If there's one place a James Bond villain — or even some actual governments — would love raiding today, it's the basement of a sombre building in lower Manhattan: the world's biggest gold vault.
Gold prices hit a record $1,632.8 an ounce Friday, reflecting a nervous rush by private and national investors from stocks, dollars and euros to the safe-haven commodity.
And the biggest single pile of the stuff on the planet lies deep beneath the New York branch of the US Federal Reserve Bank, a stone's throw from the Stock Exchange.
On a visit, a guide from the bank revealed the 7,000-tonne hoard gleaming softly in a vault carved from Manhattan's bed rock, five stories under the Big Apple's teeming streets.
Cast in bricks, stacked ceiling-high in blue-painted, caged boxes, the heap is worth a staggering $350 billion.
As it happens, the United States is the world's biggest Goldfinger with 8,133 tons in reserves, more than twice as much as number two Germany.
But the bulk of that treasure is stored at the famous Fort Knox and at West Point, while the gold below New York mostly belongs to 36 foreign governments seeking not just financial, but physical safety.
The owners' identities are kept secret — all part of extraordinary security measures at the bank, which, barring in movies like the third 'Die Hard,' has never been robbed.
An AFP reporter had to show identity papers through a bulletproof, soundproof screen before even entering the bank's ornate lobby. From there, visitors were escorted into the subterranean elevator.
The vault is entered not through a door, but a tunnel secured by a gargantuan steel cylinder that rotates to block or open access.
Once inside, among the towers of gold, it takes three separate employees selected from different departments to open each triple-locked strongbox.
As if the fortress and swarms of armed guards were not enough, AFP's reporter was ordered to put away his notebook in case he sketched the layout. Snap photographs? Forget about it.
Source : New Age