Quote Originally Posted by Baa_Baa View Post
Let's assume for a moment that the USA does has 8000 tonnes of Gold, that is 257,205,973 troy ounces * $910 per t.ounce = 234,057,435,020. That's a big number right, 234 billion USD's? Now figure out what percentage that is of the total debt of the USA. Uh oh! I guess they're not relying on Gold to bail out their financial system, at least not at this price of $910 they're not.

BAA
Of course, but I think it's a symbolic, confidence thing that at least the US and a lot of European central banks have something! What do we have in NZ? Zip. Australia sold 2/3's of their gold in 2000 at the rock bottom of the market leaving them with about 43 tonnes.

I read a little while ago that one of the solutions to reduce or eradicate global government debt is a radical revaluing of gold. A raising of the base line so that $234B has an extra couple of zeros . . . of course that would be a tip of the hat to gold as a monetary asset and tantamount to an admission that that fiat currencies have been horribly mismanaged and many of the countries (like us) who don't have any gold would miss-out. Another side effect would be the likely nationalization of every gold-mine in the world!

Interesting concept though.