re gold and hk real estate :0)
player 1: From today's "Lai See" column in the SCMP.
Note: Tin Shui Wan is probably the worst neighborhood in Hong Kong.
They say gold is the currency of kings and silver the money of gentlemen. The Chinese love affair with gold dates back thousands of years and most still believe it is a valuable long-term investment. But they may have to rethink their investment strategies if they heard Julia Leung Fung-yee, acting director of Financial Services and the Treasury, yesterday at the Chinese Gold and Silver Exchange Society party to celebrate its 100th anniversary this year.
In 1910, an ounce of gold cost US$21, compared with today's US$1,118 - a 50-fold increase. Back then, the value of an ounce of gold was equivalent to the price of 110 sq ft of floor space of an average Kowloon flat. Today, this can only buy you a minuscule 1.7 sq ft of floor space - the size of a doormat - of an apartment somewhere in Tin Shui Wai.
This gives a whole new meaning to a popular local saying that "land is at a premium". Maybe another popular Hong Kong adage - "with floor space as tiny as a slice of beancurd" - can better reflect our terribly twisted real-estate market.
player tj: just proves the points that (i) hk real estate is at freedom premium, (ii) global gold is not yet at liberty valuation, and (iii) one should hoard both, as solidified and yielding surplus, and as mineralized and sleeping excess, one balancing the other, and both leveraging off of global tyranny and planet-wide thievery, and each offering salvation in own unique way, together satisfying imperatives for secure, solid, and satisfyingly yielding golden years of serene retirement |
