Silver prices in relation to U.S. debt?
gecko109
Posts: 8,231 ✭
If $14 trillion dollars in silver could be purchased, and all of it in the form of 100oz Engelhard bars, that would be 4.375 BILLION bars. Thats enough bars to make a silver brick road 40 feet wide from NewYork city to LA.
Laid end to end, that would be a single file line of 100 ounce Engelhard bars over 414,000 miles long.....or almost to the moon and back.
This last stat seemed a little off to me when I calculated it, so I did it again....then again another 4 more times to be sure it was correct. I will even lay out the math here.
A 100oz silver Engelhard bar is 5 3/4" x 3" x 1".....we will round up to 6" on the length for ease of calculations.
$14 trillion would buy 4.375 billion bars at $3200 each.
A football field is 160 feet wide by 360 long (counting both endzones).
At 3" wide, it takes 640 bars to cover the width of 160 feet....and at 6" long, it takes 720 bars to cover 360 feet.
640 x 720 = 460,800 bars to make 1 layer of bars cover an entire football field.
4,375,000,000 / 460,800 = 9,494 layers of bars.
Since each bar is 1" thick, 9,494 / 12 = 791 feet.
So $14 trillion worth of 100oz Engelhard silver bars would completely cover a football field and rise to a height of an 80 story building. Thats a solid, compact block of silver 791 feet tall with an area the size of a football field. Thats how much this country owes.
Someone PLEASE tell me I made a mistake in my math and am off by a few decimal places!!!!
Laid end to end, that would be a single file line of 100 ounce Engelhard bars over 414,000 miles long.....or almost to the moon and back.
This last stat seemed a little off to me when I calculated it, so I did it again....then again another 4 more times to be sure it was correct. I will even lay out the math here.
A 100oz silver Engelhard bar is 5 3/4" x 3" x 1".....we will round up to 6" on the length for ease of calculations.
$14 trillion would buy 4.375 billion bars at $3200 each.
A football field is 160 feet wide by 360 long (counting both endzones).
At 3" wide, it takes 640 bars to cover the width of 160 feet....and at 6" long, it takes 720 bars to cover 360 feet.
640 x 720 = 460,800 bars to make 1 layer of bars cover an entire football field.
4,375,000,000 / 460,800 = 9,494 layers of bars.
Since each bar is 1" thick, 9,494 / 12 = 791 feet.
So $14 trillion worth of 100oz Engelhard silver bars would completely cover a football field and rise to a height of an 80 story building. Thats a solid, compact block of silver 791 feet tall with an area the size of a football field. Thats how much this country owes.
Someone PLEASE tell me I made a mistake in my math and am off by a few decimal places!!!!
0
Comments
The rest looks correct.
<< <i>Most of your calculations are right, except laid end to end there would only be 12,009 miles of silver bars, not enough to get to the moon.
The rest looks correct. >>
4.375 billion bars at 6" long each = 26 billion inches / 12 = 2.1 billion feet / 5,280 = 414,299 MILES.
Yes? No? Where is my mistake?
I don't think that much silver exists on the planet, though.
<< <i>Oh yeah, I divided by 6" instead of multiplied.
I don't think that much silver exists on the planet, though. >>
I dont think it does either.....it works out to over 400 billion ounces. As expressed in gold, $14 trillion is right around 10 billion ounces.....or twice what is known to have been found in all of humankind's history. Its just fun (for me at least) to take our nation's debt and express it in terms we might appreciate. In this day and age, we have become numb to the term "trillion", and thats a very, very dangerous thing to become numb to!
What about becoming a Zimbabwe territory, pay with this and ask for some change?!
<< <i>I dont think it does either.....it works out to over 400 billion ounces. As expressed in gold, $14 trillion is right around 10 billion ounces.....or twice what is known to have been found in all of humankind's history. Its just fun (for me at least) to take our nation's debt and express it in terms we might appreciate. In this day and age, we have become numb to the term "trillion", and thats a very, very dangerous thing to become numb to! >>
I read one pretty compelling article on one analyst's who came to the conclusion that about 45-50 BILL ounces of silver were mined throughout human history. The fact that 2 independent experts could come up with numbers 10X different demonstrates the difficulty in the analysis.
roadrunner
<< <i>
<< <i>I dont think it does either.....it works out to over 400 billion ounces. As expressed in gold, $14 trillion is right around 10 billion ounces.....or twice what is known to have been found in all of humankind's history. Its just fun (for me at least) to take our nation's debt and express it in terms we might appreciate. In this day and age, we have become numb to the term "trillion", and thats a very, very dangerous thing to become numb to! >>
I read one pretty compelling article on one analyst's who came to the conclusion that about 45-50 BILL ounces of silver were mined throughout human history. The fact that 2 independent experts could come up with numbers 10X different demonstrates the difficulty in the analysis.
roadrunner >>
So one guy estimates 45-50 billion......whats the other guy estimate? 5 billion or 500 billion?
roadrunner
<< <i>5 billion ounces was the lower end estimate I found for all the silver ever mined. The real question is what's left. And I've found estimates from 500 mill to 20 billion ounces. I tend to think reality is in the 1 Bill to 5 Bill ounce range.
roadrunner >>
I'd say your guess seems reasonable, however we need to consider the theory or diminishing returns. Im not explaining this for you specifically RR, as im sure you already know it well. Similar to the hot topic of peak oil, silver also becomes more expensive to exploit as less becomes available. The last billion ounces are ALWAYS much more expensive to extract than were the first billion. So even with an estimated 5 billion left in underground reserves, it only gets more and more expensive to pull it out.
14,000,000,000,000, that's a lot of 0s! Twelve 0s! A dozen!
If each of those 0s was a donut, lined up end to end they would stretch all the way around my waistline and back!
twelve donuts stacked atop one another on my plate would reach from the table all the way to my mouth, and take me most of the day to eat!
Liberty: Parent of Science & Industry
<< <i> I'd say your guess seems reasonable, however we need to consider the theory or diminishing returns. Im not explaining this for you specifically RR, as im sure you already know it well. Similar to the hot topic of peak oil, silver also becomes more expensive to exploit as less becomes available. The last billion ounces are ALWAYS much more expensive to extract than were the first billion. So even with an estimated 5 billion left in underground reserves, it only gets more and more expensive to pull it out. >>
By "what's left," I meant previously mined silver sitting above ground. I have no clue how much silver is left underground (known reserves/resources + undiscovered). The fact that miners are only recovering about 700 MILL ounces per year against a world demand of 900 MILL ounces shows that it's not being brought up fast enough. Peru, Mexico, and China are the 3 largest silver producers. If anything negative happened in the political climate of those nations that affected mining, it would toss a wrench into the silver supply/demand curve. For instance the Peruvian govt recently came out and stated they were considering doubling current mineral royalty payments.
roadrunner
<< <i>I like the threads where you unleash your mathematician side!
What about becoming a Zimbabwe territory, pay with this and ask for some change?!
Why not? Some politicians already believe money grows on trees. That being the case, I'm a southern pecan.
silver would have to be worth in the neighborhood of $28,000 per ounce.
Of course this only assumes half a billion ounces of silver which is too low but
the debt is still just a fraction of total wealth. If all the money in the world were
silver it would be worth far in excess of $28,000.
There's only enough silver for everyone to have a quarter ounce or so. Yet
imagine the vast wealth and infrastructure represented by one person.