Australia sold its gold in 1997, in a sale timed to suppress the...

Australia sold its gold in 1997, in a sale timed to suppress the price of gold, to bury it forever, and replace it with government paper:

Then-treasurer Peter Costello agreed to sell most of its holdings in 1997.​

The decision prompted cries of betrayal from the gold industry and, with the benefit of hindsight, was incredibly poorly timed. Since the sale of 167 tonnes of gold for $2.4 billion, or just over $400 an ounce, gold in Australian terms has rallied to record highs. The price peaked last July at $1819.44 an ounce, at which point the gold Australia sold for $2.4bn would have been worth $10.7bn. …​

Australia is in the paper camp, with the monetary progressives:

The RBA’s current gold holdings, in the Bank of England’s vaults, now total just under 80 tonnes.​

That’s less gold than is held by the central banks of Iraq, Poland and Romania, according to figures compiled by the World Gold Council, and is just a sliver of the amount held by similarly sized economies such as Spain (281.6 tonnes) and Russia (1706.8 tonnes).​

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Check out the Russian gold reserves ​

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