hey all - it's been a little quiet, so I decided that i'd spark a little controversy by discussing what I think is a really stupid investment, one that seems to be gaining popularity - speculation in the iraqi dinar. a simple google search of "iraqi dinar" will yield thousands of results of people willing to sell you 1M dinar for like $800 - they consider it an investment, as they believe that if/when the gov't stabilizes, the currency will go up, turning everyone who got in into millionaires (in USD). i've read a lot of posts in other forums where people are excited about this, and to me it's just sad...thoughts?

and how is that sad? If it works out, you've thrown money into their economy and you've gotten rich. Look at China, you throw money into their economy, their richest get richer but spend within the country.. and boom.. you've got hundreds of thousands of people able to buy cars now and slowly.. the drip effect causes even the poor people in the rural areas to get some of that good economy...

Not only that, but economies of scale cause luxury products to become common products..

There's nothing wrong with the investment, but why not have an accountable fund mgr to do it for you rather than trying to go into forex on your own...this field is complicated as hell and the people in finance are AT LEAST as qualified as your average doc. Why would anyone try to do this as a layman?

i think that my biggest gripe (or concern) would be that if there are so many billions (if not trillions) of this currency out there, that before iraq would be able to make any progess they would have to revalue the currency anyway, or even abandon it altogether - making your "investment" worthless. for the record, i am in no way considering doing this myself - i don't even consider it "forex"; more like buying lottery tickets. after all, the "ex" in "forex" stands for exchange, and at this point, there only seem to be people eager to sell you the dinar.

If anyone wants to lend me their iraqi dinars for a few years let me know. I'd repay the loan at 6% interest...

Well its an interesting investment. I'm not saying interesting in the manner that it'd be a good investment.

The US is trapped in Iraq. We will be trapped there until the Iraqi gov can show some type of independence. So you figure that the currency will go up.

I don't think it'd be a good investment though at this point. Like was mentioned above, I think investing in this is more like playing the lottery.