The value of a dollar has sunk to a new low, less than 1/3,000th of an ounce of gold. Yet according to a woefully outmoded American law, the federal government must account for its more than 8,100 tons of gold at a completely irrelevant valuation set more than 50 years ago, when the dollar’s value was much higher — about 1/42nd of an ounce.  

That outdated number stems from the precise language of the 1973 Act to Amend the Par Value Modification Act, still in force, legally stipulating that the gold value of the dollar is fixed at “forty-two and two-ninths dollars per fine troy ounce.” In other words, the law values the dollar at 1/42.22nd of an ounce of gold.