British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, in a desperate attempt to save his own job, has asked former PM Gordon Brown to be his "global finance envoy". Gordon Brown is notorious for selling most of Britain's gold between 1999-2002. He foolishly announced he was selling it beforehand, and got the worst prices. The advance notice of the substantial sales drove the price of gold down by 10% by the time of the first auction on 6 July 1999. With many gold traders shorting, gold reached a low point of US$252.80 on 20 July. The UK eventually sold about 395 tonnes (12,700,000 ozt) of gold over 17 auctions from July 1999 to March 2002, at an average price of about US $275 per ounce. That turned out to be the bottom of the market. Since 2002 gold has had historic rallies and been one of the best performing assets in the world.(Wall Street Mav)