Which country's people hold the most gold in the world?

I heard from a neighbor that out of all the people in the world, India's population has more gold than all countries combined. I am not talking about which country has the most gold but which country's people physically hold the most gold? Anyone know?

 

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I checked multiple websites and on each one of them it states the United States owns the most.

 

USA is the "MAN". BY far. Remember WW2. We took gold for payment from a lot of countries we bailed out.

 

Im gonna go with the beautiful people of El Dorado

 

When it comes to "public" gold reserves, the US has most (about 8,100 tons). But since you specifically wrote that this is not what you want to know ... well, you won't find any official data about private gold of course. India sounds quite plausible though - estimates say they have about 13,000 tons.

Christian

 

I have heard that if you took all the gold pulled from the ground and put it together, it would create a cube 66 feet across each face. That seems too small to me, but I don't know.

 

Americans would own a heckuva lot MORE gold if we hadn't sent mountains of $20 gold to Europe to bail them out after WW1. Now, they're digging that stuff out of bank vaults, slabbing it, and selling it over here.

 

Strange, where did you hear something like that?

 

Reddit. Credible source, I know.

[edit] found another source: http://www.galmarley.com/framesets/fs_commodity_essentials_faqs.htm

 

http://www.coinweek.com/bullion-report/how-much-gold-is-there-in-the-world/

 

It is somehow satisfying to know that the relatively insignificant amount of gold that I own is a part of that small 66 sq-ft cube. Awesome.

 

66' = 20+ meters => 8,141 cubic meters x 19,300 kg/cubic meter = 157,122,000 kg (157,122 metric tons) x 32.15 troy ounces/kg = 5,051,500,000 troy ounces at $1,850/oz (today's price) = 9.35 trillion dollars.

Does that seem right?

 

Let me see if I got that right. The country with (probably) the most privately owned gold is India - and you blame Europe (or rather what the US did about 100 years ago) for that? Wow.

Christian

 

Yes, that seems right.

 

I don't know where you get that information, but assuming for the sake of argument that it's true...
If Americans hadn't sent that gold to Europe after WWI and had held it privately in 1933, most of it would probably have been collected by Uncle Sam during the gold recall and melted. And it would probably have been paid out in bullion form to European central banks under the Bretton Woods agreement by the early '70s anyway. Maybe holding that extra bit of gold would have delayed Nixon's abolition of the international gold standard by a few months.

 

Think again, Christian. There was no "blame" involved. Further, India played no part in my statement. So no - you don't "got that right".

So what prompted my statement ? Enormous amounts of anti-American blame in European media. BBC, Le Monde, Der Spiegel... I read world media more than domestic. It helps me understand why the world is such a mess.

Granted, it's cooled off quite a bit in the last 33 months or so for political reasons.

The truth is this - the US has done a heckuva a lot for a lot of people for a long time. We've done a heckuva lot for Europe. I'm tired of accusations. I'd like to see some gratitude.

 

I got that information by setting up tables at coin shows and having tables next to folks from Europe (mostly the Netherlands) who were doing exactly what I said.

As per the "front end", it is well documented that the US spent untold billions to try to rebuild Europe after WW1. My guess is that was not at issue.

 

Assuming that is, indeed, what had happened... If those coins had stayed in the US, the vast majority would have been melted into gold bars that would have been paid out to European central banks anyway as a result of the Bretton Woods agreement.

 

Same here. And yes, I noticed that you wrote about WW1, not about India. Except I am not sure how much that has to do with the question from the initial post: "I am not talking about which country has the most gold but which country's people physically hold the most gold?" In my opinion, or rather based on what I have been reading, people in India do have most private gold ...

Christian

 

I thought the Leprechauns had it? They need for their pots or something like that...