Will Darling's Derrière follow Brown's Bottom?

Interesting post over at Bearwatch, on the recent purchase by the UK government of a huge quantity of US securities, and the risks to both the American currency, and to British reserves as a knock-on effect.

As we all know now (and some, like Sir Peter Tapsall, realised at the time), Gordon Brown's sale of a large proportion of our gold reserves in 1999 was timed perfectly to catch the bottom of the gold market, costing us billions. It has since become known as "Brown's Bottom". Will this move prove equally expensive, or have Alistair Darling and our Treasury boffins got it right this time?

Right or wrong, is it the job of the UK government to be speculating in such a big way, or should they be hedging more cautiously?