I like the Akiva version better, he was known as one who could not find a fault in anyone, Hillel and Shammai were at each other throat....(g), what else is new?
But on more important things, I was asked in a PM about my stance on Gold, so I'll copy here my response:
XXXX, I think that Gold is simply responding to the dollar, the dollar goes up gold goes back to the $250/270 area, the dollar declines by 20% and gold goes up by 20%. It is a commodity, and the central bankers have decided a long time ago that gold will never again act as a currency of last resort. The reason, IMTO, is quite simple, tying the currencies to gold (or what is called a gold standard) would require that the growth of monetary gold equal the growth of the world money supply and the growth of the world GWP ("Gross World Products"). Since anything under 10% backing by gold, is really "not backing", then to provide for continuous growth in the world economies at let say 4% (most economies are growing faster than ours on the average since they are so underdeveloped), new gold extraction will have to match that rate. Furthermore, there will need to be a major readjustment of the price of gold which will destabilize the world markets in an unacceptable fashion. While it is not not impossible keep the growth of gold extraction at the same rate as world economies, it would put too large a portion of the world resources into a dead commodity, a waste of international resources, and furthermore, will induce either perpetual inflation or restrict the growth of world economies. Inflation since to keep with the growth rate, you need to extract ores of lower and lower quality (gold concentration) that cost more to extract, and if you don't keep the growth of gold extraction up there with the growth rate of the world economies, money supply will be constrained, slowing economies. So they decided to do without it and are relying on market forces to discipline central bankers from printing too much paper. So, if you know what the dollar will do, you'll know where gold will go. I think that the dollar should have a little respite, but not a long one since we keep a balance of payment that grows and soon will reach 5% of GDP. Once that happens, a major readjustment of currencies will be unavoidable, and that will involve pain, not so much to us (a little inflation) but to the countries that export to us, because will have to cut our imports drastically, plunging the world into a "readjusting recession". I had the beginning of that happening in the second half, but it quite possible that the market have anticipated and are already readjusting the dollar, and the 10 to 15% decline we had in the last quarter are just the first "serving".
Zeev
