wellinghall (
wellinghall) wrote2009-02-03 01:14 pm
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Art poll
Titian's Diana and Actaeon saved for the nation
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/feb/02/titian-diana-actaeon-saved
[Poll #1342795]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/feb/02/titian-diana-actaeon-saved
[Poll #1342795]
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More recently, central banks held reserves of other currencies to use to manipulate the value of their own currency. (That is, if the Bank of England wanted the pound to be stronger, it could use reserves of dollars, yen etc to buy Sterling on the foreign currency markets, thus pushing the 'price' of Sterling higher.)
Nowadays, we're all more enlightened and central banks (or at least the sensible ones) no longer try to manipulate the markets this way. Instead they leave currencies to find their natural value. Because of this, we don't actually need reserves of gold or foreign currency any more. When he was chancellor, Gordon Brown sold off a large part of Britain's remaining reserves. He can be criticised for doing so when some of the assets he was selling (especially gold) were at a lower than usual price, but I don't think you can criticise him just for selling off reserves.
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While I'm on the fence over whether they SHOULD stump up the money (ie. be morally obliged to kind of thing), I have no particular objection to some government money going towards the Titian, after all they waste enough on botched IT projects, wild schemes for this and that, and goodness knows what else, at least the Titian has both cultural and monetary value.
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(Not a serious suggestion, given the tiny amount of gold you need for a typical computer. But it does have more industrial uses than you might think, and many of them are vital to a modern economy. Of course, since Britain doesn't manufacture anything any more....)