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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mike Johnston who wrote (53296)	2/9/2006 6:12:09 PM
From: shades	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

DJ US Space Tourism Possible By 2008 -Transportation Secy . WASHINGTON (AP)--Paying space travelers could be lifting off from the U.S. by 2008, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta says. He told a group of space entrepreneurs Thursday that he expects to issue permits for test flights next year. If those are successful, licenses for passenger space travel could then be issued. "This timeline isn't based on science fiction," Mineta said, adding that it's based on where he expects the state of commercial space to be in two years. There have already been three space tourists who have hitched rides on Russian Soyuz spaceships to the international space station. Each paid $20 million. (END) Dow Jones Newswires February 09, 2006 17:58 ET (22:58 GMT)

To: Mike Johnston who wrote (53296)	2/9/2006 7:12:46 PM
From: mishedlo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

Since 2003 ,"Bond investors" have lost close to 50% of purchasing power as measured against gold and commodities, while they happily collect 4% coupon. Cherry picking your time frame here "just a bit" aren't you? Mish

To: Mike Johnston who wrote (53296)	2/15/2006 5:13:07 PM
From: Wyätt Gwyön	Respond to of 110194

Since 2003 ,"Bond investors" have lost close to 50% of purchasing power as measured against gold and commodities i don't think short-term appreciation in gold is any kind of measure for bonds, except over very long time frames (in which bonds, especially short-term bonds, outperform gold). coupon clippers are not taking their 4% to buy gold. they are buying a broad array of goods and services. so the question is, whether they are losing purchasing power against those goods and services. i think the answer is Yes, but i don't think it's anywhere near 50%. besides, if you want to fault bond investors, why not start in 1980, since which time even "matress investors" in paper money have beaten gold handily. and people who bought 25-yr zeros and renewed them each year utterly thrashed gold by something like an an order of magnitude. i.e., they could buy more than 10x as much gold today as they could in 1980 with the capital they invested in 25-yr zeros. the latter point is just to show you can data mine any series to prove a point--or cherry-picking, as Mish called it. over long periods of time, gold simply keeps up with inflation. T-bills thrashed gold over the last century as they were a 57-bagger. gold is a terrible investment, but now and then a great speculation. maybe now is one of those times (certainly a 100% plus return off the lows is nice, though nothing compared with Crude). but going forward, if inflation really does take off, interest rates will rise dramatically. this will cause terrible losses on long-term bonds, but T-bills should still outperform gold over the next century as they will, over 100 years, need to be priced to have a real yield of 1-2% which is superior to gold's real yield of 0%. i think that will continue until civilization collapses--which, admittedly, could be within our lifetimes, but you never know. in any case, if/when civilization collapses, we will all have bigger worries than our portfolio values.