Armageddon, Y’all
I suspect you’ve heard by now that Texas has decided that Fort Knox cannot be trusted what with all these United States Armies and Walmart and underground tunnels and Barack Obama roaming around Texas and whatnot.
So the headline is that Texas “will repatriate $1 billion of gold bullion from the Federal Reserve in New York to Texas.” He’s gonna call it The Texas Bullion Depository. Abbott says the reason he wants to do this is so that the storage fees can stay in Texas instead of going outside the United States.
That’s hogwash. We are currently paying $1 million a year to store the gold belonging to the University of Texas. Bringing it here increases the storage rate to $7 million a year.
What Greg Abbott is scared of – along with his rich friends – is that Obama is just a step away from Roosevelt’s executive order in 1933 make gold hoarding illegal. Seriously. They want to take it with them.
Weird Fact #1 – Texas does not have a billion dollars in gold.
Indeed, Texas has no gold bars in the Federal Reserve’s New York vault. And what the state has is not worth a billion dollars. Instead some 4,200 gold bars bought in 2011 by the University of Texas’s endowment fund (the second largest in the country after Harvard’s) are stored in the basement vault of HSBC’s headquarters at 450 5th Avenue in New York City, just south of the New York Public Library. For the last four years, the endowment has paid an estimated $1 million per year to store their gold there. (If it had been at the New York Fed the cost would have totaled about $15,400 over that period). And the new depository law does not require the university’s endowment fund to relocate the gold to Texas.
Weird Fact #2 – So why does the University of Texas have gold bars?
Governor Rick Perry did everything he could to destroy the University of Texas. Thank God he was only semi-competent at that, too. The Board of Regents is a bunch of old white guys who share the Perry paranoia. One of those guys is Kyle Bass.
Bass isn’t just a casual metals speculator. When he believed nickel was undervalued he bought 20 million nickel coins to prove his point (they’re stored on a pallet in a Brinks vault). A brave new world mix of country club and prepper compound, in a Michael Lewis profile, Bass revealed that he’d prepared for a collapse of the government and economy by accumulating – in his words – “guns and gold.”
I do not know where he has stored the university’s guns.
Weird Fact #3 – who the damn hell is a nickel hoarder? Has the tooth fairy filed a complaint?
Weird Fact #4 – The bill to set up the Texas Depository was introduced in 2013 but died when “analysis showed that the state would be on the hook for $14 million in the first two years due to the costs of setting up a state-run depository guarded and administered by people on the public payroll.”
So, this time they fixed that.
This time his bill outsourced the expense to private industry so … it doesn’t show up as an actual expense on the budget.
It’ll cost the same – probably more, because private industry has to make a profit. But, it doesn’t show up as an actual expense.
Weird Fact #5 – Because it is held by private industry, that means the State of Texas really doesn’t own it – private industry does. Of course, private industry is always trustworthy. I’m sure those Enron Boys are looking for something to do. I am practically certain that Greg Abbott’s college roommates are setting up a “Butch and Bob’s Neighborhood Gold Storage and Fried Catfish.”
Weird Fact #6 – Nobody steals gold.
As of yet, Capriglione doesn’t know where the bullion depository might be located. But he dismissed a suggestion that a building known as a the “Texas Bullion Depository” will attract criminal masterminds. “You don’t need as much security because gold is incredibly heavy and hard to liquidate,” he said. “There aren’t many heists of gold bullion…nobody’s going to be able to steal 80,000 pounds of gold.”
One word: backhoe.
Plus, we don’t think a criminal mastermind will steal it. We think old white men will.
I suggest we put it all in Greg booth’s (On edit: Abbott’s – damn autocorrect) head – that’s empty and totally safe from intrusion.
Y’all, I am damn certain that there’s a dozen more weird facts. I am also certain that the reason this is happening is so Greg Abbott and his paranoid friends can sit around a nakkid in a gold bouillon depository and count their money.
Thanks to everybody and their Aunt Matilda for the heads up.
OMG! Do they really want to move all of that gold so close to… (gulp)… MEXICO!!
1Greg booth’s? Dang autocorrect!
2All those “messicans” with their cantaloupe thighs will be heading back across the border with all that Texas gold bullion.
3Arrrgh matey. You be movin’ yore gold down nearer the Golfo de Mexica, if you please. Arrrgh!
4I think it’s all about having gold after secession.
5Gives a new meaning to the term “Fool’s Gold.”
6Look what happens to old white men when they do not live Matthew 25! They go gold crazy! And in that damn bullion depository, the Rapture will never find them!
7If they are letting private enterprise maintain & guard the gold, they’ll have TSA rejects walking around an empty building in no time.
8I bet I could hide it for them for nothing in my garage under a bunch of old boxes and stacks of odds and ends like broken chairs and pogo sticks and old books that nobody wants. I can’t even bribe anyone to go out there and clean it up.
9But, but, there is NO gold bullion from Texas in the Federal Repository, only gold bars that belong to the UofT, not the state, and they aren’t in the Fed Depository anyway.
However, I’m guessing this virtual withdrawal just sounds like a good enough reason to pass a bill to build a gold repository in Texas for its non-existent gold.
This one totally confuses me, probably because I was born a Southern Canadian and the Texans have such a different outlook on life 🙂
10Nickels are only 25% nickel.
11Leave the gold alone, please.
I recall at least one private company getting into trouble for selling people gold coins, but not delivering them:
http://www.vqronline.org/reporting-articles/2014/06/losing-sparta
My guess is that any gold deposited with great fanfare with private companies will have long since disappeared when it comes time pull it back out.
12Juanita/Susan. You never cease to impress me with your grasp of government realities.
13Here’s the thing – physical gold has turned out to be a lousy investment for UT. The cost basis of this gold, which was acquired in 2010 and 2011, is $1,150.17 per ounce. Gold today is trading at $1,187.35 per ounce, almost no increase over four and five years from the purchases. In the short run, it’s expected to go lower so the UT holdings will be underwater. By comparison, the S&P index has risen about 60% over the same period. To say in hindsight that this was a stupid investment is putting it mildly.
So to bring this bullion back to Texas – how do you safeguard it? Why, you contract with some private entities to store and guard it for you! Think of the bribes! Think of the kickbacks! Think of those nice, shiny bars just up and taking a walk down the road! This is gonna be great, so pop yourself a big bucket of popcorn and sit back to watch. Better yet, empty out your trunk and sign up with Uber, then make Greg an offer to tote around a gold bar of two for him.
14At first I read it as “Texas Bull Depository” and I thought, “what a grand idea, keep all that Bulls^(t at home and away from the rest of us.
15So, the gun and gold loving Texans of means are going to let the Texas government (or ANY government) hang onto their bullion bars until the proverbial fan is hit and then just waltz over to the depository and check out their assets? Someone doesn’t realize the depth of the ignorance and paranoia so rampant in Texas. Oh, and good luck making your way away from Fort Crock.
16I’ve never understood wanting to hoard gold if you are a prepper. Seriously. If you think everything is going to fall apart and there will be no government, no money, etc, why in heaven’s name would gold be worth anything? It’s pretty and all, but in a true disaster wouldn’t you be more concerned with clean water, food, staying warm (or cool in TX)? What are you supposed to do with gold? Hit people (or zombies!) with it? If money is no good, why would gold or silver be worth anything?
17The Permanent University Fund is shared by UT and TAMU, two thirds to UT and one third at TAMU. It should not be called the UT fund.
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