Gordon Brown sold the gold …

[MegCleary]

.. could some lovely soul explain this to me. I have tried for years to understand it. I have read articles saying it was the worst thing ever and others saying it made no difference.
ta!

he did sell the gold when it was at a low value I understand. The price rocketed since. Annoying, but I’m not sure it would have made a difference to anything?

I've also read articles and am none the wiser.

But I have learned that he didn't sell all the gold, that he did buy other things with it that could be better investments than gold and lots of banks/leaders had quietly be doing similar.

Which is slightly different than the picture I'd been given that he sold all the gold, spent it on benefits and it was an unusual thing to do.

The bit people seem to agree on is that a announcing the sale made the price drop.

I can't seem to find anything on whether the other investments are worth more, less or the same as the gold that was sold.

Yes, Brown sold hundreds of tonnes of gold by auction over a period of a couple of years. The idea was I think to diversify assets held by the UK. They sold when prices were low, and made matters worse by announcing the sale in advance (dropping prices further) and selling by auction. Afterwards, gold prices have only gone up.
Obviously they had reasonable for selling (diversification, maybe?) and presumably those have been borne out.

And Mrs Thatcher sold the trains, the ferries, British Aerospace, the gas, the electricity, and the water!

And we're definitely feeling the effects of that now!

If you look at a graph of the gold price late nineties/turn of the century it'd been bumping along the bottom for years. In investment terms it made perfect sense to sell at least some of it and diversify into other assets, particularly currency.

Post 2001 and 9/11 the world suddenly became a much more unstable place and in instability people rush to gold; prices went through the roof. Unless Brown could see the future he cannot be blamed for that.

Whether he was tactically wrong to use auctions and give notice I don't know. I suspect though that there were market regulations and other compliance stuff that had to be done.

It's an easy stick with which to beat a Labour Chancellor....

I'm fairly sure he only sold just over half of it anyway - that is, half of the amount that had already been substantially lowered after a big sale in 1970. And we don't "need" it because the UK hasn't been on the gold standard for currency value since 1931. However, I believe Brown has since admitted it was a bit of a panicked move and he didn't handle it as well as he could have.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_reserves_of_the_United_Kingdom

At the time it was considered a bit it a botched job, and the rules were changed afterwards to limit the amount of gold countries could sell in a period (which is probably why prices have gone up so steadily since). But the UK was not the only country selling, it was just that others did it more quietly.
We still have lots of gold in the reserves btw, 310 tonnes of it, which gives me images of the opening credits from Duck Tales.

He announced he was selling the gold right before he sold the gold and in doing so tanked the price

Thank you so much my wise ones, off to investigate what other countries sold about the same time.
arming up for inevitable ‘discussion’ with in-laws Sunday with labour back in power……

The article I read about it said the thing itself wasn't necessarily bad but the way he went about it was.

And that's not 20/20 hindsight, It was bleeding obvious at the time, before and during the act.

He fucked us.

I think even worse than selling the gold was Thatchers selling off all our public utilities to foreign governments and investors, and selling off North Sea Oil. We can see what Norway did with their Sovereign wealth fund, the obvious state of our public services and what happens when a government makes decisions for the long term benefit of its citizens, and what happens when they don't.

also Osboure sold the post office - so that is a more recent one

Maggie Thatcher was PM from 79 to 90.
I remember being a very successful country from then until 2008 and the banking crash - so constantly harping on about how bad she was when in fact she led to decades of success is pointless imv. The lack of support post closing the coal industry is a big failure.
Selling off the utilities has gone wrong but unions on the railways are fighting changes that seem to have been made in other countries without strikes.I can't see it has much to do with MT, Thames water seems to be a failing in Ofwat.

The price before the banking crash was 1600 dollars plus per OZ ( could have been near 2000 from a jaded memory ) . The banking crash happened and the price of gold dropped drastically .
Gordon brown has openly apologised a decade or so after which is better than an ignorant person .

On the drop of the gold price - A. He should never had sold B. The stupid thing he done was announce to the world and markets he was preparing to sell. The price then dropped again at his announcement and he sold for I think around 200 dollars an oz .
I think within a year or 2 it was back at 1500 dollars per Oz .

In summary it was a bad decision and as above he has since apologised . Once this happens its time to move on , dwelling on it will only make you angry and solve nothing as we can't time travel ( yet )

@Specialkungfu the sale was long before the banking crash and at a time when the price was around £275-£280/oz.

Who bought the gold? One of their cronies?