Odd to think of that much "value" just sitting on rather plain (if very sturdy) storage shelves. A little shrine to mankind's irrationality. (What good is it, to be valued so highly?)
It does not matter how its stored as long as its safe. After all the US wanted plenty of it in payment for armaments in 1940. Churchill, in the darkest days of December 1940, wrote a personal letter to President Roosevelt deploring Washington’s insistence upon a cash payment — using our gold reserves — for arms and supplies shipped to us across the Atlantic.
I love how he said 197 thousand million pounds like that was clarifying it and easier to understand than 197 billion pounds.
It is easier to understand because the definition of a billion changed. In British English, a billion used to be equivalent to a million million (i.e. 1,000,000,000,000), while in American English it has always equated to a thousand million (i.e. 1,000,000,000). British English has now adopted the American figure, though, so that a billion equals a thousand million in both varieties of English. The same sort of change has taken place with the meaning of trillion. In British English, a trillion used to mean a million million million (i.e. 1,000,000,000,000,000,000). Nowadays, it's generally held to be equivalent to a million million (1,000,000,000,000), as it is in American English.
