Buy Gold?

Well, it’s finally happened…the “Buy Gold” advertisements have exceeded the number of “Buy Herbal Viagra” advertisements! If I can’t sleep, I turn on the television, someone is selling me gold.  I check my email, more gold advertisements.  At work, someone “advises” me to “buy gold today because it’s recession proof.”  Then there was the caveat; “buy the gold mines now, not the gold stocks”…what??

What is all the hype?  Am I truly missing the boat?? 

Considering the situation seriously, I needed to do my research.   

First I looked at the history of gold:

Year	High	Low	Close
12/31/60	$36.50	$35.20	$36.50
12/31/61	$36.50	$35.15	$35.50
12/31/62	$35.50	$35.20	$35.35
12/31/63	$35.42	$35.25	$35.25
12/31/64	$35.35	$35.25	$35.35
12/31/65	$35.50	$35.25	$35.50
12/31/66	$35.50	$35.30	$35.40
12/31/67	$35.50	$35.27	$35.50
12/31/68	$43.50	$35.85	$43.50
12/31/69	$43.50	$35.20	$35.40
12/31/70	$39.90	$34.90	$37.60
12/31/71	$44.20	$37.70	$43.80
12/31/72	$70.30	$44.30	$65.20
12/31/73	$126.30	$64.20	$114.50
12/31/74	$195.50	$116.80	$195.20
12/31/75	$199.10	$138.50	$150.80
12/31/76	$151.00	$109.50	$145.10
12/31/77	$180.70	$136.50	$179.20
12/31/78	$264.20	$178.90	$244.90
12/31/79	$578.70	$233.80	$578.70
12/31/80	$850.00	$495.20	$641.20
12/31/81	$647.10	$415.50	$430.80
12/31/82	$522.80	$318.70	$484.50
12/31/83	$545.60	$398.50	$415.00
12/31/84	$435.70	$328.70	$331.30
12/31/85	$364.10	$301.60	$354.20
12/31/86	$471.80	$351.80	$435.20
12/31/87	$531.70	$419.40	$522.90
12/31/88	$522.20	$421.90	$441.00
12/31/89	$448.50	$383.00	$433.40
12/31/90	$451.80	$370.90	$423.80
12/31/91	$432.70	$369.10	$379.90
12/31/92	$384.60	$353.10	$356.30
12/31/93	$435.30	$349.70	$419.20
12/31/94	$425.80	$396.40	$409.80
12/31/95	$422.90	$385.20	$385.60
12/31/96	$401.30	$367.80	$367.80
12/31/97	$365.20	$282.50	$288.80
12/31/98	$313.80	$274.10	$288.00
12/31/99	$326.00	$252.30	$287.50
12/31/00	$316.45	$264.00	$272.15
12/31/01	$294.80	$255.30	$278.70
12/31/02	$349.25	$278.20	$346.70
12/31/03	$416.00	$322.75	$414.80
12/31/04	$455.75	$373.50	$438.10
12/31/05	$540.90	$410.40	$517.20
12/29/06	$730.00	$516.75	$636.30
12/31/07	$845.40	$601.70	$833.20
1/14/08	$914.00	$833.30	$904.80

Then I charted it:

 

As I reviewed my research, I remembered business school 101 “BUY LOW, SELL HIGH.” I wondered what the buyers in 1980 felt like, paying up to $850.00 only to see it drop to a low of $252.00 in 1999.    

My questions are:

• Where were these advisers in 1999 when gold was at a 19 year low?
• If it goes up much higher will the economy be alive?  Are we in a depression at that point?
• If the value of gold is an inverse reflection of the value of the dollar what does that say about our economy?
• Should I buy gold? 

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Pharmarep View

Why did I become a Pharmaceutical Representative?

• I deeply care about quality of life
• I enjoy the intellectual discussions I have with physicians
• I appreciate the profound discoveries that have lead us to this point in time..

Too many people around the world suffer from preventable and resolvable illnesses.  There are a myriad of revolutionary and life-changing pharmaceutical drugs now available in the world market.  How were these drugs discovered? 

When you consider all the money put into drug research, ironically, many discoveries were made by pure luck or coincidence.

Sir Isaac Newton once quoted  “If I have been able to see farther that others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of Giants.”  In order to appreciate selling pharmaceuticals, it is important to understand on whose shoulders you stand.

Here are a few of the early Giants:

Anton van Leeuwenhoek:  By creating a simple microscope that could magnify nearly two hundred times, he was the first to discover one-celled animals called protozoa.

Edward Jenner:  Discovered that inoculating healthy people with cowpox prevented smallpox resulting in the first vaccine.

Robert Koch:  During an anthrax epidemic, learned how to isolate and culture bacteria outside of the human body for study and research.  He discovered the tubercle bacillus and cholera bacillus.  He discovered that the bubonic plague was transmitted by means of a louse on infected rats and sleeping sickness by the tsetse fly.  Realizing that insects spread certain diseases they could focus on eradicating the disease outside the human body. 

Louis Pasteur: Discovered the process now called pasteurization in which liquids such as milk were heated to kill most bacteria and molds. Pasteur also produced the first vaccine for rabies.

Martinus Beijerinck:  Considered the founder of virology, he discovered viruses by proving in filtration experiments that the tobacco mosaic disease is caused by something smaller than a bacterium. He named that new pathogen virus.

Paul Ehrlich:  Considered the father of modern chemotherapy, he is most famous for his “magic bullet” theory.  Since a dye could be found to stain a particular bacteria and not ordinary cells, it might represent a chemical that killed bacteria without harming the human. He is also well known for his work on the diphtheria vaccination and drugs to treat syphilis.

Alexander Fleming:  Is best known for his discovery of penicillin isolated from a fungus.  He also discovered the enzyme lysozyme.

Glimpse into the future, as a nano robot replaces a neuron: