(Augusta Precious Metals)—The value of the United States Treasury’s gold reserves has now exceeded $1 trillion, a historic first driven by gold prices climbing 45% so far this year. This surge places the market value at over 90 times the official figure listed on the government’s books, which still relies on the $42.22 per ounce rate established back in 1973.
With national debt continuing to mount and fiscal pressures building, economic insiders are buzzing about the possibility the Treasury might finally update its valuation to reflect current realities, unlocking hundreds of billions in potential funds.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent touched on this possibility earlier in the year when he declared, “We’re going to monetize the asset side of the U.S. balance sheet.”
His remark set off a wave of analysis among economists and investors, who saw it as a signal that the government could tap into undervalued assets like gold to ease budgetary strains. Monetizing in this way would mean recognizing the true worth of the 261 million ounces allegedly held at Fort Knox and other secure sites, potentially adding close to $990 billion to the Treasury’s general account without needing to sell a single bar. That influx could cover deficits, pay down debt, or even seed new initiatives, all while avoiding the political fallout of higher taxes or deeper borrowing.
Bessent later walked back any immediate plans for a gold revaluation, telling a podcast audience, “I said we’re gonna mobilize the asset side of the balance sheet,” but clarifying that no such step was imminent.
Still, the idea lingers, especially as gold’s role in global finance gains renewed attention amid currency instability and geopolitical tensions. Unlike most nations where central banks manage gold stocks, the U.S. setup has the Treasury as the direct owner, with the Federal Reserve holding corresponding certificates credited at the outdated price. A revaluation would ripple through both entities’ balance sheets, boosting assets on one side and liabilities on the other, while crediting the Treasury with fresh dollars.
Bank of America’s Mark Cabana, a former New York Fed staffer and expert on monetary plumbing, laid out the mechanics in an August note. He said that “a gold re-marking could cause TGA to be paid down in ways that stoke macro activity, risk inflation, & add excess cash into the banking system (higher TGA would eventually move to higher Fed reserves or ON RRP balances).”
The TGA, or Treasury General Account, acts as the government’s checking account at the Fed. Drawing it down through spending would pump liquidity into the economy, much like printing money but without the overt intervention.
Cabana went further, stating, “In essence, gold re-marking would ease both fiscal & monetary policy (all else equal).”
This easing effect stems from the way revaluation mimics quantitative easing—expanding the Fed’s liabilities through added Treasury deposits, which could then flow into banks and markets. While that might spur growth in a sluggish economy, it also carries the peril of overheating prices, a concern that has long plagued fiat-based systems detached from hard assets like gold.
Cabana wrapped up his assessment by acknowledging that while revaluation remains feasible, it raises “legal questions” and “may not be well received by the market since it would amount to an easing of fiscal & monetary policies + erosion of fiscal / monetary independence.”
The erosion he mentions points to blurred lines between the Treasury’s fiscal decisions and the Fed’s monetary role, potentially undermining the checks that prevent unchecked spending. Markets might view it as a gimmick, leading to volatility or even higher gold prices as investors anticipate further asset monetization—perhaps extending to bitcoin or other reserves, as some have speculated in connection with broader policy shifts.
This wouldn’t mark uncharted territory. Several countries have pursued similar steps in recent decades to address their own fiscal binds. Germany, for instance, revalued its gold and foreign exchange reserves in 1997 under Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Finance Minister Theo Waigel, aiming to meet criteria for joining the euro. The move generated about 12 billion deutsche marks, helping balance budgets without drastic cuts.
Italy followed suit that same year, using revaluation gains to shore up public finances ahead of euro adoption. South Africa did so in 2010, channeling proceeds into banking sector reforms amid post-financial crisis recovery.
A recent Federal Reserve study examined these cases, along with those of Lebanon and the combined Curacao/Saint Martin, concluding that outcomes vary—offering quick relief but not always solving deeper structural issues, with mixed success in stabilizing economies long-term.
For the U.S., revaluing gold could represent a pragmatic tool in an era of ballooning obligations, allowing the government to leverage a dormant asset rooted in the nation’s history of sound money principles. Yet it also invites scrutiny over whether such accounting adjustments truly strengthen fiscal discipline or merely delay tougher choices. As gold continues its ascent, driven by central bank buying and investor flight to safety, the pressure on policymakers like Bessent may only grow. If pursued, this step could not only reshape federal finances but also signal a broader reevaluation of gold’s place in the modern monetary order.
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
