To Gordon Brown: please remit £4bn ASAP

From Bob Hoye in Safe Haven yesterday:

"U.K. Sold 395 tonnes of gold at an average price of $274.9 per ounce. The first sale at $254 caught (or caused?) the low point in a 20-year slide in the price of gold.

The losers are us, Brown's gold sales raised around $3.49 billion.."

-- Telegraph.co.uk , January 2, 2006

That was written when the price was $627 and at today’s gold price of $895 the position would be worth $11.4 billion. And - remember the reason for selling was to improve central bank returns - what did they buy with the funds?

I make that a loss of $8 billion to date, or £4bn sterling.

We hear a lot about accountability. If only politicians could be made personally financially accountable.

Or if they could be paid to go away. In recent times, it would have saved the country a fortune if each senior politician had been given £10 million to do nothing at all.