'08 Predictions: Oil to reach $100 a barrel (Ellsworth: new house, heat pump, buy)

[dmyankee]

Wood is through the roof. Maine homes heat with oil 80% of the time. Same for most of New England.

We have a NG pipeline running through Maine, do we not?

Current solar and wind technology is running below 30% efficiency and is quickly turning into a shell game of carbon credit sales for wealthy investors.

Ethanol subsidized fuel is a joke. The break even point is $4.50/gallon of gas.

I'm a fan of nukes and hydro.

Run the liberals out of the state and federal governments. The lineup of candidates for president is a joke this year. The kool aid drinkers for Obama and Ron Paul need to get a grip. We can not remain static in world affairs. The Naval incident in the Strait of Hormuz this weekend was a perfect example. One or two ships torpedoed in the Strait will effectively cut off oil shipments in a huge way.

[Elcarim]

Originally Posted by mrs1885

I'm buying a horse.

I'm beginning to think we need to all follow Forest's example and buy up a bunch of land full of timber and build a shelter on it. Free firewood sounds good to me!

[Let's tell the truth]

Originally Posted by Elcarim

I'm beginning to think we need to all follow Forest's example and buy up a bunch of land full of timber and build a shelter on it. Free firewood sounds good to me!

Well if your living on the poverty level you will do just fine. So move to Maine hide all your assets and get free fuel,food stamps, and free medical and you will have no problem's and you will live better then the rest of us.Maine the way life should be!!!

[Bewitched]

Originally Posted by Let's tell the truth

Well if your living on the poverty level you will do just fine. So move to Maine hide all your assets and get free fuel,food stamps, and free medical and you will have no problem's and you will live better then the rest of us.Maine the way life should be!!!

Oh, for pete's sake...do you EVER have anything positive to add?

[Elcarim]

And no, for your 411, we don't live at poverty level and we WILL do fine - because we choose to. Quite a concept, huh?

[Aerobars]

Originally Posted by Northern Maine Land Man

Here is some historic perspective. In 1908 you could buy a cow with a $20 gold piece. Today you can still buy a cow with that same $20 gold piece. A $20 bill won't get you very far down the meat counter.

But if you had invested the $20 in the stock market and kept it in you would currently have $1257.40, based on the average return of 8.7% (I used the S&P 500 as an index) between 1908 and 2007 (yes, this includes the great depression, etc). This does not include dividends you would have earned from this investment. These dividends, if reinvested would boost this figure substantially (although I am too lazy to find stats on average dividends payments from the S&P 500 and make a spreadsheet on it to determine this exactly). CAGR of the Stock Market: Annualized Returns of the S&P 500

If you purchased gold with that $20 in 1908 you would currently have $860 (ish), but most of these gains have been in the last several years or even months (will this price hold?) and you would not have collected any dividends. Here is a nice chart showing historic gold prices, but does not include the run up in gold prices that occured this year.
http://www.nma.org/pdf/gold/his_gold_prices.pdf

Gold will do best if there is run-away inflation, in fact this is essentially how all commodities work. If there is inflation then a dollar is worth less, but the commodity is worth the same (or more if demand increases) hedging you against the inflation. Much of the gains in gold in the last year have been due to the devaluation of the dollar. Comparing gold prices against the Euro or British Pound for the past year is a better indication of the increase in real value of gold.

[Northern Maine Land Man]

Aerobars observes:
"But if you had invested the $20 in the stock market and kept it in you would currently have $1257.40, based on the average return of 8.7%"

Yup. There's the cow and the $20 St. Gaudens is worth about $1,250 too.

[Bydand]

Originally Posted by Bewitched

Oh, for pete's sake...do you EVER have anything positive to add?

No they don't. That is why I use the ignore feature.

[WhoFanMe]

I just had my monthly fill up, 144.7 gallons at 3.229 for a total of 467.24 and the bad news is I'm burning more than at this time last year. Where is that groundhog anyway?

[dmyankee]

I always laugh when he sees his shadow and declares six more weeks of winter!