Happy Thursday, GoldBuzzers!

Markets were closed North of the border for Canada Day yesterday, and it’s a short week for Americans with bond markets closing early today and everything closed on Friday, for the Fourth.

Meanwhile, there's a monetary story worth your time before the long weekend starts. Washington is talking about gold-backed Treasury bonds again, and the proposed launch date is not a coincidence.

Ok. Let’s get into it. ⬇️

New Fed chair Kevin Warsh gave gold its best day in weeks by declining to say much at all. At the ECB's Sintra forum in Portugal, he acknowledged inflation risks have eased, then refused to guide on the July or September rate call.

A shade less hawkish than his June debut, plus a soft ADP print (98,000 versus 113,000 expected), pushed gold close to 2 percent higher to about $4,090, up off Tuesday's $3,941 low, the weakest since November.

The bounce stayed capped: markets still price better-than-even odds of a hike by year end, the 10-year yield sits near 4.46 percent, and the dollar held firm. Silver could not follow, stuck below $60 near $58 at a seven-month low, widening the gold-silver ratio back toward 70 to 1 from under 50 to 1 during January's run to $121.

Before markets close for the holiday, today’s payrolls is the next test.

With America's 250th anniversary two days out, one idea keeps resurfacing in precious metals circles. The federal government could issue long-dated Treasury bonds tied to gold, and it could revalue the reserves it already holds.

The proposal belongs to economist Judy Shelton, a former Federal Reserve nominee who has argued for sound money for years. She calls them Treasury Trust Bonds. The structure is a 50-year, zero-coupon security, and at maturity the holder chooses repayment in dollars or in a fixed weight of physical gold, whichever they prefer.

Shelton has pinned the launch to July 4, 2026, with the bonds maturing on July 4, 2076, the country's 300th anniversary. If it happened, it would be the first US gold-linked government security since Nixon closed the gold window in 1971.

The reserves sit at the center of this. The Treasury holds roughly 261 million ounces, most of it at Fort Knox, and those ounces are still carried on the books at $42.22, a number frozen since the 1973 Par Value Modification Act. Book value comes to about $11 billion.

At a market price near $4,000, the same holdings are worth over $1 trillion. A formal revaluation would hand the government a large one-time balance sheet gain without buying or selling a single ounce. Shelton's pitch is to lock that gold up as collateral behind the new bonds rather than sell it, what she has called the family jewels.

Supporters see a few reasons this could work. Foreign central banks and sovereign wealth funds already hold dollar Treasuries but worry about currency debasement over decades. A gold option gives them a hedge inside the instrument itself, which could pull in demand and ease pressure on ordinary Treasury issuance. Backers also argue it would signal dollar discipline at a moment of record debt.

Now the other side. No announcement has come from the Treasury, the White House, or the Fed confirming any of this for July 4th or any other date. Credible gold backing would need transparency the government has not delivered, starting with an independent audit of Fort Knox. Some critics warn the move could read as an admission of weakness in existing debt markets rather than a show of strength.

I want to draw one line clearly, because it gets blurred constantly. Revaluing the reserves to market is an accounting change, moving the gold from $42.22 up toward the spot price. That is a different animal from the theories circulating online that claim an official $20,000 gold price is coming. Those are not the same idea, and conflating them is how people talk themselves into bad decisions. The $20,000 call options and commemorative Mint products getting passed around as proof are noise, not policy.

Whether this week delivers a real bond, a symbolic gesture, or nothing at all, the conversation itself tells you something important. Persistent global debt and steady central bank buying keep pushing gold back into the monetary discussion after decades on the sidelines. That’s the part worth tracking, well past the fireworks.

A week ago I shared a note from T.D. in Nova Scotia, a recent INSIDER subscriber who acted on our Min Risk signal before the drop. With gold and silver still selling off, it's worth showing again - because what he describes is exactly what's playing out now.

That’s all for this Thursday, folks. See you on Sunday.

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Rick Adams
Founder, GoldBuzz
rick@goldbuzz.com