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

To: carranza2 who wrote (80476)	9/27/2011 5:17:18 PM
From: Snowshoe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217862

>>The point is to analyze, go far into history, deduce, induce, examine, and intuit why some things retain value<< I think this bit of history about gold would make a great movie... Musa I of Mali (c.1312 - c. 1337) en.wikipedia.org Musa made his pilgrimage (to Mecca) in 1324, his procession reported to include 60,000 men, 12,000 slaves, heralds dressed in silks who bore gold staffs, organized horses and handled bags. Musa provided all necessities for the procession, feeding the entire company of men and animals.[7] Also in the train were 80 camels, which varying reports claim carried between 50 and 300 pounds of gold dust each. Musa not only gave to the cities he passed on the way to Mecca, including Cairo and Medina, but also traded gold for souvenirs. Furthermore, it has been recorded that he built a mosque each and every Friday. Musa's journey was documented by several eyewitnesses along his route, who were in awe of his wealth and extensive procession, and records exist in a variety of sources, including journals, oral accounts and histories. Musa is known to have visited with the Mamluk sultan Al-Nasir Muhammad of Egypt in July of 1324.[8] Musa's generous actions, however, inadvertently devastated the economy of the region. In the cities of Cairo, Medina and Mecca, the sudden influx of gold devalued the metal for the next decade. Prices on goods and wares super inflated in an attempt to adjust to the newfound wealth that was spreading throughout local populations. To rectify the gold market, Musa borrowed all the gold he could carry from money-lenders in Cairo, at high interest. This is the only time recorded in history that one man directly controlled the price of gold in the Mediterranean.[9]

To: carranza2 who wrote (80476)	9/27/2011 11:50:11 PM
From: Maurice Winn	3 Recommendations Respond to of 217862

Technology keeps on coming. As you know, all elements from aluminium to zirconium are just a mix up of the primary particles as cooked up in stars. Stars don't do intelligent processing. Alchemists tried to do intelligent processing but they lacked understanding and technology. My patent-pending process does the trick: <To produce platinum, just get a load of scrap IRON, strip the electrons off by pouring a stream of positrons into it and combine three IRON nuclei, then feed a stream of electrons back in to finish it off into platinum. Of course it's a bit more sophisticated than that might seem at first glance and people can't just do it in a converted P distillery. If the price of GOLD goes up compared with platinum, just add a hydrogen nucleus to top the platinum up to GOLD. Care is needed in the hydrogen addition or the GOLD would suddenly turn to lead if too much is added. Quite a lot of energy is generated in the process so a city needs to be in the vicinity to use the energy, or a data centre to power Cyberspace. I have shorted GOLD because my production cost is wayyyy below the current price. > The collective mind of Man is much more valuable than a truckload or ten of various metals as produced by my method which anyone can do [once they have the know-how]. Far more valuable in the long run is the collective self-interest of billions of people, or in the US$ case, hundreds of millions of them. You are right that US$ are an inadequate representation of the collective interest. But because US$ are not particularly good, it doesn't mean gold is the alternative. If we assume that US$ goes to zero, but gold does not take over as money, what should the price of gold be as measured by oil, CDMA, potatoes, Apple shares, land in Angola, land in Australia, land in Afghanistan, tomatoes, wheat, barley, rice, photovoltaics, coal and the millions of other things which have value. Right now, those things all have a price in US$. The price of gold should match those values, not be more, or less. The price of those things is for the most part the long run marginal cost of production, with some things being higher than others for a greater or lesser time as markets clear and productions shifts from less profitable to more profitable things. As measured by oil, gold is about right. Oil has gone from $10 per barrel to $80 per barrel while gold has gone from $300 per ounce to $1800 per ounce. So in oil terms, gold is a bit cheap. In Big Mac terms, gold is over-priced because Big Macs do not cost 6 times what they did in Y2K. In Toyota Corolla terms, gold is over the top too. In house at the beach terms, gold is expensive. In the price of shovel-ready blokes with spades, gold is expensive. In most ways we measure it, gold is expensive. The mass hysteria is basically saying "OMG US$ is doomed and the evil pixelating banksters and politicians are robbing us blind. That means gold is worth all the money in the world." There is a bit of truth in each of those things, but let's keep a grip and sense of proportion. There isn't going to be a gold standard [globally] so you can forget about that. The correct price of gold is in proportion to the infinite array of other things which can be bought today. There are something like $10 trillion but total value of everything in the world is measured in the hundreds of $trillions. US$ is so trivial as to be irrelevant. 6 billion people x $100,000 each = $600 trillion. If you value people at more than $100,000 then you need to raise the $600 trillion. On average, total value per person is I guess about $500,000 [African being worth not much but Swiss being worth $millions]. So total value is about $3 quadrillion. I used the word quadrillion several years ago when politicians were raising bids from $billlions past the $1 trillion mark. Now they are casually into a few $trilllion. I wanted to be first with "quadrillion". Gold by comparison with total value is trivial. Gold is just another trinket in the overall context of world property. It doesn't even rise to the level of ornament. It's in the 'trinket' category. Nevertheless, I'm keen to buy some. Mqurice