On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 6:05 PM, Ray Saintonge
<saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote:
Anthony wrote:
Where can you safely get 5% interest, anyway?
The 30-year bond is around
4%. Long-term municipal bonds are around 5%, but they're not totally safe
nowadays. And this is, as Gregory pointed out, before inflation. The
chance that the US is going to start adding zeros to its dollar bills in the
next 30-years is non-negligible.
It's about time that the US abandoned $1.00 and $2.00 bills and just
used coins instead.
Given the current crisis, I wonder how (and if) that would affect interest
rates, since bills are a liability of the federal reserve, but coins are
not.
Silver coin isn't silver anymore, and gold coins were effectively
abandoned a long time ago. US nickels cannot be picked up by a magnet,
and copper is too expensive for making pennies. If you inflate the
bubble economy with enough hot air it starts to look very impressive.
Ec