An X exchange over the weekend is bringing new light to an issue long shrouded in mystery—the status of America’s purported stockpile of 8,133 tons of gold stored in Fort Knox and other government vaults across the country.

News aggregator ZeroHedge tweeted at President Trump’s head of government efficiency, Elon Musk, “It would be great if @elonmusk could take a look inside Fort Knox just to make sure the 4,580 tons of US gold is there. Last time anyone looked was 50 years ago in 1974.”

Once upon a time, in a land known as Washington, DC, the experts wisely governed the people, and the people were happy. Everything from the nation’s nuclear arsenal to the Internal Revenue Service was run with precision and, most of all, trust. The happy people trusted the experts to always do the right thing which they did.

In his great classic, Crisis and Leviathan, Robert Higgs explained how Franklin Roosevelt’s attacks on the gold standard ushered in “the age of inflation” that has now robbed generations of Americans through the inflation tax. The explanation begins with the goofy economic theory that was the basis for the first New Deal: The backwards belief that low prices caused the Great Depression; therefore, if government could force prices up by restricting production the Depression would end.

In recent days, President Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Senator Rand Paul, and some others have pressed for an audit of the US gold reserves, with a special focus on the gold at Fort Knox. This is perfectly reasonable given that the US gold reserves—which are the property of the US Treasury and not the Federal Reserve—have not undergone even a partial audit in at least forty years.

Tom DiLorenzo, Jonathan Newman, Timothy Terrell, and Jason Jewell spoke on promising alternatives to state-controlled education this past weekend in Tampa. Listen to there talks here:

Educating for Liberty: The 2025 Mises Circle in Tampa