The information has gone unnoticed. However it certainly has its importance. The board of the second-largest U.S. academic endowment - behind Harvard - announced on April 14 to have completed the purchase of $1 billion in gold bullion

According to bloomberg, the fund took delivery of almost $1 billion in gold bullion and is storing the bars in a New York vault.

Central banks are printing more money than they ever have

Kyle Bass

The fund, which managed about $19.9 billion in assets, has 664,300 ounces.The decision to turn the fund’s investment into gold bars as a hedge against inflation was influenced by Kyle Bass, a Dallas hedge fund manager and member of the endowment’s board. Bass made $500 million on the U.S. subprime-mortgage collapse.

“Central banks are printing more money than they ever have, so what’s the value of money in terms of purchases of goods and services,” Bass said yesterday in a telephone interview. “I look at gold as just another currency that they can’t print any more of.”

Bruce Zimmerman, the endowment’s chief executive officer, said the holdings worth about $987 million, based on wednesday’s closing price of $1,486 an ounce for Comex futures.