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

To: gpowell who wrote (53720)	2/13/2006 2:05:40 PM
From: Skywatcher	Respond to of 110194

Syria switches to euro amid confrontation with US Syria has switched all of the state's foreign currency transactions to euros from dollars amid a political confrontation with the United States, the head of state-owned Commercial Bank of Syria said on Monday. "This is a precaution. We are talking about billions of dollars," Duraid Durgham told Reuters. The bank, which still dominates the Syrian market although private banks have been allowed to set up in the last few years, has also stopped dealing with dollars in the international foreign exchange flows of private clients. The United States has been at the forefront of international pressure on Syria for its alleged role in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri a year ago. Damascus denies involvement in the killing. "It looks like a kind of pre-emptive action aimed at making their foreign assets safer, preventing them from getting frozen in case of any conflict," said a Middle East economist who requested anonymity. news.yahoo.com

To: gpowell who wrote (53720)	2/13/2006 4:17:04 PM
From: mishedlo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

From Heinz... there have been incidences in the past when large gold discoveries led to some monetary upheaval, e.g. in 17th century Spain. still, when one looks at the US quasi gold standard of the 19th century, most economic upheavals were clearly the result of some sort of state intervention (such as the idiotic fixed ratio between silver and gold), and yet, economic growth was faster than during the fiat regime, and the aggregate level of prices stayed stable over the entire century. and THAT is the most important feature of a gold standard - purchasing power of money stays stable, not to mention, the State finds it impossible to take on ever more debt. and yes, it's true that fractional reserves banking was a feature of some of the 19th century financial crises. nevertheless, most of those crises were met with a laissez faire approach, and they didn't last long as a result. the first US economic crisis that the State tried to combat with interventionism was the Great Depression. it became such a disaster precisely BECAUSE the state and the monetary authorities intervened. in modern times, the world's stock of gold grows at about 2% p.a., and no large discoveries are likely to markedly change this growth rate. as Fekete explains, there is no limit to the marginal utility of gold - just because you own say 10 gold coins, your desire to own an 11th isn't less than your desire to own a 10th was back when you owned 9.