How many people “own gold as an investment”?
How many gold investors actually “hold the gold” they own?
How many people own gold for which there is no actual gold, in storage in a vault somewhere, with their name on it? Unallocated gold?
How many people own “paper gold”, that is “no gold in hand – NOW – somewhere”, just paper gold? Gold as an electronically traded fund?
Is there more “paper gold” than actual gold in circulation? Have you researched this issue? Do you know the ratio between “real gold” and “paper gold”? Does anyone actually know?
What would a piece of paper, theoretically redeemable “in gold”, actually be worth if the certificated had no gold backing it up? Just a promise of gold? Like the promise of a dollar bill.
Now, what if that “gold as paper currency” wasn’t backed by the full faith and credit and tax raising ability of a country?
Does anyone remember buying gold because paper currency – such as U.S. dollars – would soon be valueless . . because the currency wasn’t back by “actual gold” (in Fort Knox) or elsewhere?
What if the holders of “gold, as paper” suddenly demanded to hold the gold? What is a growing number made the deman?
Then what if there really wasn’t enough gold. Not nearly enough. Like only 1/10th enough?Does anyone know the actual numbers, currently, because it appears demand has skyrocketed?
What, then, would the remaining pieces of “gold as paper” be worth . . if there wasn’t actual gold backing “the currency”?
I suspect, in retrospect, that one of the issues related to the unfolding of the gold market and the collapse of the gold price bubble will center around the affects of “paper as gold currency” – gold which existed only on paper.
Like dollars. Only without the full faith and credit insurance.
I’ve looked for a credible answer to the question about the ratio of actual gold to ownership of gold and have not been able to find, and doubt I’ll find, an answer. The way I see it “not knowing increases risk” and not knowing the actual ratio – where so much of the impetus for investing is gold is “that it’s real” – troubles me.