{"id":474,"date":"2011-01-11T11:29:57","date_gmt":"2011-01-11T00:29:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.australian-gold.com\/blog\/the-australian-revisits-the-costello-curse\/"},"modified":"2011-01-11T11:29:57","modified_gmt":"2011-01-11T00:29:57","slug":"the-australian-revisits-the-costello-curse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.australian-gold.com\/blog\/the-australian-revisits-the-costello-curse\/","title":{"rendered":"The Australian revisits the COSTELLO CURSE"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>&#8220;The decision to sell the reserves was approved by then RBA governor Ian Macfarlane and then treasurer Peter Costello.&#8221;<\/strong><br \/>\nThe RBA revealed in July 1997 that over a six-month period, it had sold 167 tonnes, reducing Australia&#8217;s reserves to just 80 tonnes. At this time, the value of its gold assets fell from $3.6bn to about $1.1bn. The RBA&#8217;s sales pushed the world gold price down to an 11-year low, returning just $2.4bn for the gold (worth $7.4b today) that was sold via a single broker engaged without a tender.<\/p>\n<p>A board paper recommending the decision to sell conceded that gold served as &#8220;insurance against a breakdown in the international financial system&#8221;, but it then dismissed the need for holding this valuable asset. The paper has been obtained by The Australian under Freedom of Information laws.<\/p>\n<p>People might not remember but it was a fashionable idea to discount the value of gold (barbarous relic) and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.australian-shares.com\/forums\/discussion\/6294\/australian-gold-production-and-explorers-shrugging-off-the-costello-curse\">several treasurers followed it. Gordon Brown also cost the UK billions.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>What Costello didn&#8217;t know is that he would precipitate <a href=\"http:\/\/www.australian-gold.com\/decline.html\">a decade long decline in the Australian gold mining industry<\/a> that is only now getting back on its feet.<\/p>\n<p>Read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theaustralian.com.au\/news\/nation\/reserve-banks-gold-sale-cost-us-5bn\/story-e6frg6nf-1225985231872\">The Australian<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;The decision to sell the reserves was approved by then RBA governor Ian Macfarlane and then treasurer Peter Costello.&#8221; The RBA revealed in July 1997 that over a six-month period, it had sold 167 tonnes, reducing Australia&#8217;s reserves to just 80 tonnes. At this time, the value of its gold assets fell from $3.6bn to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gold-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.australian-gold.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.australian-gold.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.australian-gold.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.australian-gold.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.australian-gold.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.australian-gold.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.australian-gold.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.australian-gold.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.australian-gold.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}