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New York is home to the world's largest pile of gold is it safe there?
On the bedrock of Manhattan, five storeys below ground, the largest accumulation of gold anywhere on earth... 
King Midas or perhaps Tutankhamen must have known the feeling well. But whereas they would have been able to take a few bars home whenever they wanted, here the limits are a great deal more stringent.
No-one has ever tried to rob the gold vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY), a few scant blocks from Wall Street, and our humble gathering of foreign correspondents were not about to test the security arrangements.
The entire place can be locked down in just 28 seconds by armed guards, most of them expert marksmen. There is even a practice firing-range on site, along with an in-house medical centre.
There is no door into the vault, where gold worth about $90bn (£50bn) is held, representing roughly one-quarter of the world's official reserves, weighing in at 7,000 tonnes. Instead, a narrow two-metre-long passageway is cut into a 90-tonne steel cylinder that is rotated shut every night.
It's hardly comforting to be told that there is only enough oxygen to survive within the air-tight room for about 72 hours, just when we're standing inside when the locking procedure is demonstrated.
Goldfinger
Journalists are not allowed to take notes inside the vault, lest someone provides an overly-graphic account of the layout.
There are elements which, in a surreal fashion, resemble the set of the James Bond movie "Goldfinger" - beyond the beautiful, gleaming and numbered bars themselves.
The vault is locked manually, using large circular wheels, and the huge bullion-weighing machine itself looks like a throwback to the 1960s.
Most of the subterranean gold here belongs to foreign governments, although the Fed's employees are not at liberty to say exactly which. The New York Fed's senior vice president and spokesman, Peter Bakstansky, is good-natured but firm on the issue of whether, say, Iraq had any bars down below.
"I don't know where their gold is, and I wouldn't be able to tell you if it's here," he says.
"We know who our account relationships are with, but just as with the place where you banked, you probably wouldn't want your name listed on the wall.
"Our account holders feel much the same way."
Independence - of sorts
The reason why the bullion inside the thick walls and barred windows of the FRBNY comes from both domestic and foreign sources is the devolved responsibilities of the independent Federal Reserve System.
New York not only handles foreign financial transactions for the US Treasury, but also for many central banks abroad. It is a self-financing and trusted deposit point for most of the world economy.
America's carefully-constructed central banking system ensures that routine politics and the changing desires of the markets are kept outside the door.
But independence has its limits. In the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979, the Fed froze Iran's assets by presidential order.
In foreign dealings, Mr Bakstansky says, the State Department's instructions come first.
"We're independent in our policy making, but we're not an independent, floating-free entity within the United States. We're part of the government."
Foreign governments are not charged by the Fed for storing their precious reserves, but fees are incurred for withdrawals, or for moving bars to another compartment within the vault.
There has not been a single transaction so far this year. Governments, it seems, are happy to leave things as they are, despite the ever-present threats and alerts.
No charge
The threat of becoming a target is of course on the minds of those at the FRBNY.
The events of 11 September 2001 shook the Fed as it shook all other New York institutions.
That day marked the most recent lockdown of the vaults, the doors staying shut for several days.
Yet moving the world's biggest pot of gold to somewhere which is a less obvious target is not an option.
"There's been no discussion of which I am aware to move gold reserves, and countries have not moved their reserves," Mr Bakstansky said.
"We have roughly the same amount now as we did three years ago and if countries felt this was an insecure facility, they would have moved their gold out and put it somewhere else where they felt safer."
Overseas dollars
The gold reserves are the glamorous focus of the FRBNY.
But the truly mind-boggling statistics are to be found in the volume of electronic funds that are moved around the national system.
The average daily weight of transactions is $2.2 trillion, with an individual "Fed Wire" payment averaging $3.5m.
Out there in the world's cash economy, however, the Fed has only limited control over the ebb and flow of the mighty dollar.
For all the levers at the disposal of the Board of Governors, and the dozen Reserve Banks around the country, it is worth remembering that only 30% of the dollars in circulation are in the US.
And although the FRBNY still has the biggest gold reserves in the world, the country with more 100-dollar bills than anywhere else isn't the US. It's Russia.
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