So your original question: > Why would anyone care how much gold the US government has? was not intended to dismiss interest in any particular asset, but to a

So your original question: > Why would anyone care how much gold the US government has? was not intended to dismiss interest in any particular asset, but to ask why there isn’t an equal amount of interest in assets other than gold. I can’t speak for the other commenters who raised the issue, but it’s presumably because the asset is far more valuable than the ones you’ve mentioned, and far easier to convert to other assets. It’s also been used as medium of exchange or reserve currency for much of human history, so expecting people to dismiss it out of hand based on prevailing theories espoused by modern monetary institutions wouldn’t be reasonable.