dave@fluke.UUCP (Dave Van Ess) (05/09/85)
"Every school kid knows that crafty Peter Minuit put one over on the Manhattoes Indians in 1626 by buying their island for $24 worth of doodads. But Solomon Brothers' Sidney Homer, author of 'The History of Interest Rates', provides figures that show that the Indians got the best of the deal. Had they taken a boat to Holland, invested the $24 in Dutch securities returning 6 percent per year and kept the money invested at 6 percent, they would now have $13 billion. With that sum they could buy back all the land on the island, and still have $4 billion left for trinkets. Or the Indians could keep the money invested at 6 percent so it could continue yielding $780 million a year, without the risk of doing business amid urbin decay. The question isn't who owns New York. It's who the hell wants to?" -Forbes June 1,1971, p. 32 Dave Van Ess John Fluke Mfg Co Everett WA
gordon@cae780.UUCP (Brian Gordon) (05/13/85)
In article <603@vax2.fluke.UUCP> dave@fluke.UUCP (Dave Van Ess) writes: > > "Every school kid knows that crafty Peter Minuit put > one over on the Manhattoes Indians in 1626 by buying their > island for $24 worth of doodads. ... What the schoolbooks always seem to leave out is who was really "crafty". Since the indians from whom the area was "bought" were from a distant tribe, just passing through on a hunting expidition, who made out best? FROM: Brian G. Gordon, CAE Systems UUCP: {ihnp4, decvax!decwrl}!amd!cae780!gordon {nsc, resonex, qubix, hplabs, leadsv, teklds}!cae780!gordon