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

To: marcos who wrote (12819)	1/5/2002 5:57:46 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 74559

Marcos, re <it's the only form of money that is not a debt obligation of some group of fallible human beings, the only form not subject to political whim > How about share certificates? Those aren't debt obligations. They represent ownership of assets and productive capacity valued by people. The Q cybercurrency will enable micropayments of ownership of those companies with near-zero transaction costs. I can't see why anyone would want to own an Argentine-style currency such as the US$ when they can own a totally secure, undilutable [shareholders control any printing and own the result of that printing], instant, profit-making, tax-free, encrypted cyberspace value system. I don't think it's a matter of if. It's a matter of when and who does it and who makes the money by doing it. I would say that Microsoft and QUALCOMM are in a position to do it. First, they'll get the system developed, using the US$, then, on-line share trading will morph into the payments system and US$ will reduce in importance. Gold will be completely irrelevant and will be valued only as jewelery and stuff rather than as a financial foundation. I'm offering my usual double your money back guarantee! I'll accept gold payments!! On the tangible versus intangible, yes, you are right that while we are physical entities, a roof, car, boat, aircraft and stuff are great to have to stay dry, get dinner and stuff. But many of those physical things are not as solid as they look. As you say, CDMA stretches our hearing around the world. Webcams stretch our optic nerve around the world. Now, when 3D imaging with retinal scans are as good as being there and high quality sound is available too, we can 'be there' without the cost, time, inconvenience and tedium of airport security, box-cutter wackoes, traffic jams and stuff. Of course there are other senses we use too, so being there will still be the real thing, but a lot of physical stuff is related to information which can be moved a lot more easily through the fibresphere than by moving us in 3D. Much of the physical world is related to information movement. Should Mohammed go to the mountain or have the mountain come to him? The mountainous Library of Congress used to sit there and to see it, Mohammed had to go there. Now we can sit comfy and click in cyberspace to get it. When mountains can be squeezed through fibre, [which people can't be], Mohammed can stay home in comfort but still get the real oil on things. Now, I'm going to a real 3D supermarket in my tangible car to get some real, freshly-picked, mouth-drooling corn, soak it in butter and act like any other hungry beast... Cyberspace can't replace everything yet by a long shot. Though I could click on the supermarket and have it delivered to my door by a robot. Mqurice

To: marcos who wrote (12819)	1/6/2002 10:07:35 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 74559

Crikey, gold production has taken off in some several countries and crashed in South Africa. Even during 2 decades of serious price declines, production keeps zooming up [other than in South Africa]. Thanks for the link Marcos: goldsheetlinks.com It's not as much of a printing press as Uncle Al's machine, but there is a LOT of gold coming out of the ground and no limit either. Imagine if they start filtering it out of the ocean....!! Heck, they could use deuterium to fuel a fusion reaction to energize nano-tech separation and filtration on a vast scale to produce all sorts of stuff including mountains of gold. There aren't enough middle-aged men needing to get gold necklaces and other trinkets to keep demand up. The wedding ring market must be at a peak now. Is there a gold consumption graph somewhere? With production increases like that, we shouldn't expect price rises of any serious nature. The last big panic in 1979 after the second quadrupling of oil prices was fun for a short time, but traders had to be quick to take advantage of the suckers. Because gold was only taken off the $35 per ounce peg in the early 1970s, it was still going up as people thought oil prices, deficits and stuff would make currencies problematic and gold ownership seemed new and exciting. Gold is definitely for Aztecs, or people who want to buy a wedding ring, a middle-aged has-been necklace, an electrical connector or to replace mercury in their teeth. Production is zooming at current low prices, so there must be plenty of profit in it even at these levels. That means more competition as more producers dig for their fortune. What a lot of effort to get some crusty old guy less status than he can get from a swanky new mobile cyberspace link via CDMA. If he put that in his pocket he'd impress more ladies [except that those devices are getting very small now]. Producing an ounce of gold for a necklace is more expensive than producing ASICs for the Kyocera 6035 or the great new Samsung version. The demand is less and the profit less. EVERYONE will want a cyberspace link. Few want the gold chain. With 30,000 tons in central bank stores, there is 30,000/2,600 = over a decade of production already in stock. Not to mention all the other gold stashed around the place. No wonder companies are selling their production at current prices on the futures market rather than betting on the fantasy of price rises. How many years of wedding ring, gold chain, electrical contact and other actual uses [other than as money] is 30,000 tons? Mqurice