Gold at $42.22 and "One of the Great Mysteries" | Phillip Magness
Gold at $42.22 and "One of the Great Mysteries" | Phillip Magness
Kitco News: 8-4-2026
Economic historian Phillip Magness tells Kitco News anchor Jeremy Szafron that Americans who surrendered gold in 1933 at $20.67 an ounce got none of the gain when Washington repriced it at $35 less than ten months later.
"It's always the private sector that gets the bad end of it." America's 261.5 million ounces are still carried on the federal books at $42.22 an ounce, about $11 billion against more than $1 trillion at market.
Economic historian Phillip Magness tells Kitco News anchor Jeremy Szafron that Americans who surrendered gold in 1933 at $20.67 an ounce got none of the gain when Washington repriced it at $35 less than ten months later. "It's always the private sector that gets the bad end of it."
America's 261.5 million ounces are still carried on the federal books at $42.22 an ounce, about $11 billion against more than $1 trillion at market. Magness traces the line from the 1933 gold surrender and the Gold Reserve Act through Bretton Woods, the 1971 Nixon shock and the Smithsonian Agreement, to the accounting price still sitting on the federal books today.
Two billion dollars of the Treasury's 1934 revaluation gain went into the Exchange Stabilization Fund, which the Treasury can still use in currency markets. Magness calls the $42.22 valuation "one of the great mysteries that comes out of the Nixon era."
Also in the interview: whether anyone holding coins participates when a government reprices its gold, what would actually have to happen for a revaluation to become money the government could spend, why revaluation keeps returning whenever Washington wants financial room without raising taxes, how much public warning there was in 1933, and the single condition Magness says made it possible.
Plus why Spain grew poorer despite receiving enormous quantities of New World bullion, and when America's gold was last independently audited.
00:00 1933: AMERICANS ORDERED TO SURRENDER GOLD
01:46 HOW THE 1933 GOLD ORDER WORKED
03:12 WHY FDR BROKE THE GOLD LINK
05:51 PHYSICAL GOLD VS. PAPER CLAIMS
07:36 THE $2.8 BILLION GOLD REVALUATION GAIN
09:15 FROM BRETTON WOODS TO THE NIXON SHOCK
13:03 WHEN GOLD WAS MISTAKEN FOR NATIONAL WEALTH
16:54 WHY U.S. GOLD IS STILL BOOKED AT $42.22
20:21 WHO CAPTURED THE REVALUATION GAIN?
23:40 REVALUING GOLD TO HELP FUND BITCOIN?
25:59 HOW MUCH WARNING DID AMERICANS RECEIVE?
27:20 EMERGENCY POWERS THEN AND NOW
29:04 THE FORT KNOX AUDIT DEBATE
31:18 WHY CENTRAL BANKS ARE BUYING GOLD
32:20 WHAT HAPPENS WHEN MONEY LOSES TRUST?
34:15 COPPER AND THE RETURN OF MERCANTILISM
39:33 WHAT GOLD HOLDERS SHOULD LEARN FROM 1933