Christopher Fildes

Reading the runes on the rouble’s rim —they say ‘In Gold We Trust’

Reading the runes on the rouble’s rim —they say ‘In Gold We Trust’

For my birthday, I have been given a gold rouble. It’s the thought that matters, of course — but which would you say was worth more: the rouble, or the gold? The promise to pay, or the precious metal? In the rouble’s homeland this question has always been a no-brainer. Ninety years ago Russia went to war, backed by gold reserves that were the biggest in the world. Five years later, when civil war had supervened, Admiral Kolchak was retreating down the Trans-Siberian Railway with a fleet of special trains, one of which held the reserves. By what may have been a coincidence, this train left the rails and was wrecked, and horsemen swooped out of the night and took the gold away. Some of the missing ingots were later identified on a truck in the Vatican’s private railway sidings. Much the same trick was repeated when the Soviet Union broke up. Several tons were found to be missing from the reserves. They may have been privatised by the secret police, who certainly had to investigate some vicious suicides. Even today, any sensible oligarch will keep his own reserves — enough, say, to buy a football club — in portable form. This is his insurance policy against falling out with his government and being put in the slammer, to read through his tax demands while his company disintegrates. Governments, in Russia and out, have been known to behave like this. They have ways of making their promises worthless, the simplest being to print more and more of them. No wonder that gold has come back into favour.

Losing call

Pushing up above $450 an ounce, the price of gold is at its highest for years and must annoy Gordon Brown every time he sees it. This is the Chancellor who thought it would be clever to sell half the nation’s gold reserves.

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