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

To: Don Lloyd who wrote (5927)	7/17/2001 11:50:34 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74559

To make your analogy more consistent with the historical facts, you'd have to put in that, on his deathbed, the father of the king of the people who owned Fort Knox prophesied that bearded men would come soon come over the sea and destroy their world. And that, as a ransom for his freedom, the king offered the Spaniards enough gold to fill a large hall "as high as he could reach." And that the people did not have any weapons which were effective against Spaniards wearing armor and riding on horseback. In other words, that the Spaniards got away clean, and brought the gold back to Spain without too much trouble. And then what happened? Well, is gold a store of value? I think not. I think it's only a medium of exchange, but it's certainly purchasing power. For the Spanish kings, it was like winning the lottery many times over. What was being exchanged was the labor of the Indians who mined the gold, but I don't think anyone knows whether the Indian king compensated his subjects or not. Later, of course, the Spaniards made the Indians do more mining, and they did not compensate the Indians. Some who luck into great wealth use it to create greater wealth. Some squander it in one generation. Some buy bonds and generations live off the interest. I'd like to believe that no enduring great fortune was ever built off of slave labor - it's a subject worth studying - but that is a question to which I really don't know the answer.