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

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (26991)	1/25/1999 12:52:00 PM
From: Mark Bartlett	Respond to of 116764

Ron, << What I do believe in is the threat other's belief in the metal pose to my well-being and wealth. But facts are facts. There is no doubt that those who have held gold for the past decade would have been better off to sell it and hold dollars. >> No need to respond ... but I would suggest that the time frame you are referring to above is much too short .... the story is far from over. MB

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (26991)	1/25/1999 1:10:00 PM
From: Bob Dobbs	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116764

<< I suggest you reread your history about Jackson. Jackson wanted capital to go to decentralized banks, not the financiers on Wall St controlling a central banking authority. >> * I'm aware of this. Jackson was upset because the sale of public lands was allowed to speculators on central bank credit. He enforced the hard money discipline. * << One of the prerequisites of "hard money" is that if there is great demand for it, but limited quantities available, interest rates soar as competition mounts to get access to that credit. Can you imagine 18% interest rates now on home and auto loans?? Not friggin' likely... there would be a political uproar from the people who own this country. What is more important... your wealth, or the ability for the common citizen to have access to affordable, non-usurous, credit?? When you can muster the votes to defend your wealth, you'll win. >> * This comes out of left field. Do you know what the gold lease rates are? 1%. That's how the shorts and the hedge funds have financed their leverage. Why then are regular credit rates higher than that? If by this you mean providing cheap credit when demand is high so as to keep rates "affordable", then you're just playing the same old game of fiat creation leading to misallocation of capital, inflation and the boom/bust cycle. With a gold standard you have discipline. If there's an imbalance somewhere it will show up immediately in credit rates. With a fiat system, you paper over today what will bite you with a vengeance tomorrow. No one ever said capitalism was easy - but there are fair and there are unfair ways of allowing it. The overwhelming choice for a higher prosperity for all is a fair, free market system based on honest money. * << There is nothing gold provides that a SOLIDLY CREDIBLE Federal Reserve Chairman doesn't. Volcker and Greenspan have done fantastic jobs as Chairmen of the Fed. Not perfect, but certainly they provide a human face behind the flexible discipline of money supply. >> * If there is such a thing as a "Solidly Credible FED" then I've never seen it. This country has debt levels that exceed anything in its history, bar none! That's another discussion in and of itself! We've just pushed all the problems off to a disasterous future, and the proof will be in the pudding. Bureacracy or freedom. Take your pick. * << Bob, I don't believe in the intrinsic value of gold. What I do believe in is the threat other's belief in the metal pose to my well-being and wealth. >> * There's far more of a threat from a powerful government which inflates the currency, erodes your wealth, threatens your freedoms, and your economic livelihood through boom/bust cycles. * << But facts are facts. There is no doubt that those who have held gold for the past decade would have been better off to sell it and hold dollars. So dollars have been a better storehouse of my wealth than gold has been since the time it topped out at $850/ounce (I wonder how those people who paid that amount feel about the intrinsic value of gold?) >> * And you can say the same thing about people holding dollars in the 70's. Again, no indictment of gold vs fiat. Just part of unnatural market cycles overregulated by the govt. I think you're missing a fundamental point. We're comparing the merits of a fiat based vs a gold based economy, not the merits of holding fiat vs gold in a fiat economy. Your arguments have no validity there. The "magic" as you call it, is the life preserver it offers. It a store of wealth that doesn't depend on government decree. That's the magic. You can't say that about fiat. There's no magic with fiat, only eventual misery. * Bob