hokahay Posted October 12, 2008 Report Share Posted October 12, 2008 again.............. i'm not immortal. if i was 20 years old in 1933, then it's highly likely i would be dead, so should i care? the question is how much is $20 to my children if i had invested it the Dow / or a House in 1933? well.......a hell of ALOT more than if i had invested in gold. FACT! now this is the question you need to ask yourself; with the DOW & House prices collapsing, do you feel lucky PUNK, well do YA!? 699372[/snapback] There are plenty of houses in downtown Detroit that are 100 years old and are worth nothing. Plus, you would have had to maintain them year after year. And if they didn't always take out the losers and replace them with winners, your stock portfolio today would consist of the following companies. January 8, 1929 Allied Chemical American Can American Smelting American Sugar American Tobacco B Atlantic Refining Bethlehem Steel Chrysler General Electric Company General Motors Corporation General Railway Signal Goodrich International Harvester International Nickel Mack Truck Nash Motors North American Paramount Publix Postum Incorporated Radio Corporation Sears Roebuck & Company Standard Oil (N.J.) Texas Company Texas Gulf Sulphur Union Carbide U.S. Steel Victor Talking Machine Westinghouse Electric Woolworth Wright Aeronautical Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
I_Am_Madness Posted October 12, 2008 Report Share Posted October 12, 2008 if i bought a house with smelly dollars in 1933, and rented it out, i would have a hell of alot more wealth than if i had bought smelly gold. 699386[/snapback] I think you are comparing apples & oranges. You are comparing 'assets' bought by the dollar against gold. The other party is the comparison of the 'purchasing' power between gold & the dollar. 2 very separate animals. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trader Joe Posted October 12, 2008 Report Share Posted October 12, 2008 ....This just in from, "The Stupidest Quote of the Week Dept." "But bankruptcy protection is not an option GM is considering." GM said that a bankruptcy filing "would not be in the interests of our employees, stockholders, suppliers or customers." In other words, bankruptcy is now a cetainty before year-end. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trader Joe Posted October 12, 2008 Report Share Posted October 12, 2008 Open Letter to Hank Paulson Dear Hank, Next time, forget the bazooka and ask for something closer to the little item shown below. You idiot! Sincereley, Trader Joe ______________________ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
K Wave Rider Posted October 12, 2008 Report Share Posted October 12, 2008 I'd like to see an hour and a half of hell starting right about now.... 697931[/snapback] So how'd I do fellas? About an hour and half early, and the move lasted about 2 1/2 hours.... I'll try to do better next time! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
K Wave Rider Posted October 12, 2008 Report Share Posted October 12, 2008 Slept most of yesterday, haven't been that tired in a long time. Had one of my best and most fun days ever on Friday...only day that beat it in percentage terms was the opening day after 9/11. I probably could have outdone that day, had a I played a little more aggressively, but I have gotten a bit more conservative in my old age, and wasn't loaded to the gills with put options this time around. I expect the next few days will see more wild moves as well, before things settle down. And amazingly, the spaghetti is working wonderfully even in this wild action. I had always wondered if I could have timed the '87 crash and turn with my methods, and after Friday, I feel glad that I finally got a chance to try. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
K Wave Rider Posted October 12, 2008 Report Share Posted October 12, 2008 did you compound the rental income into a high interest rate bond and add the sum to the new house value? 699390[/snapback] Reminds me of the "He'll never get it" scene in City Slickers........ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lineup32 Posted October 12, 2008 Report Share Posted October 12, 2008 Possibly true, but as long as oil is traded in dollars, the dollar is not a true fiat currency. I first came across this thesis on another board, and I thought it made a lot of sense. I'll repost it here: Fiat money, backed by nothing, makes no sense and is unworkable. When the dollar was backed by gold, the US central bank held gold for which dollars could be redeemed. When Nixon made the dollar non-redeemable in gold, oil became the most important commodity in relation to dollars / fiat currency. Since economies run on energy, and since oil is the most BTU-intensive, easily transportable yet reasonably available energy source, it seems apparent that the most valuable "thing" that a nation can buy on the international market with fiat money would be oil. If that is the case, then the perceived value of a fiat currency, especially the world's reserve currency, would be measured by the amount of oil it can buy. If large oil producing nations (e.g.Saudi Arabia) could be induced to regulate the amount of oil in the markets to maintain a relatively stable oil price, then the buying power of the world's reserve currency could be maintained relatively stable, providing a stable monetary regime for world economic activity. If the world's largest military promised to defend that oil supplier from any attack, to maintain the supply, to maintain the Saud family control of it, and if the Saud family promised to sell oil denominated in dollars, then the dollar could remain supreme and there would be relative monetary stability for the West. The dollar is, in effect, redeemable in oil. Anyone trying to buy oil must first sell things to the US in order to get dollars with which to buy oil. US consumers are guaranteed a steady flow of consumer junk that they buy with dollars. If oil is the de facto commodity backing of the US Dollar, then, once the US domestic supply of oil is depleted, then the US completely loses control of the value of the dollar. In order to regain some ability to intervene in the ability of the dollar to buy oil, what better way than to stockpile oil? It is a direct play of dollars against oil. If the dollar buys too little oil, the US can buy dollars with oil, increasing the supply of oil and reducing the supply of dollars. Saudi Arabia is in essence a giant bank, where the world borrows oil, and pays interest in the form of wealth transfer. It makes sense then for the world's most powerful army to guard it. This thesis also perfectly explains the US invasion of Iraq, as an expansion of the US strategic petroleum reserve. It puts the Sauds on notice that we have a large army at their backdoor to defend them, or seize them, as might be necessary. We are positioning an army in a better location to protect the bank. Fort Knox has the US Army protecting it, and so does the Saudi Oil Bank. Our old enemy, Russia, has too much oil of its own, which gives it too much influence in the oil markets and hence in the value of the US dollar. It was essential to increase the US's domestic supply by seizing Iraqi oil. The Russians counter by befriending Venezuela, a major oil exporter, and by invading Georgia (on a pretense) in order to threaten control of Caucasus oil. We are building huge military bases in Iraq. We will never leave voluntarily. Loss of control of oil = loss of control of the buying power of USD = loss of dollar's reserve currency status = loss of US international power. 699352[/snapback] interesting idea but sounds a bit circular in its logic and doesn't take in the fact that the dollar is backed by US taxpayers (taxes now and future)and its their economic health along with the US economy that provide its true backing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lineup32 Posted October 12, 2008 Report Share Posted October 12, 2008 Slept most of yesterday, haven't been that tired in a long time. Had one of my best and most fun days ever on Friday...only day that beat it in percentage terms was the opening day after 9/11. I probably could have outdone that day, had a I played a little more aggressively, but I have gotten a bit more conservative in my old age, and wasn't loaded to the gills with put options this time around. I expect the new few days will see more wild moves as well, before things settle down. And amazingly, the spaghetti is working wonderfully even in this wild action. I had always wondered if I could have timed the '87 crash and turn with my methods, and after Friday, I feel glad that I finally got a chance to try. 699405[/snapback] Congrats K-wave!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roxy Posted October 12, 2008 Report Share Posted October 12, 2008 I want some of what you are smoking 699356[/snapback] All right, give me one asset class that is outperformed by gold, just one and you win Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roxy Posted October 12, 2008 Report Share Posted October 12, 2008 It's a lot more than $1-2000, although I'd guess the average is under $10,000 per person. Checking accounts are dollars just the same as paper currency, theoreticaly at least. Sweeps and reserves makes this partly untrue. Checking balances can be lent out, currency can't. I think we're more or less agreed that nearly anything else isn't money. One of the reasons I save my excess money in the form of gold is because I don't believe all this feduciary media to be a good thing, and I certainly don't trust these banks today to invest my money wisely, so I save my wealth in a different form. Note how I said save, not invest. Also, I'm careful about the price of things I choose to save or hoard rather than invest. I bought a lot of my gold and silver around 2001 when I could buy it cheaper than companies could pull it out of the ground. At that point, I figured the dollar was overvalued by 40% because of all the bogus investment in stocks and the internet, and calculated gold extraction costs to be around $550 after a dollar correction vis other currencies, so at $300us, I bought with both fists. Since then, we switched from a credit and stock bubble to monetizing land, which scares the bejesus out of me. Historically, there's nothing more devastating to a country than monetizing land. Lately, I've been contemplating a very bad outcome, and have not been buying gold: anyway it's no longer the screaming buy it was. I do still think it's worth at least $600 at what most of us think the dollar is worth today. I have no idea what the dollar's really worth, but we'll probably find out in a year or so. At some point all this bailout stuff is going to have to switch to outright inflationary "printing", but Bernanke ain't printing yet, and things might not last long enough to give him the chance. I said "have to" because the wealth is already gone. All the bailout can do is hide the loss from the ledger (which is purely accounting in dollars, not economics which is based on real wealth), and that ultimately means either removing assets (writing down the losses) or printing money. Noone's going to let people's bank balances get written off, yet the wealth behind it has already evaportated. No choice here but to print. (Technically, they don't have to "print" anything. They just have to not ackowledge the losses.) But on the dollar going to 0 and inflation, the fiat tax, as you call it--and tax is an apt desctiption, I might add--is a particularly insidious tax because it robs savers, which is the economic basis of investment--as opposed to the phoney baloney pseudo-Keynsian thinking that money is capital--and it distorts valuations leading to malinvestment. I'm a good example. Because of inflationary policies, I'm forced to save outside the system because, as you point out, it's crazy to save money when you have a fiat currency. And having fewer savers is bad for our economic health. 699362[/snapback] >>> At some point all this bailout stuff is going to have to switch to outright inflationary "printing", but Bernanke ain't printing yet, and things might not last long enough to give him the chance. I said "have to" because the wealth is already gone. Yes, I think he will. From the cyclical point of view we are about 15-20 years from the point the real inflation will pick up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roxy Posted October 12, 2008 Report Share Posted October 12, 2008 paper money is a contract. that contract promises future labour. don't like to work? no worries, just make sure you got plenty of smelly paper contracts! then someone else will do the smelly work for you... 699367[/snapback] I like your definition of money the most I ever heard. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimi Posted October 12, 2008 Report Share Posted October 12, 2008 During the Great Depression, I think the dow traded down to something like 45 (I think in 1933). Does anyone know how far back in time prior to 1929 one must go to see a level on the Dow of 45? Was it in the early-20s? Before World War I? Back to the Panic of '07? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roxy Posted October 12, 2008 Report Share Posted October 12, 2008 What I don't know is whether those who hoarded gold through the Great Depression did better than those who hoarded currency. Does anybody know? I have only one experience to go by, so my verdict would be those who hoarded gold would do much better. I've said that my grandfather as the VP of Bank of America in San Francisco. His wife came into my money. It so happens that her grandmother went through a scandalous divorce and the divorce settlement included all manner of gold and silver coins that went buried on the farm until the entire cache somehow wound up in my grandmother's possession. Upon her passing, her children got the opportunity to divvy it up and that is how my Mother came to own some of the gold (my father being a ravenous gold bug -- he was giddy). I bought three coins ONLY as keepsakes of the Grandmother I knew and the Grandfather I never met. Now my goldbug brother is jealous of my 1896 dated coin or 1894 or was it 1889? crap I couldn't tell you what it is with a gun to my head. (I still REALLY wanted the 1874 coin just to own something that old, but we let my aunt have it...) I'll wrap up my point. Had my grandmother buried an equal value of paper bills in a coffee can and had they survived the passage of time, what would that wad of bills be worth today compared to the cache of coins she stashed? I'm ignorant about precious metals, but I have to believe that those coins appreciated over time to multiples of of the now devalued currency. I mean, a stack of old paper dollars dated 1900 would be really cool to have, but c'mon, I'll take the gold and silver any day. 699370[/snapback] >>> Had my grandmother buried an equal value of paper bills in a coffee can and had they survived the passage of time, what would that wad of bills be worth today compared to the cache of coins she stashed? That would be idiotic to hoard physical currency. But the person who purchased treasury bonds (or stocks, or oil, or artworks) in 1929 by now would have a far larger wealth in those compared with a person who purchased an equal amount of gold. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fxfox Posted October 12, 2008 Report Share Posted October 12, 2008 Amazon monthly at tripple support here (tunnel, lin fibo and uptrendline), once this heavy support is lost this piece of shit will break down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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