Text 11979, 50 rader
Skriven 2008-03-06 13:43:41 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
  Kommentar till text 11975 av Robert Bashe (2:2448/44)
Ärende: Stability is security
=============================
Hello Robert,

On Thursday March 06 2008 08:23, you wrote to me:

 MV>> Frankly I have always wondered why so many people consider gold a
 MV>> valuable commodity. You can not eat it, it has limited application
 MV>> in industry and it is not irreplaceable. What is the intrinsic
 MV>> value of gold?

 RB> It's "mystique" over the ages,

Many "mystiques" have been abandonned or watered down over the ages. Few peole
would hoard Kauri shells these days....

 RB> I would guess. Lots of people have thought the way you do, but people
 RB> still want gold the same way they did thousands of years ago.

So how come the bubble doesn't burst?

I had a similar conversation in the mid seventees in RSA wiht someone who
believed South Africa would never go bankrupt because they had gold and
diamonds and white supremacy would be forever because they were the one's who
controlled it.

I asked him (mind you he was a physicist) about the intrinsic value of diamonds
and he admitted there was little or none. Nevertheless he insisted that
"diamond are forever".

Well, RSA is not what it was 30 years ago and the "diamond bubble" at least
/did/ burst...

 RB> Remember, Lenin once remarked he wanted to line the public toilets in
 RB> the Moscow subway with gold, to show his distain for the "supposed
 RB> value" of gold.

 RB> Well, he didn't,

He took a pragmatic approach then. Of course he knew very well those toilets
would be vandalised within two microseconds of delivery if not before.

 RB> but instead put it all into the central bank and used it to buy what
 RB> he thought the country needed. And the Moscow subway is still just
 RB> painted, like subways throughout the world.

Again a good observation, but not so good an explanation.

Cheers, Michiel

--- GoldED+/W32-MINGW 1.1.5-b20070503
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