Canada's Gold Reserves Are Just About Empty

Canada is selling off most of its remaining gold reserves, mainly by selling gold coins, figures from the Bank of Canada and Finance Department show.

www.cbc.ca...

The Canadian government has nearly completed a gradual sell-off of its gold reserves as its holdings of the precious metal now amount to just a few dozen ounces.

Data from the World Gold Council suggest Canada stands apart from its industrialized peers as the only G7 country without a stockpile of at least hundreds of tonnes of gold.

The federal Finance Department says Ottawa unloaded nearly 22,000 ounces of gold coins in February for about $35 million.

The department says the government now holds just 77 ounces of gold — valued around $130,000.

A department spokesman says the government has a long-standing policy of diversifying its portfolio by selling physical commodities like gold in order to invest instead in assets that are more easily traded.

Former senior Finance Department bureaucrat Don Drummond says he doesn't think it makes any sense for Canada to hold any gold because it hasn't delivered a good rate of return over time and it costs money to store it.

Drummond says that hundreds of years ago gold symbolized the wealth of a country.

www.huffingtonpost.ca...

Sorry but that doesn't sound like a good idea at all.

I don't know why they would give it up because I can't believe it's the cost of storing it.

Trump has more gold in his bathroom!

Former senior Finance Department bureaucrat Don Drummond says he doesn't think it makes any sense for Canada to hold any gold because it hasn't delivered a good rate of return over time and it costs money to store it.

Drummond says that hundreds of years ago gold symbolized the wealth of a country.

That certainly goes against many many doom porn, "buy gold" prevaricators.. Many are now saying silver will triple in price, "buy now".. I do find it interesting that Canada has taken that position though.. ?

Scary times up north mate, just goes to show how dire our economy is, turning into a mad scramble...

a reply to: burgerbuddy

Agreed, I think its a bad move. Their selling their gold in order to invest instead in assets that are more easily traded. I'm guessing they mean other countries currencies. If thats true, then that would mean canada's currency is backed by the u.s. currency and so on.

Well… this certainly shines a new light on this push the last few years to get our oil to market, even at the exorbitant costs involved with the tar sands and the vehement opposition to pipelines in many places.

Question.. what happens when its gone?

It would make no sense to have a federally backed currency at that point, would it? Whats it backed by? Another countries money, that is backed by their gold?

How can that possibly work? The article doesn't really offer much insight other than to say it's happening..

Yes, and if China ever needs to come up with some cash, you might wish you had already left the gold market.

Why is keeping a vast stock of gold important? It is probably better for the public purse to flog the stuff off when the price is high.

The UK sold a lot of its gold reserves back in c. 2000 and there was a lot of negative press, but most informed pundits seemed to think it was a good idea.

I am no economist, but it's clear that the value of gold stashed away in government bunkers is small in comparison to the economy.

a reply to: gmoneystunt

I am far from being an authority on matters financial, but when my government started selling off our gold, back in the Blair/Brown days of the New Labour government, it did not do us much by way of favours.

originally posted by: TrueBrit
a reply to: gmoneystunt

I am far from being an authority on matters financial, but when my government started selling off our gold, back in the Blair/Brown days of the New Labour government, it did not do us much by way of favours.

That's a comment without substance. Exactly what negative thing happened?

Gold is irrelevant these days. It is only important in the minds of people locked into a post WWII mentality. The world has changed massively since then and we are now an interconnected world on a scale that was unimaginable post WWII. It is that global connectivity and trade that drives all economies not some ideological stance sitting behind a fence/wall surrounded by nukes and gold and a self serving highly inefficient economy (soviet union, east germany, albania etc etc pre 1970 !!! holy crap!)

a reply to: yorkshirelad

Well, given that at one point that sell off, at the price it was sold for, lost us a bit under nine billion pounds, I think it was a bum deal.

The sell off was made because Brown was of the opinion that gold was a lazy investment, because it just sat around being pretty, earning no interest. He wanted assets that would make money, all the time, fancy investments with the potential for insane returns over the short, and medium term.

However, what he, and the entire mob that helped the process along forgot, is that the value of gold has an interesting habit of returning to a high ebb over the very long term. Now, this might be a concept lost on an individual desperate to justify his or her position in government, which depends on getting things done, and having the liquid assets necessary to achieve it on hand, but to someone whose goal is the long term stability of our economy, the ability to fall back to an emergency fund in the event of calamity, and indeed the appearance of our portfolio as a financial entity, that trade made no sense what so ever.

Also, you have to remember that there were other, better options on the table. Brown COULD have insisted on rigorous, uncompromising, and brutal examinations of the tax status of a plethora of private entities which supplied the government of the time, and indeed departments of the government currently, with goods and services. Many of these companies overcharge the government by hundreds of percent, while placing their assets in offshore accounts. The HMRC on its own is loosing billions just by having a supply and maintenance contract with a company (which has changed names many times) which is contracted to supply and maintain everything from the bulk buy pens and paper in the offices from which HMRC operates, to the air conditioning units in the buildings, to the fabric of the buildings themselves.

It is also worth mentioning, that much of the real estate from which our HMRC is run, as well as many other government department buildings, are owned by companies who bank off shore, and allow our departments to reside within them, under such a contract as I have described above. These buildings are owned by these companies, because they were sold off DIRT cheap, and I mean for a fist full of quids. I really cannot stress enough, that selling off our gold was stupid, because not only were there better options at the time, but the fact that those options were not taken at the time, means that we are STILL loosing money hand over fist, and in such vast bulk that the benefits system and cost thereof would be dwarfed by the losses involved.

a reply to: TrueBrit
To put in context however if brown had magically know the peak Gold Price and managed to sell at that (a market impossibility) the extra raised would have covered only about two months of this years projected deficit.
Worth fishing out from down the side of the sofa but hardly a nation changing amount of money.
Gold is largely irrelevant in modern economies.

a reply to: ScepticScot

But it will always come in handy when ones economy goes medieval overnight.

No matter which way you slice it, it was a poor call.

I was angry against the old gouvernment because he was betting everything on petrol. Now, I'm also angry against the new one. I will change my nick for "The angry guy from north".

Haven't they learn about diversification? The Murphy's law are right, everythings eventually fail*.

Edit:
And tend to do so, in the worst situation.

a reply to: gmoneystunt

It's fine, we have tons of silver.

~Tenth

originally posted by: TrueBrit
a reply to: ScepticScot

But it will always come in handy when ones economy goes medieval overnight.

No matter which way you slice it, it was a poor call.

Well since we still physically hold the gold if it goes proper medieval we can claim finders keepers and we will have been better off selling it anyway.

So with twenty twenty hind sight we think he made a bad decision and people still obsess over it. Gordon Brown made many worse decisions ( as will every chancellor) than selling the gold that are forgotten in history, but because this one involved some thing physical and shiny people think it was important.

a reply to: gmoneystunt

Gold is not an investment actually...it is an asset.

Who bought Canada's gold?

a reply to: queenofswords

It's both surely?

a reply to: queenofswords

Canadians and presumably others bought it in the form of coins, I think it's a huge mistake to not have gold in the coffers. I don't recall who this finance ministry bureaucrat is but like most bureaucrats I'm pretty sure he is a useless waste of air.

Can't they just mine more?

Oh wait, that's why Anglo American plc and Northern Dynasty Minerals Limited of Canada are pushing so hard for Pebble Mine up here in Alaska. Next to Bristol Bay.