Why don’t countries who are having trouble ‘balancing the books’ cash in some of their gold reserves? My calcs. shows Britain has £25billion pounds’ worth; France €200billion …
Or has some of that been secretly shipped back to the US to re fill fort knox?
£25 billion is a drop in the ocean in the grand scheme of things. It amounts to just less than 2% of government spending for just one year. Looking online suggests the UK gold reserves are around £100 billion, but even that’s only less than 8% of a single years spending.
Today’s press - sorting out potholes - £17 billion - that 25 won’t go far!
Just opened an envelope marked urgent thinking what the hell is this. “We want your old gold, good prices paid” all in french of course. Maybe the bullion stock is less than we know here in France and they are melting down all the old jewellery to boost it up again.
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I used (UK) 310 Tonnes @ £2300 an ounce …
I am certainly no economist, but I think the gold reserves are somewhat irrelevant since the gold standard was abandoned by all countries.
The UK dumped it in 1931 to allow the pound to be devalued to help with tackling the effects of the Depression. Having exchange rates tied to gold made for exchange rate stability but left finance ministers less room for manoeuvre.
Nowadays the US dollar is the default equivalent.
Which is possibly why China and others have been steadily buying gold, they may see a time when the dollar suffers, rumours of the real level of gold in fort knox after Clinton may have plundered it somewhat. Trump and Pedo guy want access to audit the reserves.
Irrelevant?
Britain has 310 Te of it and it’s value is £2300 an ounce.
Yes, irrelevant in the big scheme of things.
I saw a different figure on first search, but I think what I found was how much gold is in the B of E vaults, much of which doesn’t belong to HMG. 310.3 metric tonnes at £2,300 per troy ounce is about £23.9 billion, so a drop in the ocean.
In terms of the international payments and currency exchange system, yes, The pound sterling has not been exchangeable for gold since 1931.
The UK Government could sell it off, of course, so in that sense it has some value. But as has been mentioned, not a lot of value in the context of Government expenditure.
It’s not irrelevant in terms of the current row over the £5Bn welfare cuts.
Ok, and what do you do when it’s gone?
Bitcoin
What about it?