How Much Gold Would It Take To Pay Off The U.S. National Debt?

This pictures shows the United States Government Debt in Troy Pounds of Gold.

From The Atlantic:

'In fact, it now takes much less gold to pay off the U.S. debt than it did a decade ago. At first, this might seem surprising, since the debt has grown so much. But the price of gold has jumped even higher. 


One takeaway from this exercise is to show how little impact the U.S.'s gold reserves would make in paying down the debt. The U.S. government has around 21.7 million pounds of gold. That might sound like a lot, but it would take 808.0 million pounds of gold to pay off the debt.'

Source: The Atlantic