U.S. government counting its gold

NEW YORK, Aug. 3 (UPI) -- Results of a U.S. Treasury operation to audit about $21 billion in gold bars stashed in a vault at the New York Federal Reserve are expected by year's end.

Some 530,000 gold bars are in a Manhattan vault five stories underground protected by tons of steel, concrete and a 90-ton door. The audit -- which involves weighing 350 bars on an electronic scale and drilling into them to assay the purity of the granules -- began in January, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The Times says the audit may finally put to rest conspiracy theories over the gold deposits, which have been held in the Fed for decades. A bank official said the testing may prove no one has replaced the bullion with fake ingots, proving "Goldfinger didn't sneak in at night" and steal the gold.

The audit is being conducted by U.S. Mint employees under the watchful eyes of the congressional Government Accountability Office.

Only 32,021 of the 530,000 bars belong to the United States government. The rest are foreign reserves of Germany and dozens of other countries that began storing gold in New York for safety 88 years ago. The U.S. abandoned the gold standard in 1971, and no longer backs dollars with gold.

The government has previously tested bullion stored at Ft. Knox, Ky., West Point, N.Y., and the U.S. Mint in Denver.