rudd stays mum on slowing economy, page-9

http://au.messages.yahoo.com/news/politics/150962/

Sydney Morning Herald
Monday, November 12, 2007, 1:04 PM AEDST
Costello and the missing gold
By Paul Toohey

The Australian Government doesn't have much debt. It's not surprising. They took Telstra, which we owned, packaged it up and sold it back to us in the form of shares even though we owned it.

It's an ingenious form of double-dipping which makes the greatest criminal minds look timid. Labor did the same thing with the Commonwealth Bank.

If you haven't already noticed, business, finance and markets are not my thing. All I really know is this: governments can't just print money. It has to be worth something, backed up by reserves, often in the form of gold.

*****So I can remember being stunned when, in 1997, the Reserve Bank - seemingly in cahoots with Treasurer Peter Costello - one day announced most of our gold reserves had been quietly sold. It was especially bizarre because no discussion preceded the announcement.

Australia's 247-tonne gold stockpile slipped to 80 tonnes without the public even knowing it. I'm not sure whether they literally used trucks and ships to shift 167 tonnes of gold to its new owners. But I do know it was sold when gold was around US$350 an ounce.

Gold is now worth US$880 an ounce.