All the World's Gold Still Wouldn't Cover the US National Debt

All the GOLD World's $8.487.797.102.400.00 The total dollar value of the world's gold 165,000 metric tons - at $1,600.00 per troy ounce. How much above-ground gold is there in all the world? 165,000 The best estimate at the end of 2011 is that around 165,000 metric tons (or tonnes) have been mined in all of human history. That's about 181,881 ordinary tons or 363,762,732 pounds, or 5,820,203,717 ordinary ounces. Gold typically is measured in what are known as troy ounces, which are a little bigger than ordinary ounces (a troy ounce is 31.1034768 grams whereas an ordinary ounce is 28.3495231 grams). There are 32.1507466 troy ounces in a kilogram or 32,150.7466 troy ounces in a metric ton. Ordinary Ounce 28.3495231 g metric tons Troy Ounce 31.1034768 g "More than half of all humanity's gold has been extracted in the past 50 years. Now the world's richest deposits are fast being depleted, and new discoveries are rare. Gone are the hundred-mile-long gold reefs in South Africa or cherry-size nuggets in California. Most of the gold left to mine exists as traces buried in remote and fragile corners of the globe. It's an invitation to destruction. But there is no shortage of miners, big and small, who are willing to accept." Brook Larmer National Geographic How much gold, really, is 165,000 metric tons and 2,500 metric tons? An Olympic swimming pool is 50 by 25 by 2 meters. It therefore contains 2,500 cubic meters of water. Each cubic meter of water is one metric ton. Gold is 19.3 times as dense as water. Therefore an Olympic swimming pool would contain 48,250 metric tons of gold. It follows that 3.42 Olympic-sized swimming pools could contain all the gold that's ever been mined. Another way to imagine this is to think of all the gold in the world ever mined as a single cube. That would be a cube with each side just over 20 meters, or 67 feet, in length. Given that about 2,500 metric tons of gold is mined each year, this annual production of gold would fit in a cube whose sides were 5 meters, or 16.6 feet, in length. All the production of gold in the world for a given year would thus fit in a 20 by 30 foot 1oom with 50m ....- 5 m - 25 m -- x3.42 ... ..5m an 8 foot ceiling. Given 165,000 metric tons as an upper bound on available gold, how much does that leave to each human on the planet? 44 "Gold production has increased by a Humanity has just hit the 7 billion mark. That leaves factor of 2.1 from 1959 to 2010. At the just under 24 grams of gold to each person on planet earth, or .76 troy ounces or .83 ordinary ounces per person. In an ordinary male gold wedding band at 18-karat purity, there are about 5 grams of pure gold. That means every person on planet earth could own about 5 gold rings. At the current price of $1,600.00 per troy ounce of gold, that leaves $1,213.00 in gold same time, the world population has been multiplied by a factor 2.2. Thus we produced more or less the same amount of gold per inhabitant as in 1959." 7,000,000,000 people 1i i for each person on planet earth. gold rings per person How much gold gets mined per year, worldwide? The table here shows world gold production from 1900 thru 2011. Production in 1900 was around 400 metric 3000 tons per year and has consistently moved up over the years. It is currently around 2,500 metric tons per year. The all time high was reached in 2001, with 2,600 metric tons of gold production worldwide. The total gold mined from 1900 to the present is just under 141,000 metric tons. Given that humans have mined at total of 165,000 metric tons over the course of history. that leaves just 24,000 metric tons mined before the 20th century. 2500 2000 1500 1000 metric tons of gold mined annually 500 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 *Estimated value for 2011. **Cumulative average thru November 22, 2011 Year Didn't the Spanish get lots and lots of gold from the New World, especially from the Aztecs and Incas? In fact, the Spanish got much more silver than gold from the New World. In the 16th century, when production was in full swing, the Spanish only got 154 metric tons of gold, whereas they got 7440 metric tons of silver. Gold production in the new world for the entire the 16th century was thus less than half of what it was worldwide in 1900. Here is a comparison, decade by decade, of Spanish gold and silver production in the New World in the 16th century. 3000 Silver Gold 2000 40 1000 1503 1510 1521 1530 1541- 1550 1561 1570 1541 1550 1561 1570 1581 1590 1503 1590 1510 How does the gold that's mined get used? Official Holdings & Investments 34% Combined Industrial Use Jewelry 52% 12% 52 percent gets used for jewelry, 18 percent constitute official holdings (as in central banks of nations), 16 percent take the form of investments, 12 percent find industrial uses, leaving 2 percent unaccounted for. Jewelry Official Holdings Investments Industrial Unaccounted 10 20 30 40 50 60 Which nations consume the most gold? 745.7 metric tons 428.0 India metric tons China United States 128.81 metric tons Since jewelry is the most common use of gold, gold consumption worldwide is most easily gauged by gold jewelry consumption. India is in this respect far and away the biggest consumer of gold. Here are the data for 2009 and 2010 of gold jewelry consumption by country in metric tons. 800 I 2009 I 2010 700 600 500 Worldwide 2010 jewelry consumption in metric tons 400 300 200 2059.6 100 87.6675 percent consumed by countries named in chart. Where does the world's gold get produced? Here is the breakdown of 100 top gold-producing nations in the world for 2009. China sits at the top. with the United States the runner up: Nugget photo courtesy of Holabird-Kagin Americana Top 10 Countries for Gold Production Percentage of World Production 85,000 320,000 100-ounce 2009 Production of Gold (kilograms) California Gold Nugget China Côte D'ivoire Algeria United States Senegal Armenia Australia Saudi Arabia Poland South Africa Sweden Panama Russlan Federation Laos Burundi Peru Zimbabwe Liberia Indonesia Bulgaria Mozambique Canada Spain Serbia Uzbekistan Nicaragua Costa Rica Ghana Ethiopia Greece Papua New Guinea Viet Nam Italy Brazil Thailand Iran Mexico India Romania Colombia Malaysia Azerbaijan Argentina Uruguay Gabon Mali Honduras Kenya Chile Ecuador Nigeria Tanzania Namibia Sierra Leone Philippines Congo Equatorial Guinea Kazakhstan North Korea Slovakia Guinea French Guiana United Kingdom Kyrgyzstan Niger South Korea Burkina Faso Georgia Dominican Republic New Zealand Botswana Myanmar Suriname Sudan Chad Turkey Cameroon Congo Venezuela Uganda Madagascar Mongolia Zambia Eritrea Guatemala France Oman Guyana Tajikistan Rwanda Mauritania Morocco Benin Japan Denmark Centrafrique Finland Fiji Belize Bolivia 100.000 200.000 300,000 100,000 200.000 300.000 100.000 200.000 300,000 Kilograms Produced In 2009 A Kllograms Produced In 2009 A Kllograms Produced In 2009 A What's happening with gold prices? The trend since 1900 has been rising gold prices with occasional sharp volatility. See the table in question 2 for the history of gold prices from 1900 to the present. Here is a graph of gold prices over the last fifty years: 2000 1500 50 1000 500 years 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 Here's what's happened with gold prices in the last decade: 2000 1500 10 1000 500 years 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 Here's what's happened with gold in the last 12 months: 2000 1800 12 1600 1400 1200 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec months 2011 Who's got the gold that's used for monetary and investment purposes and how much of this type of gold is out there? In 2011, about 2,100 metric tons of gold appeared in what are known as exchange-traded funds (ETFS). The lion's share was in one fund: 1,240 metric tons in SPDR Gold Shares. As of 2009, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) held 3,217 metric tons of gold. In 2010, the central banks of nations held a total of 28,398 metric tons of gold. P 70272 32,825 metric tons are held between ETFS, the IMF, and the central banks of nations. Percentage of ForEx Reserves 8000 6000 Top 10 Largest National Gold 4000 Imm Reserves 2000 Next 90 Largest National Gold Reserves India Argentina Ireland Talwan Finland Lithuania Portugal Bulgarla Bahrain Venezuela Malaysia Mauritius Saudi Arabia Peru Canada Iran Belarus Tajikistan United Kingdom Brazil Slovenia Lebanon Slovakla Aruba Spaln Bollvla Hungary Austria Ukraine Kyrgyzstan Belglum Ecuador Luxembourg Pakistan Syrla Hong Kong Philppines Morocco Suriname Algerla Nigerla Iceland Libya Sri Lanka Papua New Gulnea Singapore South Korea Trinidad and Tobago Sweden Cyprus Albanla South Africa Bangladesh Yemen Turkey Serbla Cameroon Greece Antilles Mongolla Jordan Czech Republic Romanla Honduras Poland Paraguay Mexico Cambodla Dominican Republic Thailand Laos Gabon Australia Latvia Malawi Kuwait El Salvador Centrafrique Egypt Guatemala Chad Indonesia Colombla Congo Kazakhstan Macedonia Uruguay Denmark Tunisia Fiji 400 600 600 Central Bank Gold Reserves In Metric Tons A Central Bank Gold Reserves in Metric Tons A Central Bank Gold Reserves In Metric Tons A Provided by NumberSleuth.org http://www.kitco.com http://minerals.usgs.gov http://www.spdrgoldshares.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gold_price_in_USD.png http://mygeologypage.ucdavis.edu/cowen/-GEL115/115ch8.html http://goldratefortoday.org/world-gold-production-1900-2010 http://www.gold.org/about_gold http://news.goldseek.com/Dani/1309290922.php http://money.howstuffworks.com/question213.htm http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2009/01/gold/larmer-text http://www.indexmundi.com/minerals/?product-gold&graph-production http://www.gold.org/investment/statistics/reserve_asset statistics http://dollardaze.org/blog/?post_id-00479&cat id-20 http://www.dani2989.com/gold/goldproduction2011gb.html http://af.reuters.com/article/southAfricaNews/idAFLDE7551YW20110606 http://www.indexmundi.com/en/commodities/minerals/gold/gold_t8.html http://www.forexyard.com/en/news/Gold-jewellery-consumption-by-country-2011-02-28T130619Z-FACTBOX http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2010/11/19/how-many-olympic-sized-swimming-pools-can-we-fill-with-billionaire-gold http://www.gold.org/media/press_releases/archive/2011/02/global_gold_demand_in_2010_reached_a_10_year_high_in_tonnage_and_all time_high_in_value/ Jewelry Consumption in Metric Tons World Gold Production in Tons SOURCES Central Bank Gold Reserves in Metric Tons India Greater China United States United States ΤΚοxn Saudi Arabia ejssny United Arab Emirates Metric Tons Dollars pe Troy Ounce of Gold US Dollars per Troy Ounce of Gold JS Dollars pe roy Ounce of Gold I ejsouopuj United Kingdom Other Gulf Countries Iueder South Korea Vietnam Thailand Other Countries of Gold Production 1 Year