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Brown's gold sale 'lost £4bn' Daily Mail - March 6, 2008 Gordon Brown's sale of more than half the country's gold reserves at rock-bottom prices has cost every taxpayer £100 it was claimed last night. The controversial sales happened between 1999 and 2002 when Mr Brown was Chancellor. The price of bullion was then at a 20-year-low, at an average of $275 (£138) an ounce. Since then investors have increasingly seen gold as a sale haven amid economic turbulence, and its price has soared to almost four times that level. Although it dipped slightly yesterday, experts said it was only a matter of time until it broke through the $1,000-an-ounce barrier for the first time. This suggests that Mr Brown's sell-off has cost Britain a total of £4billion. This figure is double the loss suffered by the Bank of England on Black Wednesday, credited with ruining the Tories' reputation for economic competence under John Major. Shadow Chancellor George Osborne said: "There is no better example of Gordon Brown's economic incompetence. He sold Britain's gold at the bottom of the market and now gold is at a record high. This has cost the country £4billion, more than £100 for every taxpayer. The price of gold fell sharply the moment the Treasury announced its intention to sell 395 tons of reserves over three years. With the proceeds it bought euros, dollars and yen. It defended the sell-off as a 'long term move designed to reduce risk and get a more balanced portfolio of reserves', but it admitted last night that no assessment had been made to see how much had been lost overall.
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