2 interesting sites about gold facts are:
According to the infograph from Demonocracy, in the history of mining gold there has been 166,500 metric tons - or tonnes - recovered. (1 metric ton = 2,204.6 pounds)
According to the NOAA site, there is calculated to be around 20 million tons of gold dissolved in all the planet's saltwater. For convenience, let's assume that there is 20 million metric tons. (ton = 2,000 pounds, metric ton = 2,204.6 pounds)
Suppose Barack Obama, the super-genius that he is, found a way to extract every single atom of gold from the planet's oceans, and that it cost nothing to do so. Could Obama pay off a national debt of 16.5 trillion dollars?
As I write this post, gold has a price of $1,670.00 per troy ounce, and there are 14.58 troy ounces per pound.
20,000,000 tonnes X 2,204 pounds per tonne X 14.58 troy ounces per pound = 642,686,400,000 troy ounces
642,686,400,000 troy ounces X $1,670 per ounce = $1,072,140,000,000,000
OR 1 quadrillion, 72 trillion and change
Barack Obama, the super-genius, thinks that not only has he paid off the national debt but he has over a quadrillion dollars to spend on combating global warming. ( But, does he? ) Obama has the EPA sign contracts worth 500 trillion to start pumping the atmosphere's carbon-dioxide into the planet's crust.
Once again, Obama proved that he doesn't know the first thing about markets or economics. While he was extracting gold from seawater, gold's abundance increased over 120 fold, from 166,500 metric tonnes to over 20 million metric tonnes.
Since gold's value is dependent on it's rarity, the price of gold fell precipitously when Obama began extracting it from seawater. With gold's 120 fold increase, it's value plunged to $13.91 per troy ounce.
642,686,400,000 troy ounces X $13.91 per ounce = $8,939,767,824,000
Unfortunately for us and the super-genius, we still owe over 7.5 trillion dollars after taking all the gold out of the oceans.
There will never be a technology that can extract gold from seawater economically, and with the politicians we send to Washington, we will never pay off our national debt. We are doomed to spiral into a blackhole of debt we will never climb out of. If the cost of borrowing increases, we may have already crossed this blackhole's event horizon.
The Mayans were right. We were just too engrossed on our smartphones to see the end of the world.
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