[Music] a stone throw from where I grew up is the square mile London's Financial [Music] District they say the streets are paved with gold and that isn't as far-fetched as it sounds hey then yes I did just walk straight into the bank of England the world's second largest depository of gold bullion I've got an appointment with the bank's Chief cashier one of the very few people with access to its vaults Sarah John hi Sarah good morning Addis welcome to the bank of England a thanks for having me I'm looking for some C am I let's go this way now for obvious reasons I can't reveal our room what I can reveal is that I followed Sarah deep underground until we reached what is without doubt the thickest steel door I have ever seen okay Sarah don't worry I do all my own stunts it's pretty heavy door isn't it no not really it's all right right off to you so there you go whoa your first glimpse of the bank of England's [Applause] [Music] gold that is a lot of gold this is really unreal what you think I take your breath [Music] away this is like Raiders of the Lost [Music] Ark about 30% of the world's gold is held in professional vaults just like this okay Sarah I mean how much gold is here this is one of nine gold vaults that we have here at the bank um there's about 400,000 gold bars stored here and collectively they're worth about 250 billion something like that what I know it's a lot isn't it so I've got to ask asked the question like why do we have this here H how did it turn into okay the bank needs to hold this much gold what was the process like take me back so obviously Gold's been used for quite a number of years as a form of money first of all gold coins themselves but the problem with gold coins is they're actually quite heavy to carry rounds can't flip it exactly so what people started to do was they would take their gold coins to a Goldsmith and the Goldsmith would issue them with a IOU okay and over time people realized that actually using those IUS to pay for goods and services was actually easier than actually going and getting the gold and lugging it around okay and those IUS eventually developed into what we now know as banknotes that's fascinating isn't it see this just there that's Sarah's signature with the words I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of 2020 it's just an IOU but these days the bank of England plays an even bigger role holding gold for the world so why do countries want to store their gold here countries have what are called reserves so basically savings that they can draw on when they need to because gold holds its value very well in a time of Crisis right and it's really easy to buy and sell here in London and that supports Financial stability and there was such a crisis not so very long [Music] ago on the 26th of December 2004 there was a massive tsunami in the Indian Ocean it devastated communities in Thailand and band AE in [Music] Indonesia but in AE there was something unusual about the community that helped it to recover you see most people didn't have saving accounts instead they had gold ingots and jewelry which meant they could quickly use it as collateral start putting their lives back together and it's a bit like that on the global scale too countries worldwide hold a lot of gold so that when disaster strikes they have reliable funds they can fall back on gold is still our safest store of value that's the thing about gold it's real you can touch it and it holds its value I mean there's no sticking one in your pocket and getting out of it is there