So if gold is so low, and if in the 1930s South Africa grew by its fastest rate ever thanks to gold -- earning itself the moniker "prosperous undertaker during the plague" -- and if, in coming months perhaps, interest rates have to come down in a general deflationary process hence lessening the attractiveness of paper assets... then can't my comrades in the National Union of Mineworkers begin upping their wage demands with confidence?
> Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1998 13:07:06 -0400
> From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
> ... I dropped in at Harry's around 6 (Harry's is an old-style Wall
> Street bar) and there was hardly anyone there. My hard luck was to stand
> next to a trio of gold traders, who were convinced their day was here, even
> though dollar gold prices are at their lowest real levels since the early
> 1970s. (When FDR fixed the gold price at $35/oz, it was worth $427 in 1998
> dollars; yesterday's London PM fixing was $273.) The stox guys that were
> there (all but one of them male) didn't want to talk about the market; they
> just wanted to drink beer and nibble on chicken parts.
>
> Doug