Posted on 09/19/2005 9:45:28 AM PDT by AdamSelene235
The risk in Fannie Mae is socialized. As long as that aspect remains why would the market react otherwise?
I'll just add that I would be far more inclined to buy platinum group metals than gold if I wanted to store value in metals. Even silver would be better in many ways, though that is more volatile because a lot of the silver produced is not mined as a primary ore but as a secondary product of copper, gold, and lead mining (among others), meaning that supply is dependent on the production of other metals.
What would you estimate the max. possible increase in supply per year would be?
Where they actively managed funds?
"The risk in Fannie Mae is socialized"
Especially since mortgage lenders began engaging in social engineering to increase home ownership in underrepresented groups. Lowered credit standards, no money down or money back at closing... yep, it's socialized alright.
Your right. I meant numismatic. (IE: the value of the coin as a old rare object vs. the value of it as a weight of gold)
The right question is a function of what one's goals are. If the goal is to identify a superior unit of account, store of value and currency, then indeed your question is the right one. However, if the goal is to trade from one position to the next over time so as to maximize the value of one's trading account, then one can do better than "buy and hold" in any single asset class.
Yes, true. But if you want to hold a single assett class real estate and gold are pretty good ones for really LONG plays. Gold is a lot more portable and more difficult to tax.
"Gold is a lot more portable and more difficult to tax."
... which helps explain Roosevelt's antipathy, LOL.
Murray Rothbard, the favorite economist of Lew Rockwell and Justine Raimondo. LOL
Hmmm. Interesting, considering gold is always cheaper and cheaper to produce, and there is more and more of it. I think a dollar invested in gold in 1802 would be worth about $11 today.
Gold is good to have in any portfolio. I'd say at least 15%.
"... and there is more and more of it"
I've been reading that researchers have come up with a way to combine genetic markers from that Avian flu that everyone's worrying about, with gold particles to form what could best be desribed as a "mist" that, in human tests, is as effective or more effective than vaccines cultured in the usual manner, involving eggs. It's been said that a batch of 150 million could be produced in a matter of weeks, instead of months or more.
That would certainly put a crimp in supply. It bears watching, I'd think.
It is hard to say. Even though refinery capacity is 3x production, a lot of that capacity is not located where it is needed, e.g. there is an under-supply of refinery capacity in South America and an over-supply in Africa. Realistically, they could probably boost total output 50% from current without straining anything.
But as it is, there is currently little incentive to change their production schedule, which is currently highly profitable even from well-developed but expensive ores. As more very cheap South American sites come online and refinery capacity down there gets developed, I expect that will push down prices a bit. Gold production is slowly but surely shifting to the western hemisphere. Nevada was thought to be in decline a few decades ago but they've discovered a number of very nice sites in the last few years that have not been developed yet (or added to published reserves) and output has been doing very well with published reserves growing rapidly every year. South Africa is slipping, but Nevada should maintain its position in the world gold market for some time and possibly even move up. South America is the potential wild card in all this, as it has a ton of potential and very rich ores.
Very interesting. That would be a legitimate reason for gold prices to rise.
The quantities of gold we are talking about here is relatively insignificant. The lovely thing about gold for purposes like this is that a little bit goes a very long way. Annual gold production is on the order of 2.5 million kilos. The amount required to do anything like what you are talking about falls way under the noise floor of annual production variances and could be trivially covered by borrowing an tiny fraction of the national gold reserves in an emergency (which outstrip annual worldwide production by more than an order of magnitude).
In short, this would have no impact on gold supply. Producing a super-massive batch of vaccines would require gold quantities measured in kilograms, while annual production (never mind existing supplies) can be measured in thousands of tons.
In a year?! I didn't think mining was something you can simply flip a switch on. I remember looking at production over the last century and I don't recall any YOY production increase over ~~ 5%.
I assume by 50% you meant a 50% increase of the ~~average 2% per year increase in the overall gold supply?
Timing is everything. It's what separates you from Jesse Livermore, for example.
Same here. Got a fair amt of gold coins in 1998 and held them.. Not thinking about selling them now.. but its nice to see it go up :)
I look at them as a worst case scenario protection. When all else fails I will have them and they WILL be worth more than I payed for them.
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