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David Einhorn : Yes, certainly. Metals are interesting in the sense that a lot of people view them as stores of value so as to replace – they fight the weaknesses in things like paper currencies, and view these things as stores of value and own them for diversification or because they think that they will do well as a result. My own personal bias on the matter is that gold, like anything else, does not have an intrinsic value that is any different really from paper money other than the sense that you could use it in jewelry or electronics, and so forth. And as a result of that, it’s like the paper currencies, is also worth whatever everybody agrees that it is worth.
So it’s very hard to understand sort of a non-speculative case for why somebody needs to invest in gold or precious metals as a diversification away from currency that has its own issues and problems. I know that’s probably not a popular majority opinion. I don't think it particularly harms us in the sense that on the worst day it’s a missed opportunity for us, and it does not play particularly well into our basic skill set. As it also turns out though, incidentally, we did happen to have a short position in a precious metals company in Ecuador that had some unfortunate developments that actually helped out our results in April based upon some of the nationalization efforts that are going on in that country.
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Direct Link - Greenlight Capital 2008 Q1 Earnings Call Transcript.
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