Just out of interest,the price of gold & Gordon Brown.

[Boris Yeltsin]

History will see Brown as the most incompetent chancellor of all time, ...for failing to spot the credit bubble.

That's cos he's blind in one eye and doesn't have good depth of perception. He SAW the credit bubble problem but he thought it was further away than it actually was...

 

[beorhthelm]

as misguided as the gold sale was, it distracts from Brown's biggest fault, imposing tax on penison fund dividends. this has robbed our pensions of tens of billions every year since.

 

[Storer 68]

A little bit of 'Googling' shows me that Gordon Brown sold-off 395 tons of between 1999-2002 gold at $282 an ounce,the latest price of gold (BBC News) is $1,911 an ounce seems a hefty loss ? What was the purpose of selling gold at that price and time ?

to keep taxes down for the general population.

And you can only sell at the the price that the market determines. every government has done it. at the moment the UK holds a mere 310 tonnes of gold. GB sold 395 tonnes.

USA - Total gold holdings: 8,133 tonnes Value: $361.8bn

 

[The Antikythera Mechanism]

USA - Total gold holdings: 8,133 tonnes Value: $361.8bn

Ron Paul worries Fort Knox gold is gone

 

[Seagull over Canaryland]

Brown will go down in history as the architect of our current financial mire, aided and abetted by his henchmen Balls and more latterly Milliband (minor).
That they still dare to preach about the economy is so crass.

The selling off of our gold reserves on the cheap was criminal but just one of Brown's follys. Failing to reign in the banks and the credit fuelled escalation in debt highlight the hypocrisy of Brown's 'prudence, prudence, prudence' mantra. The whole 'feel good' factor under New Labour was a sham based on the excesses of the banks. Makes me feel sick.

Cameron and Osbourne are no saints but no one should forget they (if not them someone else would have inherited the same poisoned chalice) now have the unenviable task of trying to sort out the structural defict. It is tragic that so many ordinary people are now having to feel the pain of the cutbacks. Rightly we expect the bankers to feel their share of this but it was Brown who let them get away with it for years. If left unchecked the burden of debt allowed to accumulate under Brown would cause us to go under, submerged in servicing the spiralling cost of the deficit.

 

[CHAPPERS]

Can anyone tell me what the actual point of having a shit load of gold is? In Dirk Lehman's terms please.

When it all goes tits up I don't want gold, I want to be able to house myself and eat, not walk around like a pimp.

 

[Scotty Mac]

nah, im sure this must have been the conservatives fault in some way, shape or form

 

[Pondicherry]

Lets face it? - What use is gold anyway? You can't eat it, you can't use it for fuel, can't be used for brewing beer, you can't smoke it. No use in the food supply chain whatsoever.

Handy for making cavity fillings for your teeth & bullion blocks are handy as doorstops. Apart from that??.....

Its the shiniest metal there is so it is used on spacecraft to reflect the suns rays away. The reason the price is so high at the moment is that private space companies are buying it to protect their astronauts now that NASA has no spacecraft capacity.

 

[sten_super]

Can anyone tell me what the actual point of having a shit load of gold is? In Dirk Lehman's terms please.

When it all goes tits up I don't want gold, I want to be able to house myself and eat, not walk around like a pimp.

The point of having gold is that it holds inherent value. If the whole world went to shit, and money ceased to work as a method of exchange, people would still want gold, so you could swap (for example) one gold of bar for a herd of cows. They use gold because it does not change over time - you could keep chickens in Fort Knox instead, but i) you'd have to keep a hell of a lot of chickens and ii) it would cost money to feed them. You can put gold in a vault, leave it unsupervised, and you know it's going to be in exactly the same state when you open up the vault again.

edit: Realised that I don't explain why people would want gold. Fundamentally the answer is because it is shiny. Presumably after the apocalyptic collapse of society people will still want jewellry, etc. and with the closure of Argos (and the tragic loss of Elizabeth Duke) they will look to people that hold gold and goldsmiths to obtain their jewellery from.

 

[The Antikythera Mechanism]

Lets face it? - What use is gold anyway? You can't eat it,

One of the most expensive deserts in the world, served at Serendipity 3, a popular restaurant in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The $1000 sundae was introduced in 2004 and was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most expensive dessert. It’s made up of 5 scoops of the richest Tahitian vanilla bean ice cream, Madagascar vanilla, 23K edible gold leaf and one of the most expensive chocolates in the world, Amedei Porceleana.

In German, Danziger Goldwasser literally means "Gold water of Danzig" and considering that this root and herbal liqueur features small flakes of 22 or 23 karat gold suspended in it, the name is quite fitting.

Sometimes only gold will do: "Der Lachs" - Original Danziger Goldwasser" - the gold leaf it contains lends lustre to every occasion. Choice herbs and spices give the liquor its own distinctive, exquisite flavor. Since its creation in 1598 this specialty has fascinated people - from Czars to carpenters.

 

[drew]

What he did was even worse than has been stated. He TOLD the World what he intended to do in advance and everyone lowered their price they were prepared to pay, so revenue became less & less...
Gold was at $2000 in the 70s (equiv to $5000??) today so cyclically almost certain to reach significatly higher levels again when next crisis turned up. A London bullion trader would have been sacked for far less an incompetent judgement call

And where did you dream up that price, bearing in mind media reports that Gold is at an all time high of about $1900/oz

http://www.nma.org/pdf/gold/his_gold_prices.pdf

Brown will go down in history as the architect of our current financial mire, aided and abetted by his henchmen Balls and more latterly Milliband (minor).
That they still dare to preach about the economy is so crass.

The selling off of our gold reserves on the cheap was criminal but just one of Brown's follys. Failing to reign in the banks and the credit fuelled escalation in debt highlight the hypocrisy of Brown's 'prudence, prudence, prudence' mantra. The whole 'feel good' factor under New Labour was a sham based on the excesses of the banks. Makes me feel sick.

Cameron and Osbourne are no saints but no one should forget they (if not them someone else would have inherited the same poisoned chalice) now have the unenviable task of trying to sort out the structural defict. It is tragic that so many ordinary people are now having to feel the pain of the cutbacks. Rightly we expect the bankers to feel their share of this but it was Brown who let them get away with it for years. If left unchecked the burden of debt allowed to accumulate under Brown would cause us to go under, submerged in servicing the spiralling cost of the deficit.

So, ignoring the US sub-prime market, ignoring deregulation of banks/building societies were carried out by the Tories, ignoring the fact that the Tories never opposed any further deregulation or even hinted at problems, ignoring the fact that there is world crisis, apparently it is all GB's fault. As for the selling of gold, no one has yet answered exactly what benefit holding gold has for an economy such as ours.

As for the pensions 'raid' there are two sides to every argument

Brown and pensions: putting the record straight - Private Client Adviser

Exactly how much did the dot.com bubble cost us and the aftermath of 9-11.

 

[Leekbrookgull]

So we lost out to the tune of £58,383,360 a ton which multiplied by 395 = £23,061,427,200 - £23 billion. Is that all ?

 

[Leekbrookgull]

So we lost out to the tune of £58,383,360 a ton which multiplied by 395 = £23,061,427,200 - £23 billion

Nice work if you can get it !!

 

[drew]

The point of having gold is that it holds inherent value. If the whole world went to shit, and money ceased to work as a method of exchange, people would still want gold, so you could swap (for example) one gold of bar for a herd of cows. They use gold because it does not change over time - you could keep chickens in Fort Knox instead, but i) you'd have to keep a hell of a lot of chickens and ii) it would cost money to feed them. You can put gold in a vault, leave it unsupervised, and you know it's going to be in exactly the same state when you open up the vault again.

edit: Realised that I don't explain why people would want gold. Fundamentally the answer is because it is shiny. Presumably after the apocalyptic collapse of society people will still want jewellry, etc. and with the closure of Argos (and the tragic loss of Elizabeth Duke) they will look to people that hold gold and goldsmiths to obtain their jewellery from.

And moving into the 21st Century!!!!!

 

[Mr Burns]

So we lost out to the tune of £58,383,360 a ton which multiplied by 395 = £23,061,427,200 - £23 billion. Is that all ?

Is that all the fuss is about. Get Gordon to pop round, and I'll give him a cheque to make it up

 

[Biscuit]

He wanted to diversify the nations assets and hindsight has shown his timing to have been wrong. What a wonderful thing hindsight is eh?! It might even help people realise it was a global economic crisis and not one solely caused by the Labour party..

 

[sten_super]

And moving into the 21st Century!!!!!

What do you mean? The point is, it is viewed as having an inherent value, it is a tangible asset. Governments hold it as part of their portfolio of tangible assets, alongside buildings, land, etc. etc.

Historically countries tied their currency to gold, e.g. £1 was worth a certain amount of gold, which theoretically you could go to the Exchequer and redeem, although that's not been the case for a number of years.

More instinctively, gold should hold it's value regardless of inflation in the monetary system - the idea being that if a gold bar is currently worth £10,000 and will buy you (say) 100 cows, if we experienced hyperinflation and gold was worth £1,000,000, your gold would still buy you 100 cows. It holds its value over time.

 

[Superphil]

Nothing

 

[albionite]

Gold reserves are kept to defend the value of the currency.

What is the value of £20 note......it is afterall just a piece of paper. Why don't we just print more ?

Gold

Gold standard

It's just the way the world has always been. Many moons ago the currency was only gold and silver coins.

 

[Guy Fawkes]

Can anyone tell me what the actual point of having a shit load of gold is? In Dirk Lehman's terms please.

When it all goes tits up I don't want gold, I want to be able to house myself and eat, not walk around like a pimp.

Bank notes have the statement "I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of ....." printed on them, this is what gives them their worth, you could have taken your note and demand to be paid out that sum at a bank in gold when our currency was linked directly to the gold standard, therefore banks had to hold enough in gold reserves to pay out on all the printed money and coins in circulation that it had issued.

This direct link has now gone and i believe (but could be wrong) that the Government / banks would now be responsible should there suddenly be the demand for every pound in circulation to be cashed in at once (for either gold or other currencies etc) Gold was therefore used as a guarentee to ensure that a nations wealth held its value and can be used to fund their money - if this wasn't available, there would be a run on the curency and the whole currency could become worthless.

We left the gold standard and to some this was a mistake, no we don't really have a way of guarenteeing our money so if a panic set in there would be little that could be done to prevent a mass devaluation of our currency (apart from printing more which also then devalues our currency) giving us less buying power abroad. Your cash is basically only worth what it is because of peoples faith in it, lose that and it loses its value.

Why use gold? - it is a non reactive metal and therefore lasts without tainting - I believe that it is the only element that does this making it highly desirable