I’m going to take exception to this statement, Peter
there is always enough gold – the only question is what price tag is placed on each ounce of gold
according to Jim Sinclair (www. jsmineset.com), gold at $850/oz in 1981 balanced the US books
using the same logic, I have seen writers placing price tags on each ounce of gold at $5000/oz to as high as $50,000/oz
the price to balance the US books depends on how many of our liabilities you want to acknowledge
the $5000/oz balances the openly acknowledged liabilities like all the worthless paper the Fed has recently purchased and all the bailout money the US taxpayer has generously given the banking system as well as the $10.6 trillion public debt
the $50,000/oz price comes into play if you want to acknowledge all of the unfunded liabilities of Medicare and Social Security ($50-70 trillion dollars depending on whose numbers you want to use)
the numbers above are based on the assumption that the US actually has all of the gold that it claims to have – since the gold deposits haven’t been publicly audited since the 1950’s, who knows – there is much discussion about whether or not the gold still exists in the claimed quantities
who knows what will unfold in the future or how high the price of gold will go
I just wanted to make the point that there is ALWAYS enough gold in the system for us to have a gold backed currency