From the historical data in the World Gold Council’s archives comes the chart below depicting the dramatic rise and fall of U.S. gold reserves before and after World War II (note that the stair-step pattern prior to 1950 was the result of data being available only in five-year increments).

All sorts of helpful annotations could be made here such as the surge in early 20th century U.S. exports leading to a great accumulation of gold reserves under various forms of the gold standard and then 1960′s “Guns and Butter” U.S. policies leading to a great loss of gold reserves under the Bretton Woods system.