people can tell by looking if a gold bar is solid gold or gold-plated something else?
5. This is half of the US gold, the rest being in West Point or Denver or New York. Is Trump going to inspect all depositories at the same moment to determine someone didn't shuffle the gold to trick him?
6. Assuming it's all there and all real does it all belong to the US or does some of it belong to other nations? or corporations? or extra-terrestrial civilizations which sold us technology and haven't picked up the payment yet.
7. If Trump says it's all there how many on either side of the aisle will disbelieve that he even knows the truth let alone is telling the truth?
8. What else is in there?

By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Thursday, February 27, 2025 - 10:30 pm: Edit

9. How much is Gert Froebe going to steal?

(Actually, this question SHOULD have been numbered 007...)

By Mike Erickson (Mike_Erickson) on Thursday, February 27, 2025 - 10:31 pm: Edit

>> 8. What else is in there?

The Ark of the Covenant?

--Mike

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Thursday, February 27, 2025 - 11:04 pm: Edit

>> 8. What else is in there?
The White House Wine cellar.

By Ryan Opel (Ryan) on Thursday, February 27, 2025 - 11:14 pm: Edit

Jeff,

That's a good one.

By A David Merritt (Adm) on Friday, February 28, 2025 - 09:04 am: Edit

SVC;
True, Senate RINOs are a larger issue, and note I did not say they were gone, and I was commenting more on the House ULTRAs that have been gaining ground since President Obama's first mid term election since 2010. I should have been more specific.

In some ways, I would submit that some of the issues two years ago were by grand standers that were more interested in a "Look at me attitude." something that affects some politicians on both sides of the aisle.

By Douglas Lampert (Dlampert) on Friday, February 28, 2025 - 11:15 am: Edit

I had not heard there was any real concern about the Fort Knox repository or anyone planning to check it.

But, as noted:

Fort Knox is less than half the US government gold reserve, and it is also smaller than the Federal Reserve depository in NYC which is NOT US government gold, but almost all foriegn government gold that we're holding for those governments, with a (by comparison) trivially small amount of bank gold thrown in.

If someone were playing a shell game with gold or stealing our gold, there's no particular reason to think that they'd start on Fort Knox, and even that is far too much to easily check.

By Matthew Lawson (Mglawson) on Friday, February 28, 2025 - 12:44 pm: Edit

I remember years ago a History Channel Program...maybe the Brad Metzger mystery show where he was talking about Ft. Knox conspiracies and while driving on the highway that runs past Ft. Knox they 'freaked' out in the car because they believed they were being followed by an unmarked SUV (cue dramatic music), which did nothing of course. I'm sitting there thinking...there's a visitor center 1000 feet away they could have just gone to; I was there as a kid.

By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Friday, February 28, 2025 - 04:22 pm: Edit

As far as what else might be in there, I'm sure SOMEbody's going to throw out a Harry Potter Easter Egg by saying the Diadem of Roweena Ravenclaw has been found there...

By MarkSHoyle (Bolo) on Friday, February 28, 2025 - 05:38 pm: Edit

I recall at least once in the mid/late 90s the issue of Ft Knox came up... There was support and opposition, the idea never went anywhere....
Occasionally it was mentioned, even into the Obama years.....

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Thursday, March 13, 2025 - 08:55 pm: Edit

We talked about declining populations in various countries before, but there were several news reports posted recently that might be worth consideration:

China, since COVID pandemic, has been accused of a number things… one of which was under reporting COVID fatalities.

Several attempts at quantifying the number of fatalities using a variety of methods (mortuary records, production snd distribution of cadaver packages (a.k.a. Body bags…) infant and adolescent vaccination records, prescription vaccines records etc.) have been sited but regardless of the methodology, the results seem to indicate a far lower total population than the government has officially claimed.

In short, there are now indications that even the recent government admission to a 700 million person reduction in total population may not be accurate, that the true number from all causes (reduced birth rate, higher rate of infant and adolescent deaths, high numbers of COVID related deaths, overpopulation reports due to conflicting inflated estimates by bureaucrats fearing punishments for reporting true data etc…) may exceed 1 billion, rather than the reported 700 million.

The article had speculated that the reason China is “self reporting” the decline in population is an attempt at Damage Control. The implication being the fear that Trump (or the U.S. Government/CIA might report the true number, and provide satellite picture proof.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Thursday, March 13, 2025 - 09:09 pm: Edit

Jswile: the recent government admission is to a 700 thousand reduction, not 700 million.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Thursday, March 13, 2025 - 10:08 pm: Edit

Orsini:

You are welcome to your opinion, not your own facts.


The South China Morning Post (a Chinese Government owned and operated media site) reported last July 2024 that the Chinese population decline was estimated to be 784 million by 2100 ad.

There are other media sites reporting a significant decline in population forecast, as well as other factors mentioned

There are also reports that the U.N. Predicts a “fifty percent chance” of significant decline in China’s population by 2050.

Sorry that you disapprove, perhaps you should take it up with the Chinese Communist Government.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Thursday, March 13, 2025 - 10:57 pm: Edit

Jeff,

I would be hesitant to dignify anything from the South China Morning Post with the word "fact". If they posted that "water is wet", I would seek independent verification.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, March 13, 2025 - 11:35 pm: Edit

I think you guys are confusing 700,000 in the last five years with 700,000,000 in the next 75 years.

By Paul Howard (Raven) on Friday, March 14, 2025 - 06:00 am: Edit

SVC beat me to it...

It's clear China needs to significantly increase their Birth Rate - with their current Birth rate, your approx 1.4-1.5 billion today will clearly only be 750 Million in 75 years time.

So yes -700 million is likely to be an accurate estimate - but thats not a 700 million reduction today.

Like alot of governments (India, Philippines, Nigeria and Mexico) - they somehow need to get probably closer to a birth rate of just under 2 - to allow for a slow reduction in nuumbers (IIRC, you need just over 2.1 to maintain a nations population).

During that time 'we' (i.e. the world) can try and work out how many people can live on this planet and have an acceptable lifestyle.

I am guessing the numbers quoted will be even wilder than what

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Friday, March 14, 2025 - 09:02 am: Edit

That's precisely what happened, Steve. Mind, it may have happened because Jswile declined to describe in any way in his original comment that his reference to 700 million was a projection over the remainder of the century, rather than to losses over the past half-decade.

By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Friday, March 14, 2025 - 12:17 pm: Edit

A population decline in china may also result in increased mechanization of their agricultural sector.

Plus China might just bite off Far Eastern Siberia.

The one I worry about is when Russia realizes that "ethnic Russians" are no longer in control.

By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Friday, March 14, 2025 - 02:34 pm: Edit

There was also the "One Child" policy in the PRC for a while.

Since so many families wanted a son to carry on the family name, few were willing to have a daughter as their only child. Unintended consequence? it's my understanding that the PRC has a severe gender imbalance.

This, again as my understanding (and if I'm wrong, please feel free to correct me ), cascading problems mean there are fewer families with this new generation, which means that, even though the "One Child" policy appears to have been discontinued, there are still going to be a lot fewer births than deaths in the PRC.

By Kosta Michalopoulos (Kosmic) on Friday, March 14, 2025 - 05:44 pm: Edit

There is also the issue that the PRC's current population estimates may be off by 100 million people. This may result in an even bigger population decline by 2100.

The theory is that local governments in China have been fraudulently inflating their birth statistics for several decades, since the funds they receive from the central government are frequently based on per capita funding models. It is hard to prove this is going on in an authoritarian state like China, but it would not surprise me at all. Just another example of a Potemkin village, in effect.

I don't recall the name of the US-based academic who has been studying this discrepancy, but I have seen media coverage in print and on TV.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Saturday, March 15, 2025 - 04:13 pm: Edit

Alan Trevor:

Thank you for catching the point I was trying to make.

The South China Morning Post is published in China, and to all intents and purposes, is a government agency media site.

For the SCMP to post an article that not only doesn’t support official Chinese Government policy (which Orsini quoted and identified the citation.) but foretells a catastrophic failure of Chinese Communist policy failure is uncharacteristic.

If the assertion of declining population in China is not true, the response should have been a denial.

It ONLY makes sense for the SCMP to run the story if the goal is to mitigate the damage.

The other question is, why Orsini is fighting so hard to refute a story that the Chinese Communist Party has tacitly admitted to.

By Kosta Michalopoulos (Kosmic) on Saturday, March 15, 2025 - 05:19 pm: Edit

Jeff, I don't see what Jessica is fighting so hard to refute. It is obvious to everyone, including the CCP, that China's population has been declining over the recent past. But the actual level of decline is open to "interpretation", since getting accurate demographic statistics from China is well nigh impossible. Everyone knows they are "fudged" to one degree or another. But demographers can make reasonable estimates about the CURRENT population based on secondary sources, such as the number of children showing up for the first day of kindergarten each year. These methods are what have shown demographers in the West that China's official population statistics are a figment of the CCP's (or more likely, local municipal governments) imagination.

The far more difficult part is trying to predict where things are going to be in 25, 50 or 75 years. No one really knows, even with accurate current data, what those numbers will be that far in the future. You can generate all sorts of scenarios based on a series of assumptions about various things (e.g. fertility rates, family formation, net migration, etc.). Those estimates can be useful for planning various things, like how many schools or hospitals will be needed in a given area, even with a certain level of imprecision. But there will always be unknown unknowns that will influence things, sometimes massively.

Look at how the invention of the birth control pill changed things in our lifetime. Prior to that, demographers in the 1960s thought the population of the world would keep growing well past 10 billion by the year 2000. There was a whole industry of books written about how overpopulation would doom us all. There was even a TOS episode showing such a world.

Now there is a whole industry of books (well, maybe just podcasts, TED Talks, and YouTube videos) about how the coming population collapse will doom us all. The truth, at the end of the day, is the future remains unknown, and can and will be influenced by factors that have yet to arise and have not been considered. NOTHING is written (with apologies to Lawrence of Arabia.)

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Saturday, March 15, 2025 - 05:47 pm: Edit

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Saturday, March 15, 2025 - 08:50 pm: Edit

Jswile was referring to one thing (a projection over the next 75 years), I was referring to another (an estimate of the past five years), and they crossed each other, as Steve said above. I noted that Steve was correct in his assumption that that's what happened.

By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Sunday, March 16, 2025 - 11:13 am: Edit

Actually, I think China has a decent idea how many citizens it has. Because they do have national ID Cards and keep track ok people. And people have to pay taxes. Kids get mandatory vaccines. Schools take attendance. The Chinese Communist Party makes people go to meetings. MSS & MPS do all kinds of stuff. etc

I can't believe that you can live there without being "on the record" somehow.