We decided to take a tour of the NY Fed gold vault here in NYC, partially for a fun team building field trip and partially to visually confirm that the US really did possess a substantial amount of gold to back its quickly deteriorating dollar.  The vaults foyer is pretty small, maybe 10×15.  From here you can only see into another room where there is a large scale in the middle and several closed doors and cages surrounding it.  The only visual gold is in 1 of 120 cages.  I was expecting to see piles of gold 3 stories high for as far as I could see (or at least something akin to Scrooge McDuck’s money vault) and instead all we saw were about 200 bars in a cage and a bunch of closed doors.  Here’s a couple interesting factoids we learned on the trip (all dollar values below are based on current gold prices):

• There is 7,000 tons of bullion valued at ~$335 Billion stored in the NY Fed vault. 
• The US only holds ~5% of its gold reserves at the NY Fed (the majority is at Fort Knox, and the remaining is spread between the Philadelphia Mint, Denver Mint and the West Point Bullion Depository).  The other 95% of the gold at the NY Fed is Foreign Central Banks who had sent it there after World War II (what are they thinking?). 
• The United States owns 8,945 tons of gold making it the largest holder by a long shot.  The second largest is Germany with 3,401 tons.   
• It has been estimated that all the gold ever mined totals 182,000 tons, totaling over $7.5Trillion. 
• Jewelry comprises 52% of the world’s gold holdings (that’s nearly 10x the amount of gold the US possesses!).  Central Banks account for 18%, Investments 16%, industrial 12% and unaccounted 2%. 
• India (but soon to be China) is the largest gold consumer in the world.  Consuming nearly 500 tons of gold/year for jewelry production alone (down substantially from 800 tons/year in 2007). 
• SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) currently owns 1,430 tons (combining all the Gold backed ETFs create the 4^th largest holder of gold in the world). 
• The most expensive gold coin in the world (on display at the NY Fed) is the 1933 Gold Eagle coin which sold at auction for $7,590,000 in 2002. 
• Gold is the most malleable and ductile of all metals; a single gram can be beaten into a sheet 1 square meter, or an ounce into 300 square feet.  A gold leaf can be beaten down enough to become translucent.   
• One gold bar weighs about 28 pounds and is worth ~$540,000.   
• The total amount of gold held by the US constitutes 74% of its National Forex Reserves.  By comparison, China owns 1,160 tons of Gold, comprising only 1.7% of their National Forex Reserves.  
• The US Monetary Base is ~$2.5 Trillion and they hold 286.9 million ounces of Gold, currently valued at ~$440.40 Billion.  This means gold only backs the US Monetary Base by 17.68%!  This compares to 31% just 3 years ago!