Read What I See

Anyone who understands the real value of money will tell you that paper is worth nothing and Gold is real money.  Before going further into looking at the burden that the debt is on our nation, let's examine the U.S. Gold Reserves.

According to information that can be found the U.S. still has the largest Gold Reserves in the world.  As reported in December of 2009 the U.S. official Gold holding is 8,133.5 tones.  This is just barely over one third of the 21,700 that it held in 1948.  This link offers information on the U.S. held gold and the current monetary base.

Watching the U.S. National Debt Clock and looking at these huge plus and minus dollar figures is still hard to grasp in how much trouble our nation is.  Unable to really comprehend how much money some of those figures actually are, perhaps it would make it easier comparing them to the value of gold or real money.

Gold is traded today at approximately $1,100 per ounce.  That makes it $35,200,000 (thirty five million two hundred thousand) per ton.

The U.S Gold holdings is 8,133.5 tones or $286,299,200,000 (two hundred eighty six billion two hundred ninety nine million two hundred thousand).  That seems like a lot of money and it is but somehow we have lost touch when it is compared with our debt.  Take for instance the 2011 proposed budget of $3,830,000,000,000 which is thirteen times larger than our entire Gold Reserves. The deficit from this budget cannot really be determined with certainty because of the continued fall in revenues but it alone will be at least six times larger than the Gold Reserves. In 2008, the entire world production of gold was 2,330 tons or at today’s price of $82,016,000,000 and as reported, this year the government will need to borrow $2,000,000,000,000 or twenty four times the entire world gold production of 2008.

The aircraft carrier Nimitz gross weight is 97,000 tons.  If we were to build it out of solid gold we would take the 97,000 tons times the $35,200,000 per ton and we would have a $3,414,400,000,000 (three trillion four hundred fourteen billion four hundred million) solid gold aircraft carrier.  Our national debt is presently $12,350,000,000,000 or more than the gold value of three solid gold Nimitz at $10,243,200,000,000.  Actually if we added one solid gold Titanic it would come about even.  To make it even better our current deficit is almost equivalent as to borrowing one solid Gold Titanic every year for as far as the eye can see.

We can easily store our Gold Reserves in Fort Knox but we would need a chunk of the Grand Canyon to store the thirty one (31) gold Nimitz which are equivalent to the Unfunded Liabilities of $107,237,000,000,000 (one hundred and seven trillion two hundred and thirty seven billion dollars).

Perhaps you could explain this to those who are speaking of an economic recovery.  The politicians who speak of transferring all of this debt to our grandchildren are pulling either our legs or just plain stupid.  There is no way that anyone could pay such debt or allowed to accumulate much more.  All of us will be paying for it in the very near future with the loss of our wealth.

Did this make easier to understand that we are heading for the bottom of the ocean?