Talk:Gold reserve

Where are IMF Gold Reserves?
Where is IMF Gold held? At a few locations? As a fraction of each countries gold reserves? Is it all just on paper with no 'real' reserves? Please someone explain in better detail IMF Reserves. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.116.147.146 (talk) 05:49, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Inconsistent values
The opening paragraphs are inconsistent-

Two facts are presented: India has the largest gold reserves in the world with more than 20,000 tons of gold had privately! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.134.243.21 (talk) 15:19, 27 November 2015 (UTC)


 * In 2001, it was estimated that all the gold ever mined totaled 145,000 tonnes.


 * About one percent of all above-ground gold (370 metric tonnes) was mined in the first five years of the California Gold Rush.

But 1% of 145,000 is 1,450 tonnes. Which is correct?

(66.201.58.8 (talk) 03:16, 1 October 2008 (UTC))

Merge
Regarding the suggestion to merge the article Official gold reserves with International Monetary Fund gold reserve. I think it would be more logical to merge the IMF gold reserve article with the main IMF article. Another suitable option -- I think -- would be to have a few suitable words and a link to the IMF gold reserves article next to the IMF entry in the Offical gold reserves.Tridy 16:05, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree the articles could be merged, with any merged material added under the tables (after all, this is the main topic) --nirvana2013 16:39, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

I think that the two articles should be merged. It will probably provide a better flow. swat671 06:29, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

ZM: I disagree. There should be a list compiling EVERY number, I am not willing to later check the article about the IMF, and neither is anyone else who cares about gold.


 * SPDR Gold Trust, the world's largest bullion-backed exchange-traded fund has 651 tons, enough to rival most of these countries, it's at least as noteworthy as the IMF:
 * http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSLK9831820080820
 * - Yorn (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 15:25, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Some article
He argues that most of the gold reserves have been gold to the market and this explain the ability of gold price to keep rising. ie the governments have little ability to control them. Anyway, that was what I gleamed for the article

List
The long list seems a bit unencyclopedic.


 * On a somewhat-related note, this BBC article claims that the UK has 400 tonnes of gold stored in the Bank of England specifically.  Unless I am reading wrong, this doesn't jibe with the 311 in the table.  Though it does add that the Bank of England holds many reserves from other countries as well, so the actual amount stored in the UK is much greater than the total amount (listed) of the UK's own holdings foreign and domestic.  Anyway, don't know how the 400 and 311 line up, but either apples and oranges are being compared (possibility, I didn't read that carefully) or one of those numbers is wrong. Isoxyl 19:33, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

table
ascii art tables make baby jesus cry

come on, it's not like Wikipedia doesn't support real tables

A couple of questions: Why isn't the US in the table? Does China really hold 80% of all the gold ever mined? Where is Wankland?

The value of gold in this article is HIGHLY inconsistent.
why is the value of the us's gold SO much higher per troy ounce than the gold of the imf? $700 something per troy ounce for the us's gold and the international groups gold is worth $40-50 and ounce? that makes no sense at all. i do not know these values, so cannot correct this, but the facts in this article are so butchered its reminescent of the federal reserves present policies... total bs. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.210.40.43 (talk) 17:37, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Because IMF devalues gold value on (political) purpose(s) Ottomatias (talk) 22:51, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

UK Gold Reserves
Anyone know why the UK's gold reserves are far lower than their economic neighbours (most of the G8 members)? Seems a bit inconsistent with the GDP tables found elsewhere. RevenDS (talk) 15:34, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Gordon Brown, whilst Chancellor, sold 60% of the UK's gold reserves.--Johnbull (talk) 17:21, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

It's true, and he sold it at a time when Gold prices were near rock bottom. Economists like Brown who feel fiat currency and fractional reserve banking will last forever don't hold Gold in much esteem.... idiots.

Indian Gold
The citation is to a newsletter that itself has no citation for the 13,000 ton value.

Rankings are not up to date
The rankings are not consistent with the latest December 2007 reserve figures. nirvana2013 (talk) 23:35, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Task completed nirvana2013 (talk) 08:21, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Gold reserves per capita?
I was thinking about incorporating the gold reserves per capita to the table on this page, as a measure of individual wealth in an international perspective, so, for example, the US would have 8133/302M = 26.74 grammes per capita of gold reserves. For a better measure, this would have to be added to other precious metals/stones reserves. In the context of the presently (May 2008) collapsing global economy, I think that the world will have to return to a gold (or other non-fiat) standard so the quantity of gold per capita held by each country will be a measure of its purchasing power per capita. I'm not an economist so please correct me if necessary. Hsilagref (talk) 10:46, 20 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I have been trying to find out how much of the world's economy is actually functioning on a gold standard, or using currency that is readily converted to gold. The common conversion of gold jewellry to money (and money to jewellry) in a large part of the world, would count as evidence that a de facto gold standard is underlying the monetary system. How could this information be obtained?  Anybody have estimates, or relevant citations?  Janice Vian, Ph.D. (talk) 18:24, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Which tone are we talking about?
There are two types of tonnes in the world - short tone and metric tone. Which one is being referred to on this page? It does make a huge difference. 196.14.186.18 (talk) 06:06, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Look it up. Tonne means 1000Kg, the "metric ton". Short tons and long tons both are spelled with one N and no E's. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.200.151.191 (talk) 00:37, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Three, actually: long ton and short ton in the archaic English unit system ; and metric tonne, used in most of the world. -- Orange Mike  &#x007C;   Talk  14:11, 16 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I've changed the US$ equivalent to reflect the World Gold Council's use of the metric tonne for mass measurements. 145,000 tonnes x $730/oz.= $25,745,400

As is pointed out by Orange Mike, there are three types of tons/tonnes. As of 2006, the National Geographic Society's (a US scientific society) estimate of how much gold had been mined was 161,000 tons. http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/01/gold/larmer-text/3 The World Gold Council's estimate of how much gold has been mined through 2009 is 165,000 tonnes (FAQ 37 at http://www.gold.org/faq/ ), where they are using tonne for metric tonne (FAQ 20). Neither the National Geographic nor the trade group World Gold Council give any references as to how they created their estimates for all of the gold mined, so it is impossible to evaluate them from accuracy nor consistency. However, the differences in mixing up these different type of tons is 10-12% between the short ton and the long & metric tons, and less than 2% between the long & metric tons. 1 ton [short, US] = 29,166.666667 troy ounce, 1 ton [long, UK] = 32,666.666667 troy ounce, 1 ton [metric] = 32,150.746569 troy ounce The likelihood either organization would claim their estimates are accurate to better than 10% is very low, so means worrying about "which ton" is meaningless. Supremeknowledge (talk) 13:59, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Gold's share of reserves?
Gold's share of reserves? Please explain. The percentages for each country do not add up to 100%. nirvana2013 (talk) 12:43, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Does this mean gold reserves as a percentage of foreign exchange reserves? If this is a calculated figure it will require regular updates in order to keep it current. Alternatively please supply reference if data is sourced. nirvana2013 (talk) 17:45, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Comparing gold reserves to International Debt
It would be informative to compare each nation's gold reserves to it's international debt. Informative in that, in many/most cases we would see that Gold is an insignificcat percentage of the total debt owed. In the case of U.S., which owes over one Trillion in external trade-related debt, to say nothing of financial debt instruments, many, many Trillions of U.S. Government and privatly issued debt. Gold is one and one-half percent of just trade debt- no way to repay using gold.

63.139.122.2 (talk) 18:03, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Canada is the 3rd largest producer of gold why would they have no reserves ?
every year Canada produces about 24 times more gold than it has in reserves according to the list. it's the only g8 that isn't ranked at the top but produces more than any other g8 country except Russia. this list has them at almost nil while the cia factbook has their reserves of foreign exchange and gold at more than half of the USA and almost the same as the UK. Canada produces 2.4 million ounces a year more than any other country except South Africa and Russia.

gold holdings table
Despite recent updates of this table, it is still out of date, both in numerical data, and rankings, when compared to the WGC's official statistics of Sept. 2009. This is obviously difficult to maintain on WP and raises the question if a table like this should be contained in a general purpose article or if it should be relegated to a separate list page. Ordering the table according to international rankings is also harder to maintain, since rows need to be rearranged. Why not order it by country name, so only numbers need updating. Most people would likely only want to know what the top (say) 10 holders are, and after that would look for a country by name to see its ranking. Kbrose (talk) 18:04, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree. Nirvana2013 (talk) 21:41, 5 November 2010 (UTC)


 * I think the table should be on the same page. Making extra pages just makes W~ difficult to use. All these summaries with a link to a main page (which often don't have much more than the summary) make for a lot of repetition.
 * The rank column isn't necessary because the table has got sortable column headings. (At the moment there is a bug in the table because the annotation is incorrectly placed) QuentinUK (talk) 18:01, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

New estimate of Saudi Arabian gold reserves
Saudi Arabia is now estimated to own 323 tons of gold, a significant increase from the previous estimate of 143 tons. The table reflecting officially-reported values as of December 2009 may not be the best place to indicate this revised estimate, but I think it is worth noting somewhere in the article (perhaps in a footnote). -- Black Falcon (talk) 05:36, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Regarding "Euro Area" in Table
Why is "Euro Area" listed at the top spot in the "World official gold holding" table? Should the "Euro Area" be singled out as an entity? Many individual European countries are already ranked. "South Asia" (which includes India), or "Southwest Asia" (that includes China) would also be acceptable entries if "Euro Area" were included. A case could be made for any political union of countries if "Euro Area" were included. In addition, "Euro Area" does not include all European countries. Those not a member of the European Union are not included. This seems as if it would be unclear to readers. My suggestion would be to delete the "Euro Area" entry in the table, and let the individual European country entries stand. Additionally, the "ECB" (European Central Bank) is already listed, and is the official organ of government that holds gold reserves for the Euro Area (a.k.a. the "Eurozone").

Hellacious (talk) 04:35, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

But, but, but, the Euro area has a common currency! South Asia has not!

I highly agree with the OP. As the reference is behind a login wall I can't verify the data, but for example this article claims that "The Eurozone’s gold reserves currently stand at almost 10,000 tonnes". Eurozone gold could - maybe - be one single entity (though it would be better to count the "common gold" of Eurozone as the gold currently in ECB, not in the CB's of individual countries). Counting Eurozone and for example Great Britain is highly misleading as if you've read the news, the GB would NEVER give out its gold to ECB or Eurozone members. :) Ottomatias (talk) 22:46, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Total valuation of Gold Reserves: Math
165000 tons x 32.15 Million / ton ~= 5304750 Million ~= 5305 Billion ~= 5.3 Trillion —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.125.59.68 (talk) 15:50, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

The math in the third paragraph of the article doesn't add up, and in the comment above, units are not clear. There are 32,150 troy ounces in a metric ton (aka tonne). At $1,900 per troy ounce, equals $61.1 million per tonne. Therefore value of 165,000 tonnes of gold is $10.1 trillion. Pjwst6 (talk) 18:27, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

USA Gold tonnes in question
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_reserve#Officially_reported_gold_holdings

The table shows United States gold holding as "19,133.5 tonnes".

I think this could be a typo. The correct number should be "8,133.5 tonnes"

Thanks, Gary72.14.117.244 (talk) 15:20, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

US not on list. How did Iran rank so high? Old CNBC listings: http://www.cnbc.com/id/33242464/The_World_s_Biggest_Gold_Reserves?slide=16 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.166.77.7 (talk) 11:15, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

UK Reserves too high
Compared to all the articles and lists I've read, how is the UK at no.2, I've read it only has 300 and something tonnes? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.210.43.181 (talk) 02:56, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

QuentinUK (talk) 18:05, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

imf gold holdings value?
the last sentence of the "IMF gold holdings" para is "An attempt to revalue the gold reserve to today's value has met resistance for different reasons." What reasons?-is missing from the article though it seems to be an important piece of information. Is this article a STUB?

german gold reserve
no information on todays German Gold Reserves (mostly kept in New York) and the controversy surrounding it. perhaps an independent article of its own would be best.

also would be nice, if the importance of gold reserves in TODAYS economy would be explained (there is only something about importance of gold reserves in the time of the 2nd World War. this far from uptodate, contemporary information.)

84.236.14.122 (talk) 13:35, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

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Gold reserves or gold holdings?
The holdings of Gold by a central bank (or any other financial institution) does not constitute any kind of "reserve" in the context of state finances or financial accounting. Commercial banks have deposits in the central bank and these are called "reserves". (In some countries, these bank reserves must meet a minimum according to certain metrics. See "required reserves".) Gold holdings no longer represent "reserves". No currency in the world is redeemed in Gold any more, not after the dissolution of the Bretton Woods agreement in the early 1970s. Holdings of Gold from then on simply represent chosen stores of value; Gold is simply another investment vehicle, a commodity holding. There are many and significant arguments for returning to the gold standard but, until such time, we do not have any kind of "Gold reserves". The name of the article should change to reflect reality. -The Gnome (talk) 18:57, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
 * A new article has been created to better reflect the distinction between the two concepts. -The Gnome (talk) 05:48, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I Strongly disagree with you.  Practically there two Page with the same content  and same expamples. Can you please show us a reliable source for that what you saying? and please before to create a new Page with same content , at least can you wait for a consensus with other users?. thanks. AlfaRocket (talk) 19:40, 8 October 2017 (UTC)
 * The distinction between reserves and holdings, in the context of central banking and state finances, is clear in the literature and not a matter of contention. But I agree it should be made clearer - and it shall be. -The Gnome (talk) 23:55, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

How comes Turkey is not included in the list?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_reserve#Officially_reported_holdings Turkey has almost 600 tons of gold but is not in this list? How comes? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:74:CF49:1D3D:FC73:3541:49AD:8AE0 (talk) 07:24, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Does anyone really believe the American gold reserve figures?
Does anyone really believe the American gold reserve figures? When was this gold last physically audited by independent people? Remember the United States also stores gold that belongs to other governments, one would need to see all the gold in the physical possession of the American government and then subtract the gold that belongs to other governments and organisations - only then could one do a real physical audit.2A02:C7E:1CD7:8C00:851:C6A0:2802:7E12 (talk) 20:27, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
 * There are conspiracy theories about them, but nothing that is taken seriously by anybody to the left of Ron Paul. The doubters are generally regarded as cranks; most are gold bugs. -- Orange Mike &#124;  Talk  00:06, 26 July 2022 (UTC)