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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: energyplay who wrote (5359)	4/6/2006 6:32:44 AM
From: Seeker of Truth	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 219080

Hi energyplay, It's hard, for me anyway, to accept Mr. Liu's argument that because debts or oil or whatever are denominated in US dollars that means one has to keep a store of USD around. To take a real situation, a friend of a good friend is buying pieces of real estate in Asia for me and others and he wants the contributed capital from time to time to be sent as USD. No problem for me. I keep zero USD around, that's ZERO. When it's time to make a payment I go to the bank, buy USD with my Canadian dollars and wire them on their way. In an hour or so it's his problem. I suppose he changes the USD to yen and/or HK dollars. He probably does that within hours. So nobody clings very long to USD. I can't understand why the USD THEREBY gains much importance. If oil were denominated in Norwegian Krona and the oil sellers swif tly changed to Euros and/or renminbi and/or Mexican pesos whatever mix fit their needs, why would that make the NOK suddenly much more valuable than before? So I think this hegemony theory makes no sense. Even people that want to buy jet planes or weapons from the US don't need to cling to the USD for more than a few minutes a payment.

To: energyplay who wrote (5359)	4/6/2006 5:02:27 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 219080

For gold to replace all the world's fiat currencies, the price per ounce would need to be about as you say: <US Federal national debt is 9 Trillion, a gold price of $36,000 an ounce would cover that.> At $30,000 an ounce, the world would move to a gold economy, with hordes of people spending all day finding ways to get gold. They'd be filtering the ocean and digging everywhere. Gold jewelry would be extremely attractive for theft. Wearing wedding rings would tempt people to rob. It would be like Easter Islanders spending their days building big Moais, with no useful purpose other than perhaps to keep restless young males active and not causing trouble. Which is quite a good purpose. Gold digging would be not as useful as Moai as it would be a capital intensive business rather than labour intensive. Digging gold would occupy vast resources in an enormous exercize in futility. The idea that the amount of gold is more or less stable is false. Dilution of existing holders would be gradual at first, then rapid as production ramps up. If my proton removal system gets working a bit better, then gold will priced at about three times the price of lead. Even before I start production, the price of gold will crash as people realize they own nothing more than an Aztec relic. My production cost will define the price of gold as all other production methods will be more expensive and lead is pretty well unlimited. I might use mercury or thallium [or even, initially, make gold into platinum as prices of that are so high and it's only a single proton to produce that from gold]. But if it's easy to rattle the protons out, then I'll just flood the market with lead-based platinum and gold. Fuel cells will suddenly be the way to run a car. Oil prices will crash in a big way to hold market share against methanol-powered fuel cells. Platinum makes fuel cells expensive. Mqurice