The title of our blog today should tell you about the theme of our blog today, right? Well, not really, not exactly, I would say. The title should be "Pricey indeed". That would immediately clarify the topic of our blog.
Yes, I am talking of gold and its prices. Post Diwali, especially circa October end, suddenly the market was abuzz with the news that the gold rates are falling. I ignored the carpet bombing of such news for quite some time.
Well, the info was here, there, everywhere. Finally, curiosity got the better of me. I hence checked the reduced rate. Per ten tiny grams, rupees one lakh, twenty two thousand! If that is peoples' idea of reduction in rates, the less said, the better! Incidentally, these reduced rates do not include the GST, nor the amount charged for designing/making the ornaments!
Like everything else under the sun, be it population explosion, be it assembly of parts processing them in to perfect products, India and China always compete. With each other, rather than with others. How can obsession with gold be an exception? Gold must, moreover, be the only long lasting item from China! Together, us and Chinese would capture almost half of the gold in the world market!
Significant it is in this context that the Chinese government's recent most planning regarding the gold rates is sure going to make the yellow metal almost blood red for the common man across the world!
Actually, gold is precious, no, not when it comes to ornaments a (Chinese or Indian) woman may possess, but because it involves the gold reserves in the national treasury. The U.S., for instance, has a huge burden of debt. Yet the dollar dominates the currency considerations, solely due to the American gold reserves. Remember, in early 1990's, India had to go for the LPG solution, because otherwise, there would have been the impossible situation of liquidation of our comparatively meagre gold reserves
Except for such international realities, personally i have never understood the passion for gold. Hardly precious it is as it makes its owner pretentious! Sure, since childhood, be it ear-rings or the nose pin, I have rarely, almost never, worne the artificial equivalents. Yet the price of gold or clothes and other such show-off stuff withers away like the state in the Marxist theory in comparison with the prices of books which, too, have risen to the roof, and beyond! In brief, currently, most human beings know the price of everything and the value of nothing, as Oscar Wilde would say!
Pratima@ "Gold is money. Everything else is credit," argues J.P.Morgan. Who else!?!
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