Don’t look now but Texas is starting to horde gold

(Bugout.news) Does the state of Texas know something the rest of us do not in terms of future economic turmoil? Perhaps.

In June Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a piece of legislation – HB 483 – establishing the country’s first state-level gold bullion and precious metal depository. The bill, which was authored by Rep. Giovanni Capriglione-R, and Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, authorized the transfer of the $650 million in gold bullion owned by the University of Texas Investment Management Co. was being held in the underground vault of the Federal Reserve Bank in Manhattan to a new security facility in the state.

As noted by the National Center for Policy Analysis:

Bringing Texas-owned gold back is a reasonable move for a Texas which is a strong supporter of local and state-level leadership. There is also rumor that shifting gold back to Texas displays a distrust of the Federal Reserve. 

A number of Texans support bringing their state’s gold back, but right now there is not yet a security place to store the 5,600 gold bars, so the next phase of the plan is to build a secure repository, which is expected to cost around $23 million, or about 3.5 percent of the bullion’s total value.

Abbott justified relocating the state’s gold stash by stating it will increase “the security and stability of our gold reserves” and keep “taxpayers funds from leaving Texas to pay for fees to store gold in facilities outside our state.”

A second piece of the legislation is a phase Rick Cunningham of the Texas Center for Economics, Law and Policy calls the “system” part, which he sais is “an advanced, state-owned and operated system… Not only could it sustain state and local government operations, it could potentially sustain large swaths of the Texas economy, even in the face of a national financial or currency crisis.”

So there you have it: The real reason why this is being done is because Texas legislators and top state officials want a hedge against a potential national economic disaster that will no doubt strain and drain other states’ finances, and in a hurry.

“By not allowing the federal government to maintain a currency monopoly, could this shift eventually lead to the return of the gold standard?” said the NCPA.

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