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Jim's Quote of the Day:
"Icelanders discovered that trading bits of paper isn’t a productive
enterprise. A handful of guys, who fancied themselves as financial experts,
were taking out tens of billions of dollars in short term loans from abroad.
They were then re-lending this money to themselves and their friends to buy
assets, such as soccer teams, cars, homes, etc. Since the entire world’s
assets were rising; thanks to people of like mentality paying crazy prices
for everything, the Icelanders appeared to be making money. One non-Icelandic
fund manager said that its like, “You have a dog and I have a cat. We
agree that they are each worth a billion dollars. You sell me the dog for a
billion, and I sell you the cat for a billion. Now, we are no longer pet owners,
but Icelandic banks with a billion dollars in new assets. They created fake
capital by trading assets amongst themselves at inflated values.” Doesn't
that sound like the rest of the world's financial geniuses?" - Don
Stott of Colorado Gold,
posted in the Whiskey and Gunpowder e-newsletter
