Reality 101

Gold has always held a certain allure. It’s natural beauty and permanent luster seems to exemplify what man seeks in life. But for all of its intrinsic qualities, if modern man had to choose between steel and gold, steel would be the right choice. The last time I went to the salvage yard, they would only pay three cents per pound for it. But, our automobiles, air conditioners, skyscrapers and ships all rely on steel to perform the roles in life we all count on.


Gold is such the pretty metal, heavy, and also a non oxidizing excellent conductor. Don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t mind having a few tons of the stuff sitting in my home in small little ingots; it just seems to me that gold is valuable for a variety of other reasons.


Gold has always required an inordinate amount of labor to extract from our planet. Hence its value comes with the price of human effort. Gold mines today can run profitably off of a quarter ounce per ton ore. Currencies have been hung for generations on the gold standard. It has bolstered confidence in nations and is still redeemable almost everywhere. But our nation’s economy can’t go back to the gold standard. There is no longer enough gold left on this earth to represent all of mans useful activities. A man driving a cab and a gallon of gasoline also has tangible value.


So what is and is not tangible? That question is being revisited almost to exhaustion in the stock markets.


Again we are in trouble with our economy because a bubble has broken in Wall Street. The bubble is complex and delicate. Inflation is rapid, formed by a thin layer of liquid until instability on its surface is punctuated by disruption and a vanishing ephemeral burst as short as the blink of an eye.


The metaphor, though poetic, is not the actual thing however. The mortgage industry was inflated largely by exterior forces. When an applicant for a loan no longer has to present evidence of eligibility for the transaction at hand I think a serious situation ensues.


Honestly, I was not aware that such a thing was possible. Who would have known? I suppose those "no cash down" seminars were serious after all. I had to present check stubs, tax records and have a decent credit rating for my mortgage. I thought everyone did.



Nope, apparently not. If I was the correct ethnicity, underprivileged or had the right congressman in my district, I could get a loan on barely my signature. So, instead of letting the bubble burst and getting on with life, it seems so many of us are now confused about the value of our holdings and that values daily oscillate in the market like yo-yos on a string.


The economy loves us, it loves us not, it loves us, it loves us not . . . but that’s another metaphor. This bubble is so darn big it is taking weeks to pop. I’m as stymied as most folks are on how badly this will affect us. I for one don’t want someone telling me my dollar has sunk in value, and I don’t need my taxes raised. Either way, the burden hits us all.


To brighten your day, consider the proton. Fifteen Billion years and counting, we still haven’t seen one decay. Its mass remains constant to within 15 significant digits, and this only because of the known limits of observation. Along with gravity, electric charge and a host of other factors that make life possible, if we had to depend on the universe operating like the stock market, we couldn’t exist.


The weight of this silly idea must have caused God to pause. He would snicker for a brief blink in time and then he would say to himself . . . “Nope . . . I’ll create man instead.”