---
title: 'Transport $12 billion of gold #anyqs'
url: 'https://blog.recursiveprocess.com/2011/08/24/transport-12-billion-of-gold-anyqs'
markdown: 'https://blog.recursiveprocess.com/2011/08/24/transport-12-billion-of-gold-anyqs.md'
date: '2011-08-24'
description: "From Bloomberg: Venezuelan President\_Hugo Chavez\_ordered the\_central bank\_to repatriate $11 billion of gold reserves held in developed nations’ institutions such as the\_Bank of England\_as prices for the metal rise to a record. Venezuela, which holds 211 tons of its 365 tons of gold reserves in U.S…"
taxonomy:
  category:
    - blog
---

# Transport $12 billion of gold #anyqs

### [Transport $12 billion of gold #anyqs](https://blog.recursiveprocess.com/2011/08/24/transport-12-billion-of-gold-anyqs)

   August 24, 2011, 12:00 am  

From [Bloomberg](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-18/chavez-emptying-bank-of-england-vault-as-venezuela-brings-back-gold-hoard.html):

> Venezuelan President [Hugo Chavez](http://topics.bloomberg.com/hugo-chavez/) ordered the [central bank](http://www.bcv.org.ve/ "Open Web Site") to repatriate $11 billion of gold reserves held in developed nations’ institutions such as the [Bank of England](http://topics.bloomberg.com/bank-of-england/) as prices for the metal rise to a record.
> 
> Venezuela, which holds 211 tons of its 365 tons of gold reserves in U.S., European, Canadian and Swiss banks, will progressively return the bars to its central bank’s vault, Chavez said yesterday. [JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)](http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/quote?ticker=JPM:US "Get Quote"), [Barclays Plc (BARC)](http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/quote?ticker=BARC:LN "Get Quote"), and [Standard Chartered Plc (STAN)](http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/quote?ticker=STAN:LN "Get Quote") also hold Venezuelan gold, he said.

**How**? [An article from Reuters](http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/08/23/how-to-get-12-billion-of-gold-to-venezuela/) looks into the options that Chavez has for transporting this massive amount of gold.

Some questions arise:

- Visually, how much gold is this? ([Wolfram Alpha makes this trivial. Awesome and annoying all at once.](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=211+tons+of+gold))
- If we rented a commercial airline, how many trips would this take?
- How many Flavor Flav grill’s is this to transport?
- How many balloons would this take to float it to Venezuela, Up style?
- How many trips on Southwest with two bags of < 50 pounds of **free** checked luggage is this?

Any other questions?

 [ Next Post](https://blog.recursiveprocess.com/2011/08/28/hurricane-irene-logarithmic-spiral) [Previous Post ](https://blog.recursiveprocess.com/2011/08/24/python-challenge)

#### SimpleSearch

Bootstrap Theme for [Grav](http://getgrav.org)

---

## Navigation

- Parent: [A Recursive Process](https://blog.recursiveprocess.com/index.md)
- Previous: [Hurricane Irene – Logarithmic Spiral?](https://blog.recursiveprocess.com/2011/08/28/hurricane-irene-logarithmic-spiral.md)
- Next: [Python Challenge](https://blog.recursiveprocess.com/2011/08/24/python-challenge.md)