Oh and the thing about “selling off gold” also bullshit. What actually happened was that Gordon Brown decided the UK ought to have a wider spread of investment. The gold prices have absolutely no relation to modern currencies
Full context is yes he decided other investment markets would provide better returns: particularly currency.
Prices were low and for some reason he ignored the historic inverse elationship between gold and other markets, such as equities.
bank of england advised him not to do it...for various reasons. He of course ignored it. Gold was being offloaded by othef countries, so price was already dropping. It basically reads like a rank amateur.. thinking they know something will happen... in this case, that never happened before... gold stays low... forever or at least long term, and gambling on other markets outperforming it... no investment is on bull run whole time. Idea is diversification so when one is low/bear market, usually another is doing well. It's a counter balance... eggs aren't all in one basket.
Not only that, he decided to sell it off in staggered fashion, for some reason. Even better... announced we'd be selling it, for every trader and his dog to know. So of course the already record low value price of the gold, dropped even further. Before the auctions commenced.so we madr 10s of millions less by announcing it and selling in staggered fashion.. comparex to selling all in one go, without advertising our intentions.
Hindsight of course, but value of gold then rocketed as 2000s progressed. And data shows that if we hadn't sold the gold and invested elsewhere, the countries coffers would now have hundreds of millions more in there right now. .
Sad thing is he was advised not to do it by BoE... as it was at rock bottom price... and historic data indicates it swings. Instead he tries to play active trader/investor, forecasting an outcome that flew in face of what had happened before, and what experts told him to do.
People would be annoyed if they paid an FA who advised this path fir their personal investment and it tanked. How about an entire nations investment/wealth?
And this is before we begin to discuss another glorious financial episode from the UK's Mr Wall st/Gordon Gecko ... ah yes, the pension 'raid'.
Around 'credit crunch 'the Financial Advisor industry became much more heavily regulated....what with a lot of noise of cowboy FA'S, not necessarily acting in their clients best interest.
Hmm... i can certainly think of a cowboy, who acted as a rank amateur investor, who refused to listen to BoE.
Shortif blowing up the London stock exchange and canary wharf, it's hard to imagination how he could have realistically made much more of a mess of it.