THE US government has $52 billion stashed away that hasn’t yet been spent!

Quick, call President Obama‘s bookkeepers. How’d they miss this?

A year ago, that amount would have caused at least a wow, or maybe even a holy cow. And my first sentence above would have deserved the exclamation point I jokingly put at the end of it.

But these days, when it costs $787 billion to put a TARP over bad bank assets, an astounding $700 billion just to attempt an economic rescue and $3 billion simply to lure people into new car showrooms, that $52 billion is looking like a pittance.

Still, it’s there.

Something called the Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF) had exactly $52.411 billion when the Treasury Department last reported on July 31.

Some of that amount is in yen and some in tricky securities of questionable worth, but the total is still impressive.

As you probably guessed from the name, the Exchange Stabilization Fund is supposed to be used when our nation’s currency is in trouble.

The dollar certainly is in trouble these days, having fallen so sharply that there is increasing talk — mostly from overseas — that it can no longer be trusted as the currency of choice for international trading.

Here in the US, we are mainly wondering when the Treasury and the Federal Reserve will begin to buy dollars using some of that $52 billion as a way to firm up its value.

Keeping our currency weak has some benefits for US companies that sell products overseas.

But currency negligence, besides being contrary to the guiding principle of the Federal Reserve, also tends to foster international tension.

And right now, we don’t need to have other countries, especially our wonderful friends and benevolent creditors, the Chinese, tense.

When I first heard about the Exchange Stabilization fund decades ago it was puny, with only $9 billion or so in it. And I was sure it was being used to prop up more than just the value of the dollar.

Who’s to say, for instance, if a few million or even a billion wasn’t finding its way into some other more nefarious market adventure?

Those amounts, as large as they once seemed, were never really enough to underwrite the US currency.

The currency market, smart people have told me over the years, was simply too big to be controlled.

So, if we aren’t supporting the currency, why not put that $52 billion to work?

If the Treasury hadn’t already decided to take the ultimate step of just printing money anytime it needed it — called “quantitative easing” by the semantically blessed academics who dreamed up that scheme — a raid on the ESF would be mighty tempting.

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Unbelievable! The Securities & Exchange Commission last week appointed a 29-year old Goldman Sachs executive named Adam Storch as the managing executive of its enforcement division.

Enforcement! Goldman Sachs?

You already know about all the curious contacts Goldman’s leader Lloyd Blankfein has had with Treasury heads Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner. So I assume the SEC must also be aware of these contacts.

While I have no reason to question Mr. Storch’s ethics or motives in taking this job that presumably pays a fraction of his Goldman salary, not to mention bonus, isn’t the SEC even a little concerned about its already soiled reputation?

So, I repeat: Unbelievable!

Thank goodness the job of First Lady isn’t an appointed position, because I bet Goldman has a lot of charming female executives who could fill it.

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Back in early September, I mentioned in this column that you’d soon be hearing the issue of bank capitalization again.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) is making banks take assets of so-called “special purpose entities back onto their books starting Jan. 1.

And, like clockwork, banks last week threatened that if they needed to raise capital to comply with these new rules they’d stop lending money.

And you know what, you can’t blame banks for acting this way. Washington has already proved it’ll give anything to the banking system, so why not try a tantrum?

The only problem is that FASB isn’t part of the government. And FASB’s independence has already been called into question.

The accounting rules organization already caved on new provisions that would have forced banks to account for assets on their book at the current market value.

So FASB is talking tough.

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OK, let’s do the math again.

Last year the national debt stood at $10.024 trillion. This year it’s at $11.917 trillion. That’s an increase of $1.895 trillion.

So, the national deficit for the last fiscal year was $1.895 trillion — not the $1.4 trillion that the White House announced last week.

I wrote about this in a column back on Oct. 8 because I anticipated that Washington wouldn’t own up to the real deficit.

The difference between their numbers and mine is simple: Washington won’t include the amount of money that is “borrowed” each year from Social Security, which still takes in more money than it pays out.

The 2008 deficit was “only” $400 billion, so whatever number you use, the increase is tre mendous.

Whether you think there should be another stimulus package (I think that’s nuts) and health care reform (yes we should, but we simply can’t afford it), don’t get fooled by Washington’s numbers. We are borrowing a lot more than the politicians will admit. john.crudele@nypost.com