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Gold trading at near-record highs above $900 an ounce begs the question: Who's got the most?
If you guessed the US government, you're right, sort of. Most people automatically think of the bullion vault at Fort Knox, Tenn. The military installation does indeed hold a good stash of the US reserves, about 147 million ounces (out of 261 million total as of December.) Other reserves are socked away in the Philadelphia and Denver mints, the bullion depository at West Point, N.Y., and other places.
But the Federal Reserve Bank of New York holds the prize as the world's biggest known stockpile of gold, some 550,000 glistening bars of the stuff buried deep into the bedrock of lower Manhattan. That's $203.3 billion worth of gold in a single place. Just 2 to 5 per cent of it is owned by the US government, though. The rest is owned by foreign countries.
It's not the only horde in the world. As the prices of commodities continue to skyrocket, the vast stores held by banks, governments and commodities trading houses are increasingly valuable. Two cities, New York and London, are home to more metal than any other.
In Manhattan, the Fed safeguards the gold of the world at no charge to the depositors, who only have to pay $1.75 per gold bar to have the stuff moved around the vault. If, for example, France wants to pay Russia for something in gold, it calls the Fed and has it move bars from its part of the vault to Russia's part for the nominal transaction fee. When currencies were linked to the price of gold, transactions were aplenty, but that's no longer the case these days. Last year there was just one transaction conducted in the vault, a Fed spokesman said, declining, for obvious reasons, to add more detail.
The New York Merchantile Exchange's commodities division trades a variety of metals, including gold, silver, copper and platinum, and keeps a vast storage of physical metal in vaults around New York City to back the futures contracts traded through its venue. At the moment, it has 7.4 million ounces, or $6.8 billion, worth of gold and 134.9 million ounces, or $2.2 billion, of silver in storage.
But London is home to the world's largest stash of silver--and not because the government uses the pound sterling as its currency. JPMorgan keeps 155 million ounces of silver for Barclays to back its IShares silver electronically traded fund, which debuted in 2006.
It's also the diamond capital of the world. De Beers holds 40 per cent market share in diamonds and pretty much dominates the business, and it keeps "a few weeks" of supply at it's center in London, according to a spokesman.
England may not hold the title for much longer, though. De Beers and the Botswanan government are to unveil an $80 million state-of-the art sorting facility in March. It will be the new world diamond capital.
Other emerging market nations are capitals of sparkle. Unlike other precious metals, platinum is spoken for almost before it leaves the ground (and the mines are mostly in South Africa). Platinum, which trades at about $1,600 an ounce, is in high demand by manufacturers of flat-screen televisions, iPods and other consumer electronics and makers of catalytic converters. In Europe, it is used in diesel fuel. According to industry sources, there are no stockpiles of the white metal on the same scale as gold and silver. Comex, in New York, for example, stores only 5,575 ounces, or $8.9 million, of the metal.
Colombia dominates the emerald market, and Victor Carranza dominates Colombia's emerald business. His territory includes the Muzo region, near Bogata. He is credited with stopping drug cartels from trying to take over the emerald mines during the 1980s, but more recently ran into trouble himself when he was arrested in 1998 and charged with organizing death squads. He was released from prison in 2002.
About 90 per cent of the world's rubies come from Myanmar, the subject of considerable controversy these days. Last year, there were widespread calls for boycotts of the government auctions of raw gems. US First Lady Laura Bush said buying the gems supports the "repressive" government of Myanmar, which last October held a bloody crackdown on protests by monks and students. Once plucked from the ground, most rubies are sent to Chataburi, Thailand, to be cut.
Sapphires come out of the ground in Sri Lanka and Madagascar but like rubies are sent to Thailand, and increasingly, Hong Kong, for cutting.
But one metal, and one place, top all the rest. The Department of Energy's Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, has 6,000 pits of plutonium. You can't buy it, but if you could, you'd pay upward of $10,000 an ounce by some estimates. Total value? As they say in the credit card ads: priceless.