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To: elmatador who wrote (40850)	11/4/2003 10:22:27 PM
From: Mark Adams	Respond to of 74559

Hey Elmat, Someone, perhaps Don Lloyd, posted long ago to me the aspects of a medium which make for good money. One aspect was fungibility- a bar of gold can be subdivided with loss of value of the resulting pieces. I don't remember all the aspects, but it is clear to me that transaction costs should be a primary concern- and Gold clearly falls down there. It is far easier for me to use your AMT's, with lower transaction costs, than gold coins. So I tend to put Gold in the commodity camp, along with platinum and silver. Nice to have, but not my first choice at the grocery store. The tricky thing about my efforts, is that you find eventually money isn't perhaps a good store of wealth, which leads you to behave like Warren Buffet- buying up going concerns that are actually doing something useful. However, even that is tricky, as societies needs and desires change over time, and other 'islands' develop cost advantages sometimes rendering your capacity unprofitable, and worse, worthless. I really would like to own more Brazilian concerns, but the language barrier holds me back. I had some BAK (Braskem) & ELP, but trying to sort out their merger and books and govt influence, well, it's a bit like being alice in wonderland for the naive when it comes to Brazilian way of life, values and current events. Was looking at RIO recently, a bit run up with all the hoopla re commodities of late I suspect, but it is hard for me to expend much effort when I remember I had to throw up my hands when it came to being 'educated' re BAK & ELP. Anyway, I suspect as much as I'd like to flow capital to that great country, I'm having trouble doing so because of my inability to master the culture. Perhaps that will create more opportunities for you and the wee ones.