| Submit your comments on this article |
| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Guns Better Investment Than Gold? |
| 2011-11-27 |
| At least someone is making money in these difficult times. Arms dealers in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley are making out like, well, bandits as unrest in Syria sends black market gun prices through the roof says this story in Lebanon’s Daily Star. Rocket grenade launchers appear to be the hottest investment grade item, with prices more than sextupling from $400 to $2500 in recent months. Kalashnikovs and M16s are also up sharply, with 75 percent appreciation on the Russian guns and 100 percent on the US model. Perhaps more investments in Lebanese arms dealer funds could rescue US state and municipal pension funds; those are the kind of returns states like New York, Illinois, California and Rhode Island need to avoid massive service and benefit cuts in the years ahead. But what this news really means, of course, is that more and more people in Syria and Lebanon are preparing for all out civil war. Religious and ethnic divides half forgotten during the long decades when the dictatorship was secure are now beginning to revive as the Assad clan looks weak. This is the pattern I saw at work in Yugoslavia and the Caucasus twenty years ago as ethnic groups geared up to butcher their neighbors and drive them from their homes; I will never forget the night a Georgian poet asked me how much guns cost on the Istanbul black market; he was arming himself against what he called the “Abkhazian menace.” I made a note to myself at that time: when poets buy guns, tourist season is over. They are buying them now in Damascus; something wicked this way comes. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #6 Interesting question. I think Thomas Hobbes already answered that. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2011-11-27 22:06 |
| #5 If one person with gold but no guns meets another with guns but no gold, what do you think will happen? Interesting question. The next and even more interesting question is: If one person with guns (with or without gold) meets many more people with many more guns, what do you think will happen? Take that a few steps further... |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2011-11-27 17:44 |
| #4 Survivalist reality TV show? More like: "Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you any stinking badges." |
| Posted by: Eric Jablow 2011-11-27 16:46 |
| #3 Well, of course. If one person with gold but no guns meets another with guns but no gold, what do you think will happen? Survivalist reality TV show? |
| Posted by: badanov 2011-11-27 16:28 |
| #2 Well, of course. If one person with gold but no guns meets another with guns but no gold, what do you think will happen? |
| Posted by: Eric Jablow 2011-11-27 15:57 |
| #1 A friend told me a few years ago that his stocks, 401K, real estate and savings had all been wiped out. Only thing he owned that had gone up in value was his gold and his guns, and from then on his sole investment strategy would be guns. Wine is also a good investment in a socialist economy. If it goes up you make money. If it goes down you drink it. |
| Posted by: Iblis 2011-11-27 15:09 |