No, Larry K, what I do is invest my funds...because interest rates are so low that it's not worth keeping them in a savings account. Example: about a year ago I invested a substantial amount in gold, because I suspected it would go up. It did...by 20%. I sold that gold a year later and made 20% on that money instead of the 1% the bank would have given me. The deal, old pal, is...buy low and sell high. You just have to buy at the right time (tricky) and then be PATIENT! (most people are not very patient, and they don't have any extra cash because they are in the habit of spending it all as quickly as they make it.)

(By the way, gold isn't worth more since a year ago...the US dollar is worth less. A lot less.)

I understand your point about interest rates, and I do not wholly disagree with it, but do you understand mine? I think a fair return for bank deposits, given a normal situation in society would be from say, 7% to 10% annually. That's why I say that the present rates are criminally low, and are encouraging people not to save money, and are oppressing old retired people who can't afford fancy lawyers and accountants.

Of course there are other options to making money with money.

I was not wholly contradicting what you said, you see, I was offering an alternate viewpoint and modifying it. It is not necessary for one of us to be completely right and the other completely wrong in order to have a worthwhile discussion about something. Quite the contrary.

As for the terrorism, I consider the US armed forces to be engaged in ongoing terrorism of their own which has resulted in the death of a whole lot of people, but you don't. That's where we differ on that one...as I'm sure you are aware. I think the Israelis (and their many opponents) also deal in terrorism on a regular basis...they attack people, seeking to terrify them into submission. That's terrorism. It's been happening since before 1948, in the case of the Jewish-Palestinian conflict. The British authorities in Palestine in the late '40's referred to the Jewish efforts to found an Israeli state as terrorism, because that's exactly what it was. The Jews won. That enabled them to don uniforms and hide themselves behind the fig leaf of a flag and a national government. I'm not impressed. Killing people and taking their land is still terrorism regardless...as are the Arab attempts to eradicate the state of Israel. It's possible for people to live together, given a little sanity and goodwill. Terrorists aren't interested in that approach, and they always say, "Well, they attacked us FIRST, so we're justified in killing them." I don't buy it.

In truth, they couldn't care less about who attacked who first. They care only about winning.

- LH