A quick math checks shows greatly different numbers than your claim.
1,390,000,000,000 dollars
http://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12773.htm
1,123 dollars per ounce
http://www.jmbullion.com/charts/gold-price/
So the dollars in circulation equals at current prices
1,237,535,613 ounces or,
77,345,976 pounds or,
38,673 tons
In 2011, this stated all the gold that had ever been mined at:
181,881 tons
http://www.numbersleuth.org/worlds-gold/
So at current prices, 1/5 of the existing gold.
If buying gold to make that happen quadrupled the price, it would drop to 1/20.
And further, would it have to only be gold?
A better source on the gold existing states:
At the end of 2014, there were 183,600 tonnes of stocks in existence above ground. If every single ounce of this gold were placed next to each other, the resulting cube of pure gold would only measure 21 metres in any direction.
http://www.gold.org/supply-and-demand/supply
183,600 Metric tonnes equals 202,384 short tons
That changes my estimate above a little, 10% easier to accomplish.
I said my numbers were probably off but the main point made.
You confirmed my 1/5 number.
IIRC, the 33x number was derived from interaction with the world economy, as when we go on the standard a whole lotta other countries would panic and try to do the same.
Keep working the numbers, you’re on track to come up with pretty much the same results I did.
As for “why just gold?” Good question.
The advantage of gold is
- it’s easily refined
- it’s easily verified
- it’s rare
- it’s value/volume ratio is conveniently compact
- it’s viscerally attractive
- it’s durable
- mining/production occurs at a slow steady rate roughly equivalent to growth rate of human productivity.
Throw in other commodities, and you have to deal with lots of less desirable factors that decrease confidence and increase chaos.
I’ve long wondered about an economic model that dynamically tracks the relative value relationships between many goods & services, defining a stable unit of value. Something that recognizes that a gallon of gas typically is worth about 20 minutes of floor sweeping, a good suit or handgun is worth about 1 oz of gold, 10 oz of gold is roughly our national “poverty line”, etc thru hundreds of items and their mutual relative values, accommodating whatever “localized” variations & changes occur (like gas doubles in 6 months), all dictating what “a dollar” is. That would much better address currency as a fraction of total national/world value without everyone getting hung up on “gold” or playing stupid/dangerous games like “quantitative easing”.