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

To: TobagoJack who wrote (26919)	1/6/2003 1:01:01 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74559

>>I remember you ceased to have an opinion on the market starting about 18 months ago<< Hi Jay - on this I am sure you are wrong, and wish you would either throw down (prove it) or quit saying it. My recollection is that I never have expressed an opinion about the direction about the stock market. I cashed out in 1999, too early, but not too late, and allocated my assets elsewhere (real estate, paying down debts, and money market). Haven't invested a penny in the stock market since summer of 1999, and if pressed, I can prove it. I bought some gold in 1999, and sold it several months later, and did not like the entire process of being buzzed into a gold emporium bearing a cashier's check, and walking out bearing heavy gold coins, and repeating the process in reverse, complicated by the fact that the buyer delayed unconscionably on making good the check, due to circumstances beyond his control (hurricane, loss of power). Too much trust involved, not enough regulation. Made me nervous having the damned coins in the house, too. And costs a bloody fortune to store in a bank vault, plus what's the point? If the world goes to hell in a hurry, you can't access your bank vault. In the meantime, the prudent thing to do is insure the physical gold, which is also expensive and sort of negates the point. My kids are not mature enough to be trusted to keep their mouths shut, either. So better to be shed of it.

To: TobagoJack who wrote (26919)	1/6/2003 4:27:38 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 74559

Jay, the relationship of Taiwan to China is a bit like the relationship of New Zealand to Australia. <<<Taiwan>> ... apparently a tough problem that is, again I state for the gabillionth time, no problem at all, like a cyst that gradually disappears into the greater tissue ... gone in ... > The difference is the way Chiang and co fought a civil war and took over Formosa, which set the stage for confrontation, exacerbated by the ideological confrontation between the USA and China with surrogate wars in Korea and Vietnam. Meantime, with Japan and Russia only recently evicted [thanks to USA]. British not long before evacuating [and only just gone from Hong Kong]. With India disputing territory. With Tibet being annexed. Plus lots of internal mayhem which you saw as a youngster up close and personal. So that's quite a difference. But now, those differences will fade. Despite Condoleezza and co making talk of 'strategic competitor' which seems odd language to use for a major supplier of goods. Partner would seem a more reasonable word. But I think they've dropped that language now. Give it a decade or three and those 20th century agonies will recede. Then, the NZ/Oz equivalency will show up. NZ was once part of Oz, but became independent, then independent of Britain too. But is increasingly dependent on Oz with discussion about common currency [meaning we'd adopt theirs], "CER" = closer economic relations, mutual defence [meaning we supply some people and equipment to integrate with Oz military], common business [meaning their companies and ours are integrating so that NZ becomes a branch office of Oz]. We are like another state of the Australian federal system, though politically we are still separate. But act as though we aren't. Much the same will evolve with Taiwan I suppose. Not absorbed, but adopted. Once those old actual and ideological wounds have healed over, there won't be need for the old rancour and belligerency. People will get on with life. Mqurice