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

To: TobagoJack who wrote (19983)	6/18/2002 8:57:48 PM
From: EL KABONG!!!	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Hi Jay, Welcome back... Question for you... Were you at all impacted by the Chinese government's crackdown on Internet cafes in China, especially in Beijing? Did you see that fire that they had? KJC

To: TobagoJack who wrote (19983)	6/18/2002 9:40:10 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74559

Gidday Jay, <remain exactly where it is and was, able to buy today what it was able to buy many moons ago. How important is this magical quality? > At US$300 an ounce, I could hire prospectors to go work in the gold mines for me. I suppose I'd need about $15 an hour to hire said the company's average employee. That ounce of gold would buy 20 hours of their time. Did prospectors hunting gold in the Klondike, Coromandel, Waihi, Otago and elsewhere get an ounce of gold every two days with their pans and shovels? I suppose some would at times and maybe more when they happen upon a hot-spot. But over say a year? <The total physical gold outstanding, shares in mining companies, plus even derivatives are not very much compared to the amount of fiat paper overhang, > But compared with total assets. Gold is just an item in the vast list of assets which exist. If people get scared of fiat money, gold is just one asset of the total. It gets a turbo boost because it's more liquid and easily moved etc than a plot of land or an oil well, but it's still just an asset. Do you know what the ratio is for current total gold value/total asset value [excluding fiat paper, which is just a promise which can turn to hot air]? I guess gold is a drop in the ocean and of little consequence. If things get so bad that you have to run with a bag of gold coins, things are so bad that the bag of gold coins will have dramatically reduced value anyway. Perhaps less value than a gun and knife. My gun and knife would beat your bag of gold, when things really, really get bad. As the Aztecs found, their gold was poor defence against the Spaniards. The USA happens to have a lot of guns. I think I might bet on the USA guns and stuff. Mqurice

To: TobagoJack who wrote (19983)	6/18/2002 9:49:16 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74559

<Chanting begets chanting, begets awareness, agitation, realization, movement, panic, and leads onward to mania.> Well Jay, that's what various cult leaders try to induce, and many get some sort of following. But joining a cult on the off-chance that it'll be the one to take over the world sounds rather like John Walker Linde's idea of joining Osama's crew. Okay, they won the WTC skirmish, but Linde's game is over. What if we strike up the band with gold tubas, trumpets and drums and the crowd yawns and goes the other way. <<If speculators are lucky, they'll get a speculative boom in gold. If they are not, they'll be left holding another boring depreciating commodity, of which there are a lot>> … <How is this different from anything else in life?> It's nice when my assets get caught up in mania, which sometimes happens. But I'm primarily interested in investing in people who create things which other people want to buy at a highly profitable price. I don't think I'd be a very good speculator - I like things easier and suitable for somebody who isn't endowed with great ability, lots of luck and desire for zero-sum games of winners and losers [with the house taking a cut]. So, it's quite different from other things in life. Mqurice