Lebanon has less than 1/10th of one percent of the population of the earth, but has 1% of the world’s gold reserves. What does this mean?

I thought this was an interesting fact. I didn’t know that Lebanon holds 1% of the world’s reserves. Ranked #15 in the world. I read that just as an example, the UK owns more than $11.8 billion in reserves, Lebanon owns more than $11 billion.

This means they did very will in the last 3 years with the reserves gaining a lot of value. From the beginning of 2009 to the beginning of 2010, the value of the gold they hold went from $4.1 Bill to $11.1 Bill. Not bad I would say.

Here is the chart in 2008 with the rankings by country:

(Click for the rank chart) showing rank of each country in amount of gold reserves.

#17 at that time. Now that some countries have sold some of theirs, it has moved to rank #15.

My theory is that if Lebanon can back it’s monetary system with the gold, then it can offer lower interest to investors (Banks currently pay around 20% interst). It has to stabilize the monetary system, so the Lira stays stable against the dollar, and with the reserves backing it up, it can offer 7% and money will flock to the country.

Some interesting facts:

1- Portugal owns 382.5 Tonnes but it is almost 84% of it’s National Forex Reserves (Reserves it has to take care of it’s liability when currency demand is low)

2- The United States owns more than 27% of the worlds reported gold reserves

3- Countries like Kuwait and Malta that have the highest exchange rates for their currency (Kuwaiti Dinar & Maltese Lira) have a very low gold to forex percentage (11.4% & 2.2% respectively)? They don’t need to worry about devaluation and demand for their currency.

4- Why are Armenia, Vietnam, Turkmenistan and a lot of other countries not listed? Because not every country reports their Gold reserves.

5- Very interesting to see the value of the gold go up for each country (See here)

6- Most of this gold that other countries own is held in the United States !!!

7- India holds almost $560 tonnes of gold, almost as much as Russia (607 tonnes). But Switzerland holds almost as much as India & Russia combined (1,040 tonnes vs. 1165.4 tonnes respectively).

8- Switzerland holds almost as much as China (1,040 & 1,054 respectively)

9- Italy holds as much as france (about 2,450 tonnes) but each of them hold more than China and Switzeland combined or almost as much gold as China, Switzerland, Russia combined !!!

10- USA holds almost as much gold (For itself) than Germany, France & Italy (the rank 2,4 & 5) combined (USA 8,133 tonnes, Germany France & Italy 8,295).