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To: philv who wrote (3403)	11/22/1997 2:20:00 PM
From: Bobby Yellin	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 116810

I am a bit confused by what you wrote..currently where I live a real estate bubble is blossoming away and seems a lot more dangerous than the last one to hit..before,in the eighties, a lot of speculators and people looking for tax writeoffs bid up properties..now a lot of people who can't afford the rents have been buying whatever they can get their hands on to live in and not to speculate.. if another recession comes down the road and it should come in a year or so..(year 2000 might make it intense(somebody sent me an email saying that when a company was testing to see if they fixed the year 2000 bug for a nuclear reactor plant the plant shut down..no fix) all the value in the real estate bubble might go puff puff puff.. all the wealth generated by the stock market bubble also may go puff puff puff in a couple of years.(also real estate can be taxed. people can stop paying rents..building inspectators can demand fixups..maintenance is constantly needed blah blah blah..one doesn't even need to polish gold(if one likes patina :>) .gee..the reaction to the SE Asian currency meltdown was such a huge PUFF..(I still think the Dow will go a little past 10,000 though..extremes are always characteristic of bull markets)although the recovery has been swift.. since the US market is the current safe haven (supposedly Thanksgiving is for the bears and XMAS for the bulls..so up up and away? So I think created wealth can get vaporized in an instant..especially if it is related to paper...oh let me count the derivatives....they can't vaporize hard assets..(also interestingly,..the auctions at Sotheby's still didn't go that well..so I guess people are still very very very bullish on paper and feel that is still the place to be to make money..(friend is the trend..short term fundamentals are the enemy) I guess I should start learning more about the IMF but I have been getting so angry lately(punching phantoms which just get me weaker and the phantoms stronger)..so glad the IMF can possibly bailout South Korea to keep the ball rolling but goodness gracious...let them do nothing for North Korea which there was probably cannibalism from food shortage...after all that is not the IMF's balliwick... boy I feel like a stranger in a strange land..... (ps I am not a gold bug..just looking for assets that can't come from thin air and that don't have the baggage that comes along with real estate)

To: philv who wrote (3403)	11/22/1997 3:03:00 PM
From: PaulM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116810

OK I'll tear it apart. 1. The amount of gold produced every year is less than the amount of other real wealth created every year. Gold is rare and getting rarer and more valuable. That's true not only of its monetary aspects but also of its jewelry and industrial apects. It's a "precious metal." No reason it can't be valued at, say, the price of an equal sized diamond. 2. Say we return to he gold standard. There's no problem if an ounce of gold is redeemed at an astronomical sum,say $5000 an ounce. There's plenty of paper to go around. 3. Historically, the money supply does NOT increease in proportion the creation of real assets, but rather exceeds them. For obvious reasons. Govts improve popularity and distract from domestic ills by fooling people into believing they have more. If all goes well, the populace only realize it on the next guys watch. 4. And that's the rub, isn't it. While we are told that govts are now committed to monetary stability, the ONLY reason for using an unlimited paper money supply is to control and inflate it when necessary. To tax, for example, by "borrowing" trillions in debt and then perhaps "repaying" in deflated dollars. With a constantly fluctuating money supply, it becomes impossible for the market to value anything in relation to the medium of exchange. This is of course less than perfect. 5. But free markets have been overcoming governmental control in many areas. And so it shall be with respect to the monetary system. What do you think the free market will use? Empiracally, what did people use as a medium of exhange before govt told them what to use? Salt, silver--stuff of value--and more often gold. Not something valueless that anyone can make any amount of. Gold is particulalry useful in this respect because it is permament, durable and of relatively unchanging quantity. My computer chips may be useless when Microsoft moves to Windows 95, and they may make lots of Volvos that I don;t know about, so if I'm trading chips for volvos, gold is an excellent, permanent measure.