His reasoning appears to be, "If the world is, as the Fed presents it, then we should be able get our gold back. But we can't." and then notes agencies that the auditing agency that was aggressively pushing even an accounting of the available gold has gone silent implying they have been made complicit somehow in the conspiracy.

Here on the outside we can't really know what is going on of course. And frankly if it got out that 1200 tons of gold was on the move I could imagine that would be a tasty target even for nation-state level thieves. But I also found it interesting when the Economist and others reported that the Fed was refusing to let auditors verify their gold deposits. That is a question that really needs an answer and we haven't gotten it yet.

NASDAQ claims a gold market volume of barely 5 tons at this time. Good luck buying 1200 tons at a decent price.

Edit: Whoops. I meant to reply to your parent.

I struggle to think of ones where physically-held gold is better than cash. It only happens when your government fails. In that case (e.g. a Communist revolution or civil war) it's easier to kill you and take everything than negotiate. Where it might have had value, e.g. an American holding pounds sterling during the American Revolution, the old money held value. Selling gold to paranoid individuals is so profitable for a reason.

(The only time it may be useful is if you can tell someone about to harm you that you can pay them with something offsite. At that point, however, wired dollars are an easier sell than waiting for a gold shipment that may or may not be accompanied by Marines.)

Fiat currency has become worthless many times in many countries without a total breakdown of civilization to the extent that gold no longer has any value (e.g., Argentina, Yugoslavia, Brazil, Weimar Germany, post-revolution France, ...)

Gold is for when that stuff hits the fan: no one will take your paper money or if they do, you'll need 50lbs of trillion billion dollar bills to buy a loaf of bread. By noon the price will double.

If you're net liquid worth is well into millions, why not have a few hundred gold coins laying around? You might lose money (compared to the stock market returns) but so what. Peace of mind. Never know. All eggs in one basket and all.

All the bars look identical, to me anyway - there are no stacks of coins or goblets etc. that I could see. (Not all the cages are visible from the vault entrance).

The Fed states in the tour that sovereign nations can keep their gold in the vault, virtually free of charge. And take it back at any time. This is basically a service to the world that the US has provided since the second world war, when much of Europe wanted - for obvious reasons - to move their gold to a safe haven.

As the Federal Reserve is a very secure place, and great value for money, I think most nations have been fine to use that - much cheaper and easier than building a facility that is equally secure.

So personally I'm not sure about the conspiracy theories saying that the Fed refuses to release the gold; to me that is easy for any nation to test - just ask for it, it could be done publicly except that you signal to any thief the date/time of when to attack :-)

Until Simon Gruber shows up

So you use your wealth to ensure that local authorities protect your interests. You setup people in power, vassal kings, to protect land interests above all others. Who is in charge now? Who are their friends? Do they own property scattered all over the globe? Do any of them care about a box of gold?

I wouldn't agree with what you say completely. I wouldn't say gold is replaced by real estate. That doesn't mean that real estate can't be a source of power, though.

I'd recommend you reading this interview with M. Burry (guy who foresaw the real-estate crises in '08): http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/12/big-short-geniu...

If one wants to get all conspiracy-minded: Vancouver, Toronto ... not the warmest of cities. Neither are they in red zones for rising sea levels. And, being in Canada, have more fresh water per person than most anywhere on the planet.

Telling the truth. If there's a doomsday scenario USA might refuse to hand you the gold. He's saying that gold not in your hand is not really gold, because when you might need it everyone else will and they have it.