Sunday, May 15, 2011

Selling Gold To Build Slums...What a Deal!

With the United States poised to slam into its debt limit Monday, conservative economists are eyeballing all that gold in Fort Knox. There’s about 147 million ounces of gold parked in the legendary vault. Gold is selling at nearly $1,500 an ounce. That’s many billions of dollars in bullion.

“Its just sort of sitting there,” said Ron Utt, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation. “Given the high price it is now, and the tremendous debt problem we now have, by all means, sell at the peak.”

More at WaPo

The federal government’s largest housing construction program for the poor has squandered hundreds of millions of dollars on stalled or abandoned projects and routinely failed to crack down on derelict developers or the local housing agencies that funded them.

Nationwide, nearly 700 projects awarded $400 million have been idling for years, a Washington Post investigation found. Some have languished for a decade or longer even as much of the country struggles with record-high foreclosures and a dramatic loss of affordable housing.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which oversees the nation’s housing fund, has largely looked the other way: It does not track the pace of construction and often fails to spot defunct deals, instead trusting local agencies to police projects.

The result is a trail of failed developments in every corner of the country. Fields where apartment complexes were promised are empty and neglected. Houses that were supposed to be renovated are boarded up and crumbling, eyesores in decaying neighborhoods.

Also at WaPo.

Why stop there? I wonder how much the Chinese would pay to own Area 51? Enough to wipe out our trade balance and then some, wouldn't you say?

7 comments:

drjim said...

Public Housing, just like Social "Security", is one of the greatest con games ever perpetrated on the American people.
And the sheeple wonder why we're in trouble.....

MrGarabaldi said...

I hope that they don't sell the gold, the money would be pissed away on some vote buying scheme. The gold is part of the wealth of this country, the framework of our economic system. Even though our currency isn't on the gold standard, it still is there in the background. if obummer and crowd sell it, we truly will be a 3rd world economy and a 3rd world nation

drjim said...

And that's just *exactly* what they want!

Roberta X said...

Besides, don't slums pretty much require bling-bling?

All Roark dynamited was his building -- the outfits behind some of these scammed-out Projects manage to dynamite people's hopes and our tax money.

Y'know, they appear to have stopped the regular inventories at Ft. Knox some decades back. Are we sure there's still gold in there?

Anonymous said...

No, it is gone. Clinton gave it to the Russians as compensation for the 1996 VRA to prevent the warehouses in the Ural mountains being opened and guns flooding into the USA.

Stretch said...

There are parts of DC that are indistinguishable from third world countries. All housing programs outlined in the WaPo are in cities run by The Party of The People for at least 40 years.

drjim said...

And parts of L.A., Chicago, Detroit, etc.
Anybody besides me see a pattern here?
Bueller?