Bringing Texas gold back to the state?

Texas Tribune:

Call it the Rick Perry gold rush: The governor wants to bring the state’s gold reserves back from a New York vault to Texas.

And he may have legislative support to do it. Freshman Rep. Giovanni Capriglione, R-Southlake, is carrying a bill that would establish the Texas Bullion Depository, a secure state-based bank to house $1 billion worth of gold bars owned by the University of Texas Investment Management Company, or UTIMCO, and currently stored by the Federal Reserve.

The idea isn’t entirely new. Some Republican members worked on a gold bill last session that was never filed. And gold-standard-backing Ron Paul, the former Texas congressman, has raised repeated concerns about the safety of states' gold supplies.

"If you think gold is a hedge, or a protection, you always want it as close to the individual and the entity as possible," Paul told the Tribune on Thursday. "Texas is better served if it knows exactly where the gold is rather than depending on the security of the Federal Reserve."

Bringing Texas' gold home has gained more traction this legislative session because of Perry’s vocal support for it. On conservative radio host Glenn Beck’s show on Tuesday, the governor said Texas was “in the process” — the legislative process, he later clarified — of “bringing gold that belongs to the state of Texas back into the state.” He argued that the state was at least as capable as the Federal Reserve of safeguarding Texas’ “physical gold.”

“If we own it,” Perry said, “I will suggest to you that that’s not someone else’s determination whether we can take possession of it back or not.”

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I don't have a position on whether the gold should be brought to Texas.  I certainly don't have an objection.  I do think the investment has proved to be a mistake.  The University made a mistake when it sold a large portion of its interest in the Permian Basin oil play to buy the gold.  At the time that looked like a smart move because gold was increasing in value.  Now that is not the case and since that time the new drilling techniques have released much more oil and gas from the Permian Basin and more is expected to be found in the Cline formation.  At the time they were trying to recover from stock market losses caused by the Democrats' housing debacle.  Now the stock market has also recovered.