At 5:46 PM -0700 on 9/18/00, Ray Dillinger wrote:
In order for a currency to stand, it really has to be backed up by a commodity.
Sure you have to "ground out" into something tangible, or at least a fiat currency ;-), sooner or later. Someday, of course, you won't need the fiat bit, but pure commodities aren't the end-state. You probably need a mix of stuff, including financial proxies like debt and equity indices, and so on. But the core problem is measuring inflation. Fortunately, :-), Paul Harrison and I have this giant rant in the can about non-state bearer synthetic numeraires, using things like digital bearer warehouse receipts for the hard stuff, a proxy for the CPI... Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'