837 billion australian dollars
The US federal reserve bank has decided to put together a ‘package’ of $USD700 billion to help prevent the greed of stock brokers destroying the modern world. That is, of course, with special clauses which will ensure that they have a controlling hold on it’s future.
Going back a couple of decades we’d find people talking of money as a tangible thing, “backed by gold” they’d say. Whatever happened to that? I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer something tangible backing my investments, be it property or some other sort of physical object which is of value to another person other than myself.
So how much gold is $AUD837 billion (on the 23rd of September, 2008) ?
The current value of gold per kilogram is $34316.42.
$837,000,000,000 / $34,316.42
=
24,390,656.10 kilograms (or 24,390 tonnes) of gold.
What would you do with 24,390 tonnes of gold? Is there 24,390 tonnes of gold available?