One of the MANY good things I got from those two videos was a figure I'd recently tried but failed to find: How many dollar [denominated claims] are there?
The answer, according to video: 70 trillion.
The reason I was looking for that number was so I could do a little number crunching to figure out what the price of gold might need to be if the U.S. wanted to back its currency again.
THIS site http://money.howstuffworks.com/question213.htm makes a simplistic argument that every scrap of gold ever mined comes to a measly TEN BILLION OUNCES.
I don't really know if either number is right or wrong, but they're as good as anything else I've seen. Let's hope they're in the ballpark, though.
If those two numbers are correct, and if the U.S. had every ounce of the world's gold in its possession, it could then back the nation's currency at a price-per-ounce of $7,000 (70 trillion dollars divided by 10 billion ounces.)
Good stuff! Except, of course, that the U.S. doesn't possess anything close to all of the world's gold. But it DOES give us an inkling of what the price of gold might be if our country decides to back its money again.
If I dig a little deeper...
According to THIS site http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/gold-how-much-of-it-does-the-usa-actually-have-in-fort-knox-and-elsewhere/question-548289/ ...
the nation's total gold bullion holdings come to 261.5 million troy ounces.
That might even be right! Here's a Treasury Department report that says approximately the same thing - if I'm understanding what I'm seeing: http://www.fms.treas.gov/gold/current.html
So, if there are 70 trillion dollars extant, and if the U.S. has 261.5 million troy ounces of gold in its reserves, all it would need to do to back its money again would be to get the price of gold to . . .
$267,687 / ounce.
Can that be right??? Somebody, quick. Pinch me.
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