Cutting losses

摘要

Governments often make lousy investors. Between 1999 and 2002 Gordon Brown, then the chancellor of the exchequer, sold more than half of Britain's gold reserves at an average price of $275 an ounce. The sales marked the bottom of a two-decade fall in the price of gold. The metal promptly began to appreciate, rising to above $1,800 an ounce over the following decade. That memory weighs heavily on politicians and Treasury officials who are now considering when and how to sell the government's stakes in Royal Bank of Scotland (rbs) and Lloyds Banking Group. Pressure to move is mounting, both from Conservative mps, who feel the state ought not to own large chunks of firms, and from the banks themselves.