April Fool's Gold

srcandas

As well as the very sad German Flea Circus story I see on the BBC an interesting article on Gold.

How much gold is there in the world

Which ever quantity you go for it doesn't amount to much. Does make me wonder if they find gold bearing asteriods what impact it might have (Impact on the price of gold, not the moon where I'd crash it before bringing it to earth ).

ColdIron

It's sometimes estimated that more than half the above ground gold is hidden under the beds of Indian and Asian grandmothers

If there is 171,000 tonnes of gold ever mined and if you consider the USA holds only 8,000 tonnes of it (which is 4%) it could well be true

vectistim

ColdIron wrote: »

It's sometimes estimated that more than half the above ground gold is hidden under the beds of Indian and Asian grandmothers

If there is 171,000 tonnes of gold ever mined and if you consider the USA holds only 8,000 tonnes of it (which is 4%) it could well be true

Well let's do some back of an envelope guesswork:
Seven thousand million people on the planet.
Say half in Asia: Three and a half thousand million
Let's then reduce that to one thousand million households.
Let's say each household has 1 gold ring, 1 gold neckclace, 1 gold tooth, and a few bits of electronics with gold in, total weight say 90g.

90g x 1,000,000,000 = 90,000 tAu
90,000 > Half of 171,000

freeride

I'm not sure how much gold there is in the world, but I know the UK has a lot less after Gordon Brown sold half the UK's gold at the bottom.

u704446

... and as we very clever individuals knew the gold price was then at its bottom, we went out and bought heavily and are now millionaires. .... errmmm presumably?

freeride

u704446 wrote: »

... and as we very clever individuals knew the gold price was then at its bottom, we went out and bought heavily and are now millionaires. .... errmmm presumably?

Being the chancellor you'd think he had an idea. No?

u704446

Chancellors have as little knowledge of the future price of gold as anyone else. Otherwise presumably Geoffrey Howe would have sold it all off at it's previous height around 1980.

merlingrey

From wikipedia:
At the end of 2009, it was estimated that all the gold ever mined totaled 165,000 tonnes.[2] This can be represented by a cube with an edge length of about 20.28 meters. At $1,600 per ounce, 165,000 metric tonnes of gold would have a value of $8.8 trillion.

Ark_Welder

vectistim wrote: »

... 1 gold ring, 1 gold neckclace, 1 gold tooth, and a few bits of electronics with gold in,

This would be a line from the 21st-century, materialist version of the 12 Days of Christmas?

hp4020

Wait until the Chinese move into gold......

rpc

u704446 wrote: »

... and as we very clever individuals knew the gold price was then at its bottom, we went out and bought heavily and are now millionaires. .... errmmm presumably?

It wasn't so much that he did it (which wasn't his best idea, but isn't hindsight wonderful) but the fact that he told the world he was going to do it. Expectation of large amounts being sold by auction = much shorting and general depression of prices.

It wouldn't have been half as stupid if he'd just done it over a long period and told people afterward.