johnnyone

[QUOTE=The Oddities;9185655
The other act of utter stupidity, probably the biggest of recent times was Brown´s sale of british gold reserves. It totally defied any form of logic and was obvious to the most economically illiterate person that gold price was only going to go one way. Up.
Graham[/QUOTE]

Hindsights a wonderful thing.

There is an article in todays Telegraph (Y16) by its journalist Paul Farrow about M & G closing its gold pension fund in 2001 due to its poor performance. ie the gold priced had slumped.

Interestingly Farrow then goes on to state that he had some sympathy for M & G as no one cared too much for gold at that time.

This is the very same paper that has lambasted Brown ever since he sold off the reserves yet when comes to their city cronies its a different story.

bil

Yeah, had things gone the other way after Brown flogged off the gold reserves, he would have been hailed as a hero.

As you say, Brown's an easy target, and it's one rule for them.....

rugbymatt

It was never going to go any other way for him mate, almost everyone told him it was a mistake, everyone could see the monumental rise of the new "Big Three" (India, China and Brazil) and over the years dozens of people wanted him to reconsider... he had it in his mind to sell it very early on in his political history. There was a really interesting article in the Telegraph a few days back talking about how Brown effectively set out to destroy England and nothing was going to stop him do it... maybe a bit extreme but something must explain why someone who everyone hailed as an economic GENIUS managed to steer us away from the same measures that Germany, most of Scandinavia and France took to minimise the devastation. We have all also forgotten what led so many Councils down the route they find themselves in now.... anyone else remember what happened to start this whole mess? Anyone else remember what DISASTROUS decision was taken by so many Councils in the name of greed?

bil

Someone on here once posted that tho politicians would like you to think they were in control, they are as much in contol of the country's trajectory, as a dandelion seed in a high wind.

I wish I didn't find that so easy to believe.

Rosemary

It has nothing to do with hindsight, the discussions I had with knowledgeable and lay persons were at the time. Accountants and fund managers that I dealt with could not believe what was happening. Only a fool sells the family silver when the price is rock bottom and there has never been a time in history when gold has dropped and stayed down. Once the price rises then you sell and anyone who sells at rock bottom is either desperate or has very little grasp of the way gold performs. I hope that I never have a fund manager so incompetent as to tell me to sell when the price of any commodity is at rock bottom.
Graham

johnnyone

I am not an expert on this, I was just pointing out that Brown wasn't the only one who sold gold and he must have been given advice from other so called 'Experts' before making his decision.
I wish I had your fund managers! From my experience the majority are are a bunch of overpaid sheep who follow the few competent managers and the majority of those did not forsee the stock market slump.
And surely for every buyer there is a seller, they cannot both be picking the right time to buy/sell, one of them must be getting their timing wrong.Very simplistic but I just do not have much confidence or trust in the abilities of the majority of fund managers.
The people we are relying on are the very ones who grossly/negligently undervalued state assets sold off during privatisation.

steviedeluxe

Indeed. There also seems to have been a total media concentration on this Gold issue - I wondered how much was involved... So I googled and found that the total estimated loss by selling the gold at the wrong time was £2 billion.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle1654931.ece

So, by no means pennies - I'd like to have 1% of that £2 billion - and it looks as though Gordo ignored good advice on the issue. But who could have reasonably predicted at the time that gold would increase three-fold? Also, that £2 billion has to be put into perspective - look at the £20 billion bailout of Northern Rock (again under Nu Lab), or the £10 billion the Tories magicked up last year to help bail out the Irish banks. I wonder also how many billions have been spent in Iraq? Or, how many billions in lost tax revenue and extra benefit payments will be caused by the forthcoming increases in unemployment? If we're criticising Brown, I'd sooner concentrate on his lack of action to stop the housing bubble and regulate the banking/credit system, that has led us to the economic mess in many western countries. But the media will gloss over that, partly because the Tories were also in favour of the cheap-credit de-regulated financial system, and also because we were nearly all involved in supporting ever-increasing house prices.

Rosemary

I do not recollect any other country selling off their gold reserves, the point of having these reserves is to underpin a country´s economy. If one really must tinker then at least sell when the price is high and buy when it is low.
So fundamental.
Graham

johnnyone

I getting into stuff here I probably don't fully understand.
Gold is a commodity, no more and no less and traded as such. Shouldn't the question be whether the money raised selling gold was reinvested sensibly if at all.
I have no idea of the answer but if it had been reivested into something that had achieved better growth than gold ( eg the Chinese stockmarket )it would be seen as act of genius, on the other hand if it had been reinvested in something that crashed it would be seen as sheer stupidity.
Many countries do not carry large gold reserves relying on overseas investments.

bil

The money was probably pissed up the wall, as when the tories flogged off the public assets.

They are all scum.

steviedeluxe

Maybe he bought a load of buy-to-lets ?

agoreira

Switzerland has sold off over 1,000 tons of the stuff over the years. And at not a great price.

whitelinen

And yet they still have more gold reserves than say China or Russia maybe?

There is universal condemnation for what Brown did. No amount of Googling for figures for other countries can alter that.

bil

What a completely useless bastard Brown was, and what a useful hate figure he makes.

Me, I cannot wait for the ConDems to lead the UK into the land of milk and honey. How lucky we are to have such wise and trustworthy leaders, for Cameron and Clegg are honourable men.

It was the same with Red Ken vs. BoJo. People were all saying what a bastard RK was to bring in congestion charges, and how BoJo would make it all right, as will Cameron and Clegg, those honourable men. Oddly tho I don't think BoJo has revoked the congestion charges at all, but he will, he will, for all of them are, as you know, honourable men.

And where does that leave us? Deeply, I fear in the brown stuff as it rises ever towards our nostrils, while our leaders, those honourable men, strive to make the world a better place for us, by assuring that those at the bottom of the heap are not crushed.

Our leaders, those honourable men have ensured that in order to help the country, if you sell anything and make a profit, you will have to give these honourable men 28% of profit over 10K. This is compared to the tax rate on Bank profits of what, 2% in Corporation tax?

It is indeed an honour to be ruled by such honourable, honourable men.