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You can't just setup a market stall one morning and shout 'roll up, roll up'.
But that is EXACTLY what happened. He announced the sale way in advance to give the market time to prepare and then he sold it at auction, again unconventional which always commands a lower price. But as previously discussed, it was all part of a well known plan to bail out the banks.
A smarter approach (and used by other banks) would have been to sell the gold over a longer period and in smaller units.
The UK eventually sold about 395 tons of gold over 17 auctions from July 1999 to March 2002
Will you respond to this correction/pointing out that you are, once more, factually incorrect?
As long as your happy with the increased costs of this efficiency/profit margin coming out of your pocket when you use the services.
But hey we have accepted it across the utilities market and railways and what a resounding success thats been! still heavily subsidised, inefficient and guess what more expensive. I bet it's just coincidental that MRSA was rife when contract cleaners were introduced to the NHS, oh and the rather large fraud that G4S got away with.
I think it's fair to say your average punter does not feel value for money has been delivered, paying higher prices for the same services, who's infrastructure was publicly funded in the first place and still quietly subsidised, with all the boys getting a nice buttie off the back of it.
Yeah you are right, it was undervalued to the tune of £180M.
According to a report commissioned by the government that sold it (with preference given to their chums in the city of course).
Whereas others such as JP Morgan suggest it was undervalued by up to 6 billion pounds.
I suggest you have a read of this too LHS:
http://ampp3d.mirror.co.uk/2014/04/11/the-final-word-on-gordon-browns-gold-sell-off/
It explains why the 'Gordon sold our gold' meme is a favourite of the hard-of-thinking.
If Ed Balls and Ed Miliband are “muppets” for the gold sale in 1999, what does that make Cameron?According to Oren Laurent, chief executive of Banc De Binary:
“Gold prices have been on a downward trajectory since their peak in August 2011, after ten years of virtually uninterrupted growth”.
Why aren’t people angry that Cameron didn’t sell the rest of our gold at the peak price in 2011?
Will you respond to this correction/pointing out that you are, once more, factually incorrect?
How is what i said factually incorrect.
Selling at auction is not common practice, it always commands a lower price and not something that had previously been done.
Announcing the sale of the gold in advance will always allow the markets to prepare to buy at a lower price.
It explains why the 'Gordon sold our gold' meme is a favourite of the hard-of-thinking.
Yes good point, an article from the Mirror!
As I have said, the sale of the gold at cut price was a plan to bail out the banks, this is a pretty much fundamentally accepted analysis of what happened.
Selling at auction is not common practice, it always commands a lower price
Why is the STW "What's it worth?" response always "99p no reserve, ebay" then?
Yes good point, an article from the Mirror!
Well that's a well thought out and reasoned argument.
I assume you don't know much about Conrad Quilty Harper. I am not going to accept the "final word" on economics from him.
Although he did right a very nice article in GQ recently as to why David Beckham likes flowers and Whiskey.
Keep up with the ad homs then I guess - seeing as you don't actually have an argument. Classic argument fail.
Care to explain why you're not so angry with David Cameron for not selling the gold reserves at their peak? Thought not.
Care to explain why you're not so angry with David Cameron for not selling the gold reserves at their peak? Thought not
He didn't need to.
That doesn't actually address the point though does it.
If you don't like The Mirror perhaps you'd prefer that bastion of socialism the FT?
Britain was right to sell off it's pile of gold....
[b]More substantively, criticism of Mr Brown’s sale also betrays a misunderstanding of why a country such as the UK has gold at all.[/b]
In common with most rich nations, the function of British foreign exchange reserves is not for the government to manage wealth on behalf of the country. British citizens do that themselves. The UK does not have a sovereign wealth fund that aims to maximise returns, and nor should it. It is not a big net oil and gas exporter such as Norway – UK net foreign exchange reserves are about $40bn, equivalent to 2 per cent of nominal gross domestic product, while Norway’s sovereign fund has $525bn, equivalent to almost 140 per cent of its GDP.
Nor does the UK pile up foreign assets by persistently selling its own currency to manipulate the exchange rate, as does China. It is notable that the much-vaunted official purchases of gold over the past year are mainly by countries such as China and Russia – and, to a lesser extent, Mexico – with big excess reserves.
UK reserves are there mainly for precautionary reasons – to intervene in currency markets to stop a run on sterling or to pursue monetary policy objectives. Yet gold is badly suited for this task because, despite recent interest from private investors, a large proportion of global above-ground stocks – 18 per cent in 2010 – is still held by governments.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5788dbac-7680-11e0-b05b-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3VyYv50iv
The "never forgive" attitude taken by several people intrigues me. I can see understand why people are very upset over the actions of specific party leaderships and/or governments but applying the same logic to an organisation that has an existence before and after the offending peoples' contributions to it seems a bit odd. Will there never be a time now where the Labour party's soul is untouched by the actions of Tony Blair? Must we hold a party's failings against them forever, while discounting what good it may have done before, during or after their times of shame?
I don't know whether the time to forgive Labour is now or not. I'm sure that someone will be along shortly to list those MPs who were part of Blair's cabinet and are still in positions of influence in the party today. I do think though that refusing to forgive any part of its historic sins is going to quickly reduce the pool of acceptable parties down to zero.
Many will never forgive the Conservatives, Labour nor the LibDems after the last five years. Could any party take power and lead a blameless government?
Edit: Sorry, I seem to have accidentally posted on the original topic rather than the slap fight about selling gold... 🙂
He didn't need to.
You mean he didn't pay off the national credit card when he had the chance? How very irresponsible. I thought we were supposed to be bankrupt like the greeks?
How is what i said factually incorrect.
My post did not quote you and was not a response to you
FWIW the poster claimed earlier [ possibly the tory thread] the entire family tax credit fraud bill was greater then the NHS [ its not even close]hence the dig about them not responding
[u]But hey we have accepted it across the utilities market and railways and what a resounding success thats been! still heavily subsidised, inefficient and guess what more expensive. [/u]
This would be a good point if it wasn't for the fact that retail gas and electricity prices are amongst the lowest in Europe including government levies / taxes.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25200808
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Energy_price_statistics
As for railways, a record number of passengers was carried last year and a record number of services ran on time. If railways were subsidised any more there would simply be demand that couldn't be accommodated given the extremely long lead time for rolling stock and new lines.
http://www.rail.co.uk/rail-news/2014/passenger-numbers/
Any comment on you being wrong above about saying they sold it one go?
Perhaps you can go to the other thread and comment on being wrong about working tax credits?
Are you guys aware of how similar to politicians you appear to be when you start arguing like this?
Dazh are you defending Nu Labour just for laughs or do you believe the bollocks you're typing?
😆 STW's intellectual giant has turned up ^^^
.
BTW enfht I liked your "contribution" to the SNP thread :
enfht - MemberShe revolting, nothing but a badly painted corpse. Wonder if she smells as bad as she looks.
Posted 2 days ago # Report-Post
Classy stuff. You really are a lovely person, aren't you ? 🙂
[quote=ChrisL opined]Are you guys aware of how similar to politicians you appear to be when you start arguing like this?
Under the previous discreditted regime this problem was rife, however under our stewardship discord is down by 12 % and direct answers have improved due to our strong policies aimed at supporting hard working families whilst making the tough choices the nation deserves.
I'm with @grum (and J P Morgan) on the Post Office undervaluation. The PO is a huge play on city centre property, the government could have addressed social housing by using the huge undervalued land bank / properties of the PO for redevelopment into residential with PO premises onsite.
Plus I just used that as one example, there are many. The railways are a disaster in private hands from a travellers, I had the great misfortune to commute on them for 30 years. Very expensive and a dire service. You cannot have competition on railways, its fundamentally a public service like the roads. You can have competition in trucks or planes but it just doesn't work with trains.
I don't want to defend them, there's plenty they did that turns my stomach, but the more rubbish I hear from the tories and their apologists about how they crashed the economy, bankrupted the nation, put everyone out of work, killed everyone's grannies etc, the more I feel forced to defend them. Especially when the tories at the time offered absolutely no opposition or alternatives to the things they supposedly did that were so bad.
i ll vote labour all day every day when they can fulfill a couple of simple points.. thier leader is chosen by one member one vote and that leader is somebody whose actually done a days work.. one set of solicitors barristers in red and another set of solicitors barristers in blue.. no representatives of mine..
Junkyard for PM!
Since when does STW draw "intellectuals" Ernie you Marxist muppet. 😆
Well obviously when you wade into a thread enfht. Your one-line posts dripping with hatred and anger always up the intellectual content a notch or two.
What a drama queen you are lynchmob, you're the one who always gets personal with the old 'you really are a nice person' jibe.
I've seen that one from you on more than one occasion.
"lynchmob" is a good one. Yes enfht's input definitely ups the intellectual content of a thread.
Blimey there's nothing like repeating yourself eh, be sure to put 'intellectual' into another post on this thread won't you.
😆
Genius retort.
Now then boys play nicely. Most of the high profile politicians from both parties are privately educated middle to upper class tw*T's. This is their private club and we the general public are not invited. To think there is any difference between them you must be deluded. You can play your left and right wing party politics, won't make a tiny bit of difference.
You can play your left and right wing party politics, won't make a tiny bit of difference.
Yes that's the popular soundbite. I've said it myself plenty of times. And for the majority of us who have jobs, cars, houses, expensive bikes etc it makes not a jot of difference. But for those unlucky enough to be at the margins of society, and who may be reliant on the state to keep them, house them, care for them etc it makes a massive difference, and that difference is worth voting for even if you have to swallow some unpalatable truths.
Most of the high profile politicians from both parties are privately educated middle to upper class tw*T's.
Although privately educated Conservative MPs in the recently dissolved Parliament outnumbered privately educated Labour MPs 5 to 1.
Labour MPs might behave like Tories but it is more likely to be a case of them betraying their backgrounds than sharing simular backgrounds to the Tories
I wonder what percentage of the cabinet/shadow cabinet are privately educated oxbridge graduates. I am sure your right Ernie about the numbers but what about the numbers where the real power is, the heart of government so to speak.
Well the Leader of the Labour Party isn't privately educated, but yes, the Shadow Cabinet of this recently dissolved Parliament had a higher percentage of privately educated politicians than the average for Labour.
The average of Labour MPs privately educated was 10% while the Shadow Cabinet was 22%. That's still less though than 36% of the Coalition Cabinet.
Interestingly 52% of all Conservative MPs and 41% of all LibDem MPs received private education which suggests that the Cabinet was less "elitist" than the majority of both Conservative and LibDem MPs, the reverse of Labour. Very Strange 😕
http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/aug/28/elitism-in-britain-breakdown-by-profession
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-31140623
Not surprising that the numbers are so low. Why waste a good education? 😉
And no sign of football on the list - Eton should never have introduced rugby!
Labour, Tories, LibDem and UKIP are all the same party.
In case you didn't hear that properly:
Labour, Tories, LibDem and UKIP are all the same party.
All controlled by the EU and elite networks, and whoever gets 'elected' just does what they're told by their bankrollers.
I can't believe it's 2015 and people talk about these parties like there's a ****ing difference
That was a party political broadcast on behalf of the JiveHoneyJive Party
Vote human remove the lizards
... whoever gets 'elected' just does what they're told by their bankrollers.
Whilst I don't disagree that there aren't sufficient and significant differences between the Conservatives Labour and the Liberal Democrats to give people a meaningful and worthwhile choice between them, how does your claim that they do "what they're told by their bankrollers" fit in with your theory when the Labour Party is bankrolled by the affiliated trade unions?
Are you seriously suggesting that the affiliated trade unions are telling the Labour Party to behave like Tories?
Are you seriously suggesting that the aims of the affiliated trade unions are the same as the aims of wealthy tax dodging Tory donors?
Today's Labour Party completely ignores the wishes of the Trade Unions which founded it to represent them in Parliament, and which today still keeps it from bankruptcy by pouring millions into their coffers every year. It's time everyone, including trade union members, woke up to that fact.
Today's Labour Party completely ignores the wishes of the Trade Unions which founded it to represent them in Parliament, and still today keeps it from bankruptcy by pouring millions into their coffers every year. It's time everyone, including trade union members, woke up to that fact.
It is strange that basically the trade union doesn't really represent the political views of it's members. Many people are "obliged" to join for any number of reasons but not actively participate. The Union leadership then push their views onto the Labour party who then chooses to ignore them, perhaps because they are not the views of society as a whole.
Blaming Labour for a shift to the right or a shift to electability is also an interesting idea. Would it please you more to have had no labour government but a labour party in opposition who's ideas were not in line with a majority of the country.
While I agree that protection of workers rights and standing up for what is right is important, in many ways the trade unions have disappeared up their own arses and left common sense a long way off. The last one I was asked to join I had to decline as they were a bunch of mad fantasists with no idea how the rest of the UK was doing while demanding a 6% pay rise and unconditional bonuses of about another 6% while the rest of the publicly funded UK was getting 2%. The worst bit is they thought they were worth it.
If these threads remind me of anything it's that people don't vote for policy, they don't look forward and it's to the detriment to the future. Blame politicians all you want but then ask what you did to change it.
Many people are "obliged" to join for any number of reasons ...
I didn't bother reading beyond that. No one is "obliged" to join a trade union.
No one is "obliged" to join a trade union.
Really?
Want a say on how your pay and conditions are negotiated?
In a bit of a fix and want some cheap legal cover?
Feel like there is something going on and you want some support?
Most of the people I knew joined for self serving reasons with no interest in influencing the policy of the Labour party.
Most of the people I knew joined for self serving reasons
So they were not obliged to join then.
Not something which I necessarily agree with but that's the law. Your claim was false.