The gold price
Crisis? What Crisis? - 11 December 2008
THE BRITISH POUND is now suffering its worst crisis since the near-bankruptcy of 1976 required emergency aid from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Not only has the Pound reached new record lows against the rest of the world's currencies – down below 80 on its trade-weighted index – but it's fallen by more than 20% in the last 12 months, sinking as the Bank of England slashed interest rates to all-time lows of just 2.0%.
Amid the Sterling Crisis of three decades ago, and after begging for $3.9 billion in IMF aid, the Labour government set about "a package of deflationary measures...public expenditure cuts and tax increases," as a secret memo of November 1976 put it.
Thus Thatcherism began early, even under the left-leaning Callaghan administration. Whereas today, the New Labour Treasury says the public budget deficit will leap to 8% of the national economy in 2009, by far the greatest debt owed by any major world government.
Any wonder that ever-more British investors and savers are choosing to Buy Gold for defence...?
Adrian Ash runs the research desk at BullionVault, the physical gold and silver market for private investors online. Formerly head of editorial at London's top publisher of private-investment advice, he was City correspondent for The Daily Reckoning from 2003 to 2008, and is now a regular contributor to many leading analysis sites including Forbes and a regular guest on BBC national and international radio and television news. Adrian's views on the gold market have been sought by the Financial Times and Economist magazine in London; CNBC, Bloomberg and TheStreet.com in New York; Germany's Der Stern and FT Deutschland; Italy's Il Sole 24 Ore, and many other respected finance publications.
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