US gold reserves and US Treasury debt owned by foreigners

This is a table of US Federal debt held by foreign investors.  It aggregates the amount of US Treasury debt owned by foreigners.  As of April 1, 2012, foreign investors hold $5,292,300,000,000 of US Treasury debt.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/FDHBFIN.txt

As of October 31, 2012, the US Treasury has 261,498,926.247 troy ounces (8133.5 metric tons) of gold in its vaults.

http://www.fms.treas.gov/gold/current.html

Using first grade arithmetic, and dividing the first number by the latter number, we calculate that each ounce of gold backs $20,238.32 of US Treasury debt owned by foreign bond holders.  As of November 16, 2012, the spot price of gold is $1713.70 per troy ounce.

These numbers should understandably concern foreign holders of US Treasury bonds.  And it also explains why they are accumulating gold as far as they can.  See China.