Abbotâs statement: âThe law will repatriate $1 billion of gold bullion from the Federal Reserve in New York to Texas.â
The problem: âTexas has no gold bars in the Federal Reserveâs New York vault. And what the state has is not worth a billion dollars. Instead some 4,200 gold bars bought in 2011 by the University of Texasâs endowment fund (the second largest in the country after Harvardâs) are stored in the basement vault of HSBCâs headquarters at 450 5th Avenue in New York City, just south of the New York Public Library. For the last four years, the endowment has paid an estimated $1 million per year to store their gold there. (If it had been at the New York Fed the cost would have totaled about $15,400 over that period). And the new depository law does not require the universityâs endowment fund to relocate the gold to Texas.â