GoldFinger or The Man with The Golden Gun?

Gordon Brown, remember him, Chancellor of the Exchequer and a short lived Prime Minister.
He reigned over one of the worst collapses of the UK economy since the Depression, was he totally to blame?
Well Yes, Between 1999 and 2002 he sold of most of the UKs Gold reserves in "an attempt to cut the budget deficit".
Just to put this into perspective, that was a total of 395 tons, yes tons, gold is usually talked about in ounces troy but this guy sold TONS. He raised £3.5 billion but left the country with no real reserve to back up the currency and invested the money in dollars, yen & euros, how is that working out then Gordon?
The big problem was that gold was at a 20 year low when he sold, he got an average of $275.60 per ounce, this week (August 2011) it reached over $1700 per ounce, the same weight sold today would net £21.35 billion almost 6 and a half times as much. That would go some way to relieving the current doom & gloom.
Lets see what the "investment in $, yen & euros" has done over the same period.
The dollar is showing a 1.61% increase, the yen is showing a 9% drop and the euro is showing a 1.4% drop, over all a decrease in value of 8.8% so the £3.5 billion is now worth less than £3.2 billion instead of the £21 billion we could have had.
Nice One Gordon.
Gold played a crucial role in preserving the wealth of countries such as India & China during the recession and a middle class, hungry for gold is quickly emerging.
The World Gold Council has advised that Gold outperformed major bond, equity and commodity indices in developed and emerging markets in Q2 2011.
Currently with much of the developed world in turmoil, few gold experts will argue with the potential for gold to reach over $200 per ounce in the next 12 to 18 months.
Gordon should have been known as the Man with the Golden Gun who shot himself in the foot.
Shame on you from a fellow Scot.