"The Key to the Gold Vault"

Some interesting tidbits from a pdf booklet on the New York Federal Reserve Bank website:

• The Federal Reserve Bank of New York stores gold bullion belonging to 60 foreign central banks and international monetary organizations.  The Fed does not charge foreign countries for holding gold, but it does levy a handling fee when gold enters, is moved within, or is shipped out of the vault.
• That gold is housed in a vault that rests on the bedrock of Manhattan Island -- one of the few foundations adequate to support the weight of the vault, its door, and the gold inside -- 80 feet below street level and 50 feet below sea level.
• In mid-2004, the Fed's vault contained roughly 266 million troy ounces of gold (1 troy ounce is 1.1 times as heavy as the avoirdupois ounce we use for general measurement).  This represents 25 to 30% of the world's official monetary reserves.
• The NY Federal Reserve Bank stores gold in the form of bars that resemble construction bricks and stacks them on wooden pallets like those used in warehouses.  The shape of a bar may indicate whether it was cast in the U.S. or abroad.  Before 1986, bars cast in this country generally were rectangular bricks 7" long, 3 5/8" wide and between 1 5/8 to 1 3/4" thick.  Gold bars cast more recently in the U.S. or abroad are trapezoidal.  Bars from the NY Assay Office have square edges, bars from the Denver Assay Office have rounded sides, and bars from the San Francisco Assay Office have rounded corners.
• The NY Fed's vault holds only a small fraction of the U.S. gold reserves, a majority of which are held in depositories of the Treasury Dept. at Ft. Knox, KY, and West Point, NY.
• If you are still planning your summer vacation, you too could be one of the 25,000 visitors a year to view the NY Fed's Gold Vault.

Link:  http://www.ny.frb.org/education/addpub/goldvaul.pdf

(ag) June 26, 2007, in Federal Banking Agencies/FRB