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

To: TobagoJack who wrote (5591)	7/5/2001 12:23:22 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Thanks Jay for the links. I like the gold graph from 1833 the most. Notice the long, flat graph, then the oil-related and inflation-boosted sudden, excited, rise to $800 an ounce for an instant. Then, the twenty year trend down. There seems to have been one time in human history when owning gold was a good idea. That was when the gold standard was dumped and oil went from $2 to $40 a barrel. Yes, I know there have been ups and downs over 20 years, but who can pick those? Waiting for some financial chaos seems more risky than just taking part in the vicissitudes of human life and the daily economic system, with profits and taxes. Maybe $35 an ounce was too cheap and production costs far exceeded that, resulting in a large rise. But I don't think production costs are $300 an ounce are they? Anyone who wants gold for a purpose can get it, so supply and demand are in balance, with a big demand from 'gold bugs' acting as additional price push. As the price falls, I'm sure swarms of gold bugs think "Yeah! What a bargain. I'm in! We haven't seen such low prices for 20 years and when the great financial collapse comes, everyone's going to want my god". Well, you pays your money and you takes your chances. It is still a fashion to own gold rather than an economic imperative. Fashions, even long-running ones, are just fashions. Without a bottom line of profit, it seems pointless to me and is simply a speculation. And, this one, which is as applicable to many other things, from money, to land and all sorts: <THE POWER OF GOLD THE HISTORY OF AN OBSESSION Prologue The Supreme Possession About one hundred years ago, John Ruskin told the story of a man who boarded a ship carrying his entire wealth in a large bag of gold coins. A terrible storm came up a few days into the voyage and the alarm went off to abandon ship. Strapping the bag around his waist, the man went up on deck, jumped overboard, and promptly sank to the bottom of the sea. Asks Ruskin: "Now, as he was sinking, had he the gold? Or had the gold him?" This book tells the story of how people have become intoxicated, obsessed, haunted, humbled, and exalted over pieces of metal called gold. Gold has motivated entire societies, torn economies to shreds, determined the fate of kings and emperors, inspired the most beautiful works of art, provoked horrible acts by one people against another, and driven men to endure intense hardship in the hope of finding instant wealth and annihilating uncertainty. > I have not studied gold, so I guess you can safely ignore those opinions, but I'm going with them. But don't take your gold on a boat. Mqurice