–– A Gold Classics Library Selection ––
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Britain’s Gold Sales ‘a Reckless Act’
(Sir Peter Tapsell’s speech before the House of Commons, June 16, 1999, on the partial sale of United Kingdom’s gold reserves)
We do not update our Gold Classics Library often, but when we do we try to choose items that have a timeless quality. This latest selection certainly meets that standard. It comes to us unexpectedly as a by-product of research for the recently published article, The Power of Gold Diversification, and with the kind permission of the United Kingdom Parliamentary Archives.
Many associate Britain’s sales of nearly 60% of its gold reserves in 1999 with the beginnings of gold’s secular bull market. The government’s rationale for the sales, as explained by then Economic Secretary to the Treasury Patricia Hewitt, was to “achieve a better balance” in its reserves by going to foreign currencies. Sir Peter Tapsell took the opposite tack. “The Chancellor [of the Exchequer] may think that he has discovered a new Labour version of the alchemist’s stone,” he argued, “but his dollars, yen and euros will not always glitter in a storm and they will never be mistaken for gold.”
History’s indisputable verdict is that Tapsell was right and the British government wrong. The ensuing more than two decades featured a global financial crisis, a pandemic, low-to-zero-percent interest rates, scrambling central banks, and the consistent depreciation of global currencies against gold. Currencies did not glitter in the storm, and they could not have been mistaken for gold which rose relentlessly from $287 per ounce at the time of his speech to the current price of over $1800 (at one point reaching more than $2000 per ounce). Though Tapsell’s speech before the House of Commons failed to stop the sales, it goes down as one of the most eloquent appeals ever made on the merits of gold ownership for nation-states and individuals alike.
