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Gold/Mining/Energy : Gold Price Monitor -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: goldsnow who wrote (50357)	3/13/2000 5:27:00 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116759

Cold War?? With what ideology? The cold war was fought between two different ideologies, one democratic market based capitalism, and the other a centralized totalitarian state economy. For the cold war to resume, the Russians will have to offer some alternative politico-economic model and they have a rather poor record of providing sustainable ones. Marxism has fallen into disrepute. Maoism has fallen into disrepute. Capitalism has prospered despite having to spend billions defending its interests against totalitarian states. However, there is no doubt that Russian could become a authoritarian state, but the cost of remilitarizing itself would sap what little economic strength it has and cause an incredible outflow of talented scientists and technicians as occurred in Nazi Germany. And I dare say, the same can be said for China, which may wish to be a world military power, but does not have the economy, nor technology to quite achieve that status. That is not to say that both China and Russia wouldn't make life miserable for the western and Pacific Rim nations, but let's face it... wars between holders of nuclear arms are limited wars generally fought on foreign soil. And in the end, Russia and China could only fight such a war at great sacrifice to their economies and political systems. Neither Chinese, nor Russians, have much desire to fight on foreign soil, no matter how savagely they would defend their home soil against invaders. As for future oil shortages, I guess you don't know about tar sands and oil shale, which can comprise hundreds of years of available supply at current energy usage rates. Then there are the extensive gas and coal fields that lie in the US, Mexico, and Canada, both of which can readily be converted into liquid fuels. There exists literally 500 years worth of coal available to be converted into liquid fuels. And I haven't even touched upon Hydrogen or ethanol. So don't get your BVDs in a wad. If China or Russia opt to go to war with the west, they will lose (or we will all lose and all of this discussion will become a moot point as we play our harps in heaven sporting Nuclear Suntans.. :0). Regards, Ron