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Message:: [QUOTE="Numbers, post: 1588895, member: 11668"]The Mint doesn't produce gold.  The Mint turns gold into coinage.  The Mint's coinage production figures tell us nothing about U.S. gold production. In fact, U.S. gold production from mines has been running <a href="http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/gold/mcs-2012-gold.pdf" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/gold/mcs-2012-gold.pdf" rel="nofollow">well over 200 metric tons per year</a> lately, with production from scrap recycling contributing nearly as much again.  In 2011 the U.S. exported 470 metric tons of gold, which works out to about 15.1 million ozt. So Iran's imports are about half of the U.S.'s exports.  Non-negligible, but not nearly so huge as you're making them sound. For another comparison, the <a href="http://www.fms.treas.gov/gold/current.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.fms.treas.gov/gold/current.html" rel="nofollow">U.S. Treasury has a gold stock of about 260 million ozt</a>.  So Iran would have to keep importing gold at the quoted rate for about three decades if they wanted to accumulate as much as we've got. In other words, the numbers you're quoting aren't remarkable, for an entire country.  They don't reflect some kind of massive distortion of the gold market; they just reflect a country that feels like increasing its gold reserve a bit.[/QUOTE]