Just wanted to introduce myself

[Ed_the_Fed]

Hi everyone. I have just joined and am looking forward to sharing with you all. I think it is great to pool all of our IFT's and get a sense of whose strategy is working. I have been making IFT's since the mid 90's. Since I started really tracking my account, I am up 45% since June 2003. This unfortunately includes my new bi-weekly contributions as I don't have the time to break them out. I would guess I am earning about 12% a year over the last three years. I still have 17 years to go so am hoping to retire as a "rich" fed! Is that possible?

[Wizard]

When measured in the price of gold, the dollar and U.S. financial assets have already crashed. For example, relative to gold, as of Friday's close, since their last relative highs in June-July 2005, the U.S. dollar index has declined 39%, the 10-year Treasury bond 43%, and the S&P 500 31%. These declines have become free-fall in the last month or so.

http://www.safehaven.com/showarticle.cfm?id=5089&pv=1

Depends on your definition of rich. Before Turkey revalued their currency it would cost a couple million Lira to eat breakfast.

Real heart stopper was to pop into a mini mart for some supplies and the bill was 21M Lira and their highest demoniated bill, at the time, was 100,000 Lira. You all most needed to wheelbarrow your money around to pay for stuff.

It got so bad they came out with 1M and 5M Lira notes. Then later on it got really bad and they issued 10M and 20M notes.

I was unable to visit the country when they issued 10M and 20M notes. That would of been fun to bargain with those high numbers. Very hard to grasp a hotel room costing 350,000,000 a night, I would bet. Just thought it would of been cool to have done some credit card transactions so I could have the statement.

[Wizard]

Chronic inflation from the late 1970s onward saw the Turkish lira gradually depreciate against other major currencies.

1933 — 1 U.S. dollar = 2 Turkish lira.
1966 — 1 U.S. dollar = 9 Turkish lira.
1980 — 1 U.S. dollar = 90 Turkish lira.
1988 — 1 U.S. dollar = 1,300 Turkish lira.
1995 — 1 U.S. dollar = 45,000 Turkish lira.
2001 — 1 U.S. dollar = 1,650,000 Turkish lira.

[FundSurfer]

http://cgi.ebay.com/Turkish-Coin-worth-a-Million-Lira_W0QQitemZ8415602979QQcategoryZ257QQssPageName ZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

It isn't too late to get that million lira.

[tsptalk]

Hi everyone. I have just joined and am looking forward to sharing with you all.

I'm sure Ed appreciates the education in lira, but I have nothing to add to that so I'll just say, welcome Ed! Thanks for joining us. We look forward to your input.

Tom