National Geographic goes to 33 Liberty Street in New York City to visit the Federal Reserve’s gold vault, home to about one-quarter of the world’s gold. Beginning at about the 3 minute mark, you get to see what one tonne of gold looks like, another reminder of just how dense the metal is.
About half-way through this segment, they visit the New York gold district and then they begin a discussion of the current monetary system with this:
All that money used to be backed by gold, but not any more. Today, our buck is backed by a promise from the U.S. government. The fact that it all works based on trust alone is simply taken for granted…
In part two, they go to Washington to visit Fed Chief Ben Bernanke. Pretty interesting stuff.
