The perfect investment would be a permanent medium that guarantees safety of principal, steadily increasing income, steady growth, instant liquidity, and protection of purchasing power. Good luck with that.

In the world we inhabit, nothing is safe. Nothing is sure in any field of life. The world is a competitive place. Sorry to be the one to tell you.

In short, it's a jungle out there and the worlds' wealth does not, will not, and can not increase fast enough to allow for the compounding of interest or the pyramiding of profits on everyones' "invested capital" all at the same time. Someone has to lose!

Losses are an economic fact of life. That's why, every so often, adjustments are made through bankruptcies, scaling down of obligations, and currency devaluations.

Thus, in the pursuit of wealth, as the economic pendulum swings back and forth, one finds oneself forced to "speculate".

To speculate, of course, meaning to think about things yet unknown; trying to foresee the changing economic tides and attempting to conserve purchasing power through the retention of cash, money market funds, and bonds during cycles of deflation, and various forms of equity holdings during cycles of inflation.

The perfect investment? Yeah, right. As the song says, "Welcome to the jungle, baby!"