Opinion: The lasting effects of a No Deal Brexit

[Fletch]

gold has been a crappy investment except for those who sell it to the poor suckers.

It's a store of wealth, not an investment vehicle. Always has been, always will be.

Incorrect and the basis of your fallacy - gold is a commodity like all others and every bit as subject to market forces it has absolutely no mystical intrinsic value whatsoever.

Gold is the ultimate safe-haven asset, with a value embedded in human societies for at least 3,000 years. We have the expression “as rich as Croesus”, for he was the first monarch to mint gold coins in around 550BC.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/go ... 09611.html

[Fletch]

Gordon Brown Dumped Britain’s Gold to Save Goldman Sachs & JP Morgan

The Telegraph’s Thomas Pascoe has released a riveting account of why Gordon Brown dumped 400 tonnes of Britain’s gold (which has been dubbed Brown’s Bottom) intentionally at the lowest price possible.
Pascoe’s sources have informed him that one globally significant US bank was short 2 tonnes of gold at the time of the 400 tonne gold dump.

Goldman Sachs reportedly approached Treasury Head of Commodities Gavyn Davies to explain its dire predicament, and the immediate global financial consequences should The Vampire Squid default on its gold delivery obligations.

Pascoe alleges that Gordon Brown used various mechanisms (telegraphing the sale, using an auction rather than the London fix, etc) to intentionally sell Britain’s gold reserves at the lowest possible price to save the necks of Goldman Sachs’ massive gold shorts (which likely included JP Morgan which was even more massively short gold at the time).

When Brown decided to dispose of almost 400 tonnes of gold between 1999 and 2002, he did two distinctly odd things…
It seemed almost as if the Treasury was trying to achieve the lowest price possible for the public’s gold. It was.

From the Telegraph:
One decision stands out as downright bizarre, however...
.
.
.
Goldman Sachs, which is not understood to have been significantly short on gold itself, is rumoured to have approached the Treasury to explain the situation through its then head of commodities Gavyn Davies, later chairman of the BBC and married to Sue Nye who ran Brown’s private office.

Faced with the prospect of a global collapse in the banking system, the Chancellor took the decision to bail out the banks by dumping Britain’s gold, forcing the price down and allowing the banks to buy back gold at a profit, thus meeting their borrowing obligations.

https://www.silverdoctors.com/gold/gold ... jp-morgan/

That's what I was referring to in my comment to you about the gold sale earlier in the thread canny. It was Goldman Sachs who wanted it but as I said, JPM was also massively short.

[Guest]

Gordon Brown Dumped Britain’s Gold to Save Goldman Sachs & JP Morgan

The Telegraph’s Thomas Pascoe has released a riveting account of why Gordon Brown dumped 400 tonnes of Britain’s gold (which has been dubbed Brown’s Bottom) intentionally at the lowest price possible.
Pascoe’s sources have informed him that one globally significant US bank was short 2 tonnes of gold at the time of the 400 tonne gold dump.

Goldman Sachs reportedly approached Treasury Head of Commodities Gavyn Davies to explain its dire predicament, and the immediate global financial consequences should The Vampire Squid default on its gold delivery obligations.

Pascoe alleges that Gordon Brown used various mechanisms (telegraphing the sale, using an auction rather than the London fix, etc) to intentionally sell Britain’s gold reserves at the lowest possible price to save the necks of Goldman Sachs’ massive gold shorts (which likely included JP Morgan which was even more massively short gold at the time).

When Brown decided to dispose of almost 400 tonnes of gold between 1999 and 2002, he did two distinctly odd things…
It seemed almost as if the Treasury was trying to achieve the lowest price possible for the public’s gold. It was.

From the Telegraph:
One decision stands out as downright bizarre, however...
.
.
.
Goldman Sachs, which is not understood to have been significantly short on gold itself, is rumoured to have approached the Treasury to explain the situation through its then head of commodities Gavyn Davies, later chairman of the BBC and married to Sue Nye who ran Brown’s private office.

Faced with the prospect of a global collapse in the banking system, the Chancellor took the decision to bail out the banks by dumping Britain’s gold, forcing the price down and allowing the banks to buy back gold at a profit, thus meeting their borrowing obligations.

https://www.silverdoctors.com/gold/gold ... jp-morgan/

That's what I was referring to in my comment to you about the gold sale earlier in the thread canny. It was Goldman Sachs who wanted it but as I said, JPM was also massively short.

Labour are cunts! Impoverishing is like that is mad.

[Guest]

gold has been a crappy investment except for those who sell it to the poor suckers.

It's a store of wealth, not an investment vehicle. Always has been, always will be.

Incorrect and the basis of your fallacy - gold is a commodity like all others and every bit as subject to market forces it has absolutely no mystical intrinsic value whatsoever.

Gold is the ultimate safe-haven asset, with a value embedded in human societies for at least 3,000 years. We have the expression “as rich as Croesus”, for he was the first monarch to mint gold coins in around 550BC.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/go ... 09611.html

So gold is good by fiat therefore gold is fiat money - QED

[Rolluplostinspace]

Why do we value gold?

Mankind's attitude to gold is bizarre. Chemically, it is uninteresting - it barely reacts with any other element. Yet, of all the 118 elements in the periodic table, gold is the one we humans have always tended to choose to use as currency. Why?

Why not osmium or chromium, or helium, say - or maybe seaborgium?

I'm not the first to ask the question, but I like to think I'm asking it in one of the most compelling locations possible - the extraordinary exhibition of pre-Columbian gold artefacts at the British Museum?

He pulls out a copy of the periodic table.


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25255957

[Guest]

Why do we value gold?

Mankind's attitude to gold is bizarre. Chemically, it is uninteresting - it barely reacts with any other element. Yet, of all the 118 elements in the periodic table, gold is the one we humans have always tended to choose to use as currency. Why?

Why not osmium or chromium, or helium, say - or maybe seaborgium?

I'm not the first to ask the question, but I like to think I'm asking it in one of the most compelling locations possible - the extraordinary exhibition of pre-Columbian gold artefacts at the British Museum?

He pulls out a copy of the periodic table.


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25255957

Simples! It doesn’t tarnish like other metals because it doesn’t react with other elements and maintains its glorious sheen.
For decorative purposes it looks wonderful - except in a bathroom.
That’s what made it so prized and why the ancients placed great value on it, and that has continued.
It doesn’t degrade like other metals and is always literally worth it’s weight in gold.

[Cannydc]

Why do we value gold?

Mankind's attitude to gold is bizarre. Chemically, it is uninteresting - it barely reacts with any other element. Yet, of all the 118 elements in the periodic table, gold is the one we humans have always tended to choose to use as currency. Why?

Why not osmium or chromium, or helium, say - or maybe seaborgium?

I'm not the first to ask the question, but I like to think I'm asking it in one of the most compelling locations possible - the extraordinary exhibition of pre-Columbian gold artefacts at the British Museum?

He pulls out a copy of the periodic table.


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25255957

My guess it that it's a combination of 3 things. It comes 'as is', i.e you can dig it out of the ground as lumps of pure gold - it is rare but was discovered long before many of the rarer elements e.g. Osmium etc - and it makes beautiful jewellery making it something to be flaunted and admired.

[Cactus Jack]

Why do we value gold?

Mankind's attitude to gold is bizarre. Chemically, it is uninteresting - it barely reacts with any other element. Yet, of all the 118 elements in the periodic table, gold is the one we humans have always tended to choose to use as currency. Why?

Why not osmium or chromium, or helium, say - or maybe seaborgium?

I'm not the first to ask the question, but I like to think I'm asking it in one of the most compelling locations possible - the extraordinary exhibition of pre-Columbian gold artefacts at the British Museum?

He pulls out a copy of the periodic table.


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25255957

My guess it that it's a combination of 3 things. It comes 'as is', i.e you can dig it out of the ground as lumps of pure gold - it is rare but was discovered long before many of the rarer elements e.g. Osmium etc - and it makes beautiful jewellery making it something to be flaunted and admired.

The Aztecs didn't value gold all that much.

[calitom]

gold has been a crappy investment except for those who sell it to the poor suckers.

Gold is a commodity as much a subject to the vicissitudes of market forces as any other commodity.

When there is a threat of war gold prices rise.

Gold is a lousy investment and that has been proven in every objective way.
Like I said---the only ones making money from this 'commodity' are those selling it to the poor suckers.
The buyers of gold are poor suckers for many reasons.2 big ones are 1)Gold prices in any decent time period underperform those of plain old cash--let alone stocks
2)The mark up for buying the gold goes from excessive to criminal.Sadly the best deals are probably from pawn brokers--not the
criminals who market gold online and on television.
The fear mongering is what the rip off artists use to sell gold at huge markup..like "there is a threat of war!! hurry up and buy our gold"!!

Gold is beautiful to look at....and in concert with it being part of an art piece or a specialty collector coin CAN be part of a great investment.

We agree.

I think it's a moment we should savour as it happens so rarely

a breakthrough has happened in the cosmos!

[Cannydc]

Gordon Brown Dumped Britain’s Gold to Save Goldman Sachs & JP Morgan

The Telegraph’s Thomas Pascoe has released a riveting account of why Gordon Brown dumped 400 tonnes of Britain’s gold (which has been dubbed Brown’s Bottom) intentionally at the lowest price possible.
Pascoe’s sources have informed him that one globally significant US bank was short 2 tonnes of gold at the time of the 400 tonne gold dump.

Goldman Sachs reportedly approached Treasury Head of Commodities Gavyn Davies to explain its dire predicament, and the immediate global financial consequences should The Vampire Squid default on its gold delivery obligations.

Pascoe alleges that Gordon Brown used various mechanisms (telegraphing the sale, using an auction rather than the London fix, etc) to intentionally sell Britain’s gold reserves at the lowest possible price to save the necks of Goldman Sachs’ massive gold shorts (which likely included JP Morgan which was even more massively short gold at the time).

When Brown decided to dispose of almost 400 tonnes of gold between 1999 and 2002, he did two distinctly odd things…
It seemed almost as if the Treasury was trying to achieve the lowest price possible for the public’s gold. It was.

From the Telegraph:
One decision stands out as downright bizarre, however...
.
.
.
Goldman Sachs, which is not understood to have been significantly short on gold itself, is rumoured to have approached the Treasury to explain the situation through its then head of commodities Gavyn Davies, later chairman of the BBC and married to Sue Nye who ran Brown’s private office.

Faced with the prospect of a global collapse in the banking system, the Chancellor took the decision to bail out the banks by dumping Britain’s gold, forcing the price down and allowing the banks to buy back gold at a profit, thus meeting their borrowing obligations.

https://www.silverdoctors.com/gold/gold ... jp-morgan/

That's what I was referring to in my comment to you about the gold sale earlier in the thread canny. It was Goldman Sachs who wanted it but as I said, JPM was also massively short.

Riveting - but extremely unlikely.

Brown was driven to diversify UK investments. In Scotland before the financial crash of 2008, many professional families held a high proportion of their savings in bank shares. Banks were safe, paid a decent dividend, and there was also the prospect of a capital gain. Then both the Royal Bank and Bank of Scotland went bust. Many families saw their savings wiped out. They thought they were being prudent, but they had failed to diversify.

He decided that selling gold and moving the proceeds into such investments as the (then new) Euro, and interest bearing US bonds (gold earns no interest) was the right thing to do.

Brown wasn't the luckiest man, and the fact that the price of gold rocketed soon after, which it had shown no signs of doing for many years before, was an unfortunate issue. However, had he not sold it (about £5bn 'lost' on the deal was reported) that same gold would still be sitting in a vault earning nothing and waiting for a precipitous price drop. Instead, Brown's investments have made real cash, billions, immediately available to spend.

[jra]

Accepting - for the sake of argument - that Boris will be successful and push through a No Deal Brexit on 31 October there will be some long term effects, and not just economically. Indeed for the purpose of this let's leave aside the economics and talk purely in terms of the cultural and political changes.

1 - The end of the UK.

The inarguable facts are that both Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain whilst England and Wales voted leave.

Even if the UK had negotiated staying in the Customs Union or the Single Market that would have been a problem to seeing the Little Englanders have so completely hijacked the agenda and forced through a No Deal Brexit the only conclusion left for the Scots and the Irish is that there is no place for them in the UK.

In the case of Northern Ireland a No Deal exit breaks the terms of the Good Friday agreement and as surely as night follows day terrorist attacks in London will happen within two years of a No Deal exit. Without the infrastructure offered by the EU single market as a framework the Good Friday agreement cannot be revived and another few decades of strife seems inevitable. The only viable outcome will be a United Ireland with those few disgruntled Unionists being invited to live in the United Kingdom they avow such affection for and probably being denied entry.

In the case of Scotland it will probably be a lot more peaceful. Scotland has been held up as the 'demon' by three successive Tory Prime Ministers now and that shit isn't going to go away when Indy II lands. I expect a result around 80% in favour of Scottish Independence as soon as the efforts to keep kicking that can down the road eventually run out - I doubt it will come to a terrorist attacks from that quarter but I don't rule it out.

2 - The end of the Royal Family.

Through no fault of their own - the Queen never turns down a request from the Prime Minister to exercise a Royal Prerogative- the British Monarchy were condemned to abolition this week.

Personally I don't see that as a bad thing. Ironically, many years ago in a debate on whether Britain should have a constitution, I foresaw a situation where a Prime Minister could use Prerogative powers to completely bypass Parliament and was told - categorically - by an MP that could never happen. That MP was Boris Johnson. We've already seen on prerogative power legislated away in most of our lifetime, the Fixed Term Parliament Act took away the power of the PM to dissolve Parliament and call an election on a whim, and the rest will now follow.

When the dust settles and chaos of No Deal unfolds one man will be left with the blame but the mechanism by which he took that step on the road to tyranny will also be examined. As by that time the Brexitshitters will want to remove any chance of prerogative powers being used to rejoin the EU. The remaining Prerogative powers will be legislated away and without them there is simply no basis for having a Royal Family (but at least this will please the racist who have gone off the royals since Megan Markle became one)

3 - The End of the Commonwealth.

Without the Royal Family as a figurehead and with the notion that the UK is headed so firmly down the road of Isolationism and Xenophobia expect the Commonwealth to disintegrate in a very short time - less than twenty years.

Cactus. Do you expect me to read all that? This is a message board, not somewhere to post a mini-thesis. tl;dr.

[jra]

Why do we value gold?

Mankind's attitude to gold is bizarre. Chemically, it is uninteresting - it barely reacts with any other element. Yet, of all the 118 elements in the periodic table, gold is the one we humans have always tended to choose to use as currency. Why?

Why not osmium or chromium, or helium, say - or maybe seaborgium?

I'm not the first to ask the question, but I like to think I'm asking it in one of the most compelling locations possible - the extraordinary exhibition of pre-Columbian gold artefacts at the British Museum?

He pulls out a copy of the periodic table.


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25255957

Simples! It doesn’t tarnish like other metals because it doesn’t react with other elements and maintains its glorious sheen.
For decorative purposes it looks wonderful - except in a bathroom.
That’s what made it so prized and why the ancients placed great value on it, and that has continued.
It doesn’t degrade like other metals and is always literally worth it’s weight in gold.

Not quite right.

Gold reacts to a mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_regia

[Lady Murasaki]

I wonder if this one turns green after too many flushes.

[Fletch]

Gordon Brown Dumped Britain’s Gold to Save Goldman Sachs & JP Morgan

The Telegraph’s Thomas Pascoe has released a riveting account of why Gordon Brown dumped 400 tonnes of Britain’s gold (which has been dubbed Brown’s Bottom) intentionally at the lowest price possible.
Pascoe’s sources have informed him that one globally significant US bank was short 2 tonnes of gold at the time of the 400 tonne gold dump.

Goldman Sachs reportedly approached Treasury Head of Commodities Gavyn Davies to explain its dire predicament, and the immediate global financial consequences should The Vampire Squid default on its gold delivery obligations.

Pascoe alleges that Gordon Brown used various mechanisms (telegraphing the sale, using an auction rather than the London fix, etc) to intentionally sell Britain’s gold reserves at the lowest possible price to save the necks of Goldman Sachs’ massive gold shorts (which likely included JP Morgan which was even more massively short gold at the time).

When Brown decided to dispose of almost 400 tonnes of gold between 1999 and 2002, he did two distinctly odd things…
It seemed almost as if the Treasury was trying to achieve the lowest price possible for the public’s gold. It was.

From the Telegraph:
One decision stands out as downright bizarre, however...
.
.
.
Goldman Sachs, which is not understood to have been significantly short on gold itself, is rumoured to have approached the Treasury to explain the situation through its then head of commodities Gavyn Davies, later chairman of the BBC and married to Sue Nye who ran Brown’s private office.

Faced with the prospect of a global collapse in the banking system, the Chancellor took the decision to bail out the banks by dumping Britain’s gold, forcing the price down and allowing the banks to buy back gold at a profit, thus meeting their borrowing obligations.

https://www.silverdoctors.com/gold/gold ... jp-morgan/

That's what I was referring to in my comment to you about the gold sale earlier in the thread canny. It was Goldman Sachs who wanted it but as I said, JPM was also massively short.

Riveting - but extremely unlikely.

Brown was driven to diversify UK investments. In Scotland before the financial crash of 2008, many professional families held a high proportion of their savings in bank shares. Banks were safe, paid a decent dividend, and there was also the prospect of a capital gain. Then both the Royal Bank and Bank of Scotland went bust. Many families saw their savings wiped out. They thought they were being prudent, but they had failed to diversify.

He decided that selling gold and moving the proceeds into such investments as the (then new) Euro, and interest bearing US bonds (gold earns no interest) was the right thing to do.

Brown wasn't the luckiest man, and the fact that the price of gold rocketed soon after, which it had shown no signs of doing for many years before, was an unfortunate issue. However, had he not sold it (about £5bn 'lost' on the deal was reported) that same gold would still be sitting in a vault earning nothing and waiting for a precipitous price drop. Instead, Brown's investments have made real cash, billions, immediately available to spend.

You think countries own gold as an investment? You have no idea canny. As said further up thread, 'Gold is the ultimate safe haven'. Countries know FIAT is worthless paper and it can be gone in seconds. Gold isn't.

You're just making it up as you go along, yet again. If the idea was to make more money, why then did this happen?

When Brown decided to dispose of almost 400 tonnes of gold between 1999 and 2002, he did two distinctly odd things.

First, he broke with convention and announced the sale well in advance, giving the market notice that it was shortly to be flooded and forcing down the spot price. This was apparently done in the interests of “open government”, but had the effect of sending the spot price of gold to a 20-year low, as implied by basic supply and demand theory.

Second, the Treasury elected to sell its gold via auction. Again, this broke with the standard model. The price of gold was usually determined at a morning and afternoon “fix” between representatives of big banks whose network of smaller bank clients and private orders allowed them to determine the exact price at which demand met with supply.
The auction system again frequently achieved a lower price than the equivalent fix price. The first auction saw an auction price of $10c less per ounce than was achieved at the morning fix. It also acted to depress the price of the afternoon fix which fell by nearly $4.

It seemed almost as if the Treasury was trying to achieve the lowest price possible for the public’s gold. It was. …
This plan worked brilliantly when gold fell and the other asset – for the bank at the heart of this case, yen-backed securities – rose. When the prices moved the other way, the banks were in trouble.

From the Telegraph: https://www.silverdoctors.com/gold/gold ... jp-morgan/

[Cannydc]

Fletch, you just keep spouting the same garbage, over and over.

Gold has been held as a 'reserve' by many countries for many years. However, the amount we had was pitifully tiny (£16bn or so) compared to a £1,600Bn GDP.

When you get that we spent three times as much saving Northern Rock alone as Brown got for selling half our gold, you will see the perspective.

Gold on that scale is a tiny pinprick in the UK economy, and as such was a completely wasted asset which could be put to work.

And was.