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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tradelite who wrote (6921)	11/19/2002 8:35:25 AM
From: Moominoid	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

Here in the U.S., we haven't yet resorted to the barter system whereby material goods (i.e., art) are a negotiable substitute for cash.... Oh come on... wealthy people have always bought art and families like ours (in the past) sold it to them. It's not much of an investment in the economic sense of course about the same as gold but less liquid and more fragile. My father sold the majority of it once he inherited it. He also saved all his life into bonds, stocks, mutual funds, cash etc and paid off one small mortgage (£4500 for an apartment in 1966 in South London where I grew up - there's been a lot more inflation in the UK than the US since then). "American wealth" which many people seem to discount today (thinking all boomers and younger people are heavily in debt or downright poor) has much to do with capital accumulation by previous generations. The average person doesn't inherit a lot from their parents - if they are lucky a house typically and if they are lucky no debts... But for a significant group inheritance is important. Maybe some of those people above are poor but soon won't be? The incentive to save is low if you know you are going to inherit. One reason for the fall in the savings rate in advanced Western economies. And these days, stocks are only "saleable and transferable", as you say, when they attract a buyer. Hey, are those stocks paying a dividend? If not, I'm not interested. <g> You can always get a buyer immediately in a publicly traded company unless it is extremely small and majorly inside owned or your position is very big in that stock. Dividend paying isn't important in theory and is tax disadvantaged in the US. It is much higher in Australia where dividends have the tax advantage. In practice it does seem to discipline managers. LOL....I've been thinking lately we should all invest in scrap gold from jewelry and/or old silver coins--those may be the only things we can trade for passage to another state or another country, if we need to evacuate. <g> Well maybe Americans should be a little less complacent about the safety of property post 9/11. That on top of earthquakes and other disasters which may be uninsurable... My long-term strategy is to be globally diversified. Having the majority of my net worth sitting in a single building or even a few in the same district is pretty scary! Moomin