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

To: Stock Farmer who wrote (13057)	1/9/2002 6:00:44 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74559

John, on the road to Holland from Belgium for a day trip, our family needed some local dosh so stopped at the border exchange get some guilders. There was quite a queue. Incidentally, the queues, cost and hassles of having many ratty little currencies in Europe was one of those minor but very irksome problems of life which added nothing to the quality of it. So, I'm an avid Euro supporter and was hoping for that way back in 1987 - I'm amazed it took them so long. While standing in the queue, with 12 year old son impressed at the profits to be made by the teller taking Francs from one person, keeping a few and giving out guilder in exchange, then, taking guilders from somebody else, keeping a few and giving Francs [Marks, etc] in exchange, it occurred to me after a short time [queues are not my favourite fun] that I should do a deal with somebody else. Pretty soon there was a bustling exchange market in the queue. The disintermediation was just the thing we wanted. The queue was smaller, delays less, people kept their value in the new currency. With the Euro, you can be sure that the person and building have gone. There are no queues and soon, cyberspace will make such things even easier. Disintermediation and better ways don't leave the old-hands able to simply move in in another way. They really do go the way of the horse shoe. Money, being totally abstract and intangible, lends itself extremely well to cyberspace. I would not want to own bricks and mortar banks with gold bars, security guards and nonsense that costs a fortune and adds no value. The Q will finish them off. Mqurice