Texas to Feds: We Want Our Gold Back

It's an unusual move, and one that smacks of secession to some observers: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has signed a bill to create a state-run depository to store gold and other precious metals. The facility will be the only state-level one of its kind, and the bill makes it clear that the federal government or any entity from outside Texas will not be able to confiscate the gold, Raw Story reports. The bill's author, Republican Rep. Giovanni Capriglione, has been pushing for the depository for years, and he tells the Star-Telegram that he has heard from people "literally all over the world who said they want to store their gold" in Texas because of the state's "big and powerful" image.

Abbott's office says the state "will repatriate $1 billion of gold bullion from the Federal Reserve in New York to Texas," a statement that Brian Murphy at Talking Points Memo finds more than one problem with. First, he notes, Texas isn't another country, so it can't "repatriate" anything. Also, Texas doesn't have $1 billion in gold—and the gold it does have isn't stored at the Federal Reserve, according to Murphy. Instead, the University of Texas' endowment fund has around $500 million in gold bars stored in a private bank in Manhattan, where the state pays $1 million a year for storage, much more than the Fed would have charged. (Abbott has ordered the Texas State Guard to monitor US military exercises in the state.)