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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Stcgg who wrote (3521)	5/9/2001 9:39:01 AM
From: Ilaine	Respond to of 74559

It's not surprising that the Russians want to move to a global planned economy. Their faith in such matters is touching. I can't imagine all the governments of the world being able to control the global economy - it's all electronic entries on computers these days. They can't control drugs, they can't control prostitution, they can't control slavery, they can't control pornography, they can't control violence, they can't control fraud, however do they expect to control money, the most powerful drug, the be-all and end-all of earthly existence? I'm halfway through a very interesting book, Gregory J. Millman's The Vandals' Crown - How Rebel Currency Traders Overthrew The World's Central Banks." About derivatives and currency speculation - written in 1995, before the LTCM fiasco, before Soros threw in the towel, so perhaps it would not be so optimistic if written today, but he lays it out pretty well. You can't understand money these days without having the same type of ability at math that would allow you to get a Ph.D. in theoretical physics. For those, like me, who are math morons, it's very good about the history of money. Governments are always trying to advance their own interests at the expense of capitalists, and vice versa. He says that bankers adopted the gold standard as a way of preventing kings from debasing the currency, but capitalists had to throw off the golden fetters* because "boom-bust-boom-bust" is inevitable with the gold standard, and who needs that? Interestingly, we haven't had a real bust since we left the gold standard in 1934. *("Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression, 1919-1939" is the title of a book by economist Barry Eichengreen. Well worth a read.)