On Fri, October 3, 2008 11:45 am, Chris Gehlker wrote: > The Econ 101 distinction between the 'financial' economy and the > 'real' economy seems relevant here. The former is the map and the > latter is the terrain. If you bought an SUV to haul stuff around for > your business and the bottom of the SUV market falls out that doesn't > affect the usefulness of the SUV for hauling stuff around. This argues > for some simple depreciation formula for valuing SUVs owned by > businesses. But if you bought a CDF or some similar financial > instrument for speculative purposes and the value declined it makes no > sense to say 'I can still use the CDF in my business'.
I think you stated what I was getting at far more clearly than I could - I just don't have the background (Econ 101 aside). There are assets which are useful in and of themselves - they have intrinsic value, even if it steadily depreciates. Others have only extrinsic value - if the market doesn't want them, then they are literally worthless. Take a company HQ - it has real value; even if the commercial real estate market goes down, you can't simply unload it - there may be more value in holding on to the property (cost of relocation, the absolute need to HAVE a location) than what the market considers it "worth" at the moment. So in this list, the value of this asset may well be legitimately worth far more than the current market value - the company can't live without it, or a suitable replacement (plus relocation costs, build-outs, etc). Complicated question indeed. _______________________________________________ OSX-Nutters mailing list | [email protected] http://lists.tit-wank.com/mailman/listinfo/osx-nutters List hosted at http://cat5.org/
