Gordon Brown’s Solid Gold Joke

MORE news on serious Gordon Brown.

Gordon’ at Lancaster House. It’s a drinks reception, with nibbles, to congratulate and paw over Britain’s Olympic gold medal winners. Says Gordon:

“There is more gold in this room than in the Bank of England.”

Ho-ho. No, he’s right. It’s not funny. Brown only does serious. There is more gold around an Olympian’s neck than in the BoE. Why? Because Gordon Brown sold the nation’s gold reserves.

In 1999 the then Chancellor Gordon Brown told the Bank to sell 395 tonnes of gold. After prudent Brown’s announcement gold fell to its lowest value for 20 years, about $250.

The sale ended in 2002.

The average price achieved was $275.6. Gold has since risen in value by over 250%. Not too shabby.

So the $3.5bn earned would now be worth $12.5bn - about £200 per taxpayer.

But it’s not all bad. Prudent Brown stuck the cash in interest-bearing assets denominated in dollars, euros and yen: 40%, 40% and 20% respectively.

Work out how much they earn, and then knock it off the £9bn loss to get your cost to the country.

So here’s Gordon Brown; the Prime Minister; seriously…

Note: 2012 Olympians should check the make up of their gold medals, just in case…

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Anorak

Posted: 7th, October 2008 | In: Gordon Brown, Money, Politicians Comment (1) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink