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You are flailing around a bit there PaulB. The simple fact is that gold was at an all time low, he announced the sale and drove the price even lower as a result. Sheer idiocy.
It does not take a genius to tell him it was the wrong thing to do, in fact he was told that and ignored the advice.
Basic stuff, sell high, buy low.
The gold price has since then been rising steadily.
Brown has a track record of ignoring advice and as a result getting it wrong. Taxation of pensions for instance in 1997, he was warned of the implications and ignored them. Then after that the pensions 'simplification' introduced in 2006, three years before then he was told some proposed changes to permitted investments would not work but he stuck to his guns, then 3/4 months before implementation he did a U-turn, after costing the pensions industry a lot of money.
Incidentally - he made a lot of blunders on pension simplification. He made it easier to get tax relief on life cover premiums through a pension but found advisers were recommending it too much (of course, because it is right and sensible to look after your family and why not get tax relief for doing so) so he reversed that 9 months after it was introduced. Other blunders are in respect of Alternatively Secured Pensions, again resulting in a u-turn.
His changes to tax free savings (PEP/TESSA change to ISA) were a disaster to the savings ratio and over complex, he u-turned eventually on part of that. His implementation and concept of Stakeholder pensions went against experience and advice and were a flop.
That is just my industry - everyone will remember the 10p tax fiasco, again he was warned and advised of the impact well before implementation and ignored it until faced with a by-election defeat.
He is now blundering around on the economy. His VAT cut is another flop, I (and others) have been saying he should have increased the starting rate for income tax to £10,000 at the same cost instead. Now we hear that he is likely to do just that in the budget....
He is simply a disaster area whatever he touches.