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Gold/Mining/Energy : Gold Price Monitor -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bobby Yellin who wrote (25472)	1/5/1999 11:13:00 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 116753

Morgy, To answer your points one by one (my opinion only): Rubin and US Dollar: Rubin and Greenspan are fighting a tough battle. Yes, having the dollar decline relative to other currencies helps alleviate our trade deficit. However, on the down side, it also makes it harder to manage our tremendous national debt (some $5 Trillion) through sales of US bonds. There is also the question about oil, which is primarily denominated in dollars. If oil is redenominated in Euros, then we will find ourselves a disadvantage in that market that non-US currencies face currently. Eventually Europe could challenge the dollar, but I think is some years away and only after a lot of arm-twisting (head knocking?) as Europe transitions to a political union. Look at Canada... they have been dealing with a separatist Quebequois province hell bent on maintaining their unique culture. Just how with Europe convert itself into a nation where citizens are forced to become marginalized into a European consciousness, rather than as a German, Frenchmen, ... etc. These kinds of assimilation efforts are never easy on a smaller scale and nearly mind-boggling for a continent that has seen a multitude of wars fought over cultural and political differences. Military spending: Building weapons adds nothing to the economic pie. It's like the legal profession, a necessary evil, but produces nothing that is more valuable than its cost of operations. Military spending is just the "cost of doing business", like a police and fire dept. Were there no crime or fire, those resources would find themselves being better spent producing even more wealth as that wage money is spent on engineers, teachers, and scientists doing research on new technologies. But given our proclivity for conflict and greed, we must spend this money and divert it from areas that could enable greater economic impact. As for technology, it always has bugs, (or according to MSFT, undocumented features..:0) that have to be worked out. Every innovation has faced teething problems and the need to train common people on how to use it. Usually, this takes an entire generation as younger people grow up with technology that older people are afraid of. Eg: the transition from riding horses to driving cars. How long did that take? I wish you luck with your computer problems... I have Win98, and I find it locks up on me from time to time, but not nearly as bad as Win95 and 3.1 My main problem with Win98 is its a memory and storage hog with bloated programs. But then again that's bullish for the memory makers, INTC/AMD, and the disk drive makers.... :0) I shall now step off of my soapbox... Fire away!!! <VBG> Regards, Ron