Indian households have the largest private gold reserves in the world, with about 24,000 metric tons. That figure exceeds the combined official gold reserves of the United States, Germany, Italy, France, China and Russia. Collectively, Indian households have the most gold in the world: approximately 24,000 metric tons. .
The United States has the largest gold reserve in the world by a substantial margin. The government has almost as many reserves as the next three countries with the largest gold reserves combined (Germany, Italy and France). Russia completes the top five. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is reported to have more gold reserves than Italy, but less than Germany.
Gold has served as a medium of exchange, to varying degrees, for thousands of years. For much of the 17th and 20th centuries, paper money issued by national governments was called gold and acted as a legal claim to physical gold. International trade was carried out with gold. For this reason, countries needed to maintain a gold reserve for both economic and political reasons.
No contemporary government requires that all its money be backed by gold. However, governments still house enormous quantities of ingots as a security measure against hyperinflation or another economic calamity. In fact, every year, governments increase their gold reserves, which are measured in metric tons, in hundreds of tons. For companies, gold represents a basic asset used in medicine, jewelry and electronics.
For many investors, both institutional and retail, gold is a hedge against inflation or recession. Continue to safeguard gold that belongs to other countries. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is the depositary of gold owned by foreign governments, foreign central banks, and official international organizations. Inside a vault at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
It is known to contain the largest amount of gold in the world. Gold reserves by country. S&P Global. The Central Bank of Russia tries to boost gold exports by paying below the market price.
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Does the Federal Reserve own or hold gold?. The only countries where gold represents a higher percentage of reserves are Portugal, with 80.1%, and Venezuela, with 82.4%. While a Kitco forum poll showed that the vast majority of people thought American gold ownership was less than 1%.
Unlike most countries, where gold reserves are owned by the state and managed by its central banks, Italy's gold is actually owned by the Banca d'Italia and is located in vaults in Rome and in the National Bank of Switzerland, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Bank of England. However, it has since increased its stocks by an impressive 38.30 tons, meaning that it currently holds 431.1 tons of gold. Last year, Germany completed a four-year repatriation operation to move a total of 674 tons of gold from the Bank of France and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to their own vaults. First of all, it's safe to assume that these private gold holds don't represent a significant addition to most people's net worth.
However, that organization states that it cannot accurately establish private gold holds in the United States or in most other countries. That's why many of the largest private gold investors in the East and West are against it or simply have a persistent lack of faith in other forms of currency. A figure of around 1% or less seems to be a common figure for the number of people who own gold in the U.S. UU.
Throughout all my years of writing about gold, I have often discovered that most people don't own gold because they don't know why they should or where to start. And then there are the collectors and private investors who collectively own an enormous sum of precious metals. .
