Scared Again, As Usual Anymore, About Taxes, Debt And Inflation

December 14, 2012

Mogambo Guru

 

                        Scared Again, As Usual Anymore, About Taxes, Debt And Inflation

Perhaps not surprisingly, my career is suddenly going nowhere since I retired and quit working completely.   For example: Is the wife asking me to take the garbage out?  "What do I look like," I ask incredulously, "some kind of janitor, or custodian, or maybe a professional garbage-taker-outer?  Ha! Screw that! You got the wrong boy, babe! That's work, and I'm retired!"

Of course, this is my usual empty bluster and whining about how one day things are going to be different around here, see, and I will run the show -- with an iron fist! -- and everybody will do what I want for a change, and yet there I am, taking the damned garbage out to the damned garbage can, but grumbling and mumbling incoherently under my breath to show that I am not the least bit happy about it.

However, if I ever decide to return to writing, willingly suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous editors ("Worthless trash from a no-talent hack"), I will apply at Reuters news service as a hot-shot editor, since I obviously have a knack for seeing the profound writing mistakes made by others, taking a cruel joy in hurting the writer's feelings because, I self-righteously ask, where were in the hell were THEY all those years when I was being criticized ("Worst crap I have ever read! I feel soiled from the experience!"), crying myself to sleep every night, boo hoo hoo.

You are probably saying to yourself "Who cares? You ARE a crappy writer! Is there a point to all of this? Is it because Reuters wouldn't even let you take their garbage out because you are a stupid, raving lunatic?"

"No," I imperiously say. "It's not about that at all. What I am talking about is how Reuters treats a simple news item like "The U.S. Internal Revenue Service on Wednesday released final rules for a new tax on medical devices, products ranging from surgical sutures to knee replacement implants, that starts next year as part of President Barack Obama’s 2010 healthcare law."

Reuters goes on to explain that "The 2.3-percent tax must be paid, effective after December 31, by device-makers on their gross sales. The tax is expected to raise $29 billion in government revenues through 2022."

Now get a load of this: The tax "applies mostly to devices used and implanted by medical professionals, including items as complex as pacemakers or as simple as tongue depressors," which is kinda scary since, apparently, medical professionals "use and implant" tongue depressors in people! Yikes! I had no idea!

Anyway, despite my little attempt at humor that seems to have fallen somewhat flat, that is pretty much it. End of story!  

If I was indeed the intrepid editor of this news story, and I had made it back to the office not too late from one of my famous two-hour power-lunches, and I was not too falling-down, snot-faced drunk to actually manipulate at least one of my fingers, I would sit at my keyboard and edit that last sentence to read "…which means only that the device-makers will happily charge more money for their devices so that the company can still make the same profit after paying another 2.3% tax, which means that the prices of medical devices will go up, which is popularly defined as inflation, which is a kind of tax paid by consumers, or companies will go out of business because their prices are now too high, whereupon all the stockholders (orphans, widows and your retirement account) lose everything, and the employees are all fired, which is kind of a tax, too, and all the millions of the people who pay these higher prices for the devices have to turn around and charge more money for their goods and services to try and break even, which means more inflation in prices and a shrinkage of the economy unless the Federal Reserve creates more money and credit, which they invariably do, which makes inflation in prices worse and worse in some horrifying dance of inflationary economic death, and which makes it so easy to predict that We're Freaking Doomed (WFD)!"

And, speaking of WFD, I note with a trembling horror in my voice and my heart pounding, pounding, pounding in my ears that the latest Consumer Installment Debt figures for October jumped up by a massive $14 billion, bringing the total to of this huge, strangling, staggering $2.753 trillion, which is -- unbelievably! -- higher than the $2.6 trillion in Consumer Installment Debt at its "height" in 2008! 

To be sure, that $2.6 trillion record-setting debt set in 2008 dropped over the next few years by a couple of hundred billion dollars as people cut gradually paid off some of their debt.

But now! Now, in the last couple of years, despite rising unemployment, rising bankruptcy, stagnant wages and an economy that is at death's door because the evil Federal Reserve created so irresponsibly much money and credit for the last three decades, people are again borrowing money with the greedy, reckless, mindless abandon of old, and have astonishingly gone another $300 billion deeper in consumer debt in the Last Freaking Year (LFY) alone!  A short twelve months! $300 billion in the LFY! That's $2,000 more personal debt for every adult in the Whole Freaking Country (WFC)!!

Like most of you, even the exciting use of two exclamation points cannot penetrate my shocked numbness from the steady drumbeat of disturbingly, terrifyingly higher and higher prices, and a higher and higher money supply, and higher and higher debts, both cash-basis and accrued.

Fortunately, this shell-shocked attitude is not universal, and Ed Steer of the eponymous Ed Steer's Gold & Silver Daily newsletter reports that Stephen King (if that is his real name!), and who is supposedly chief economist at HSBC Holdings Plc in London and a former U.K. Treasury official, said "There are lots of things central banks are worried about at the moment, and inflation is not the highest priority.  As long as people believe central banks are committed over the longer term to price stability, there is leeway to play around with other objectives.”

A high-decibel Mogambo Scream Of Outrage (MSOO) was literally in my throat when I was stopped the humor of Ed's reply.  I envision an arched eyebrow, curled lip and contemptuous sneer to accompany his understated "Such as???"

According to the Mogambo Rules Of Punctuation For Economics Stuff (MROPFES), the use of three -- three! -- question marks indicates extreme stunned incredulity mixed with anger and shock, as seems apropos to the very idea of a central bank not being foremost concerned with inflation in prices above all other concerns. ALL!

Well, the answer to Ed's question "such as?"  is, of course, that the central banks are committing yet another monetary sin, artificially holding interest rates down to near zero by creating mountains of new money and credit with which to buy up bonds (driving their prices up and their yields down) at the rate of almost $200 billion per month (about $90 billion mortgage bonds and, recently announced, other bonds, which, I assume, is on top of the $100 billion a month in new Treasury bonds that have to be sold to finance a $1.2 trillion federal budget deficit). That's $2.4 trillion a year in new money! Gaaahhhh!

You can see how I am on the verge of working myself into a screaming fit of fearful outrage, and how I could go on for hours and hours about the evil Federal Reserve, predictably ending with me telling you, with a voice rising hysterically in volume and timbre, to feverishly buy gold bullion, silver bullion, and oil stocks, because such absolute, suicidal idiocy like that is, I am chilled to say, running rampant, and thus We're Freaking Doomed (WFD)!

Rather than be drawn into one of my sick little melodramas, Ed wittily and pithily goes on, while expressing the exact same anger and outrage as found in any of my wild incoherent tirades packed with profanity and vague death threats, with a subtle "I can't believe he said that! Be very afraid."

Be very afraid, indeed. He correctly said that.

Buy gold, silver and oil. I correctly said that.

It's that time again

December 6, 2012

 

Mogambo Guru

 

 

                                    It's that time again

 

These are, indeed, times that try men's souls.  To such a profound revelation, some would perhaps delightedly say "Indeed, Mogambo!"   Perhaps you, too, are inclined to say "Well said, Mogambo! Thou art truly the greatest of writers, who can, with a mere fillip of prose or punctuation, turn a such simple phrase into immortal, graceful poetry, and anybody who criticizes you is an idiot and a jealous, loudmouth, know-nothing halfwit who wouldn't know true writing talent if it came up to them and took a whiz on their shoes!"

 

If so, I have to confess that I did not, alas, write it. But thanks, anyway.

 

That famous phrase is from, as it turns out, Thomas Paine, who used it in his "The American Crisis."

 

He actually wrote  Cached - SimilarYou +1'd this publicly. Undo"These are the times that try men's souls," so you can see how I vastly improved upon this Paine guy by cleverly inserting the word "indeed," brilliantly using a couple of commas, and deftly removing the "the."  

 

This, I am sorry to say, however novel and clever I hope it is, is sadly indicative of the woefully low level of personal creativity that I display these days, probably contributing to my appallingly "relaxed" attitude towards blatant, outright plagiarism.

 

In my own defense, please remember that what I admittedly lack in talent or professional ethics, I make up for with other, perhaps more endearing, qualities.

 

 I mean, who can deny my sheer, screaming paranoia?  And with that, I throw in -- for free! -- a howling, homicidal anger, and an incoherent, blubbering blood-thirst for awesome revenge against the treachery and betrayal of America by legions of greedy, smug morons for the last half century, ranging from the lowliest leftist voter thinking the government is there to "help people," up through the vast, expansive realms of "We're helping everyone, and borrowing ourselves into bankruptcy to do it" governments, and, perhaps most painful of all to see, up through the awful Supreme Courts.

 

All of these inexcusable dimwits are totally ignorant of the Constitution of the United States literally requiring that money shall be ONLY gold and silver specifically so that the money supply can't grow, thus preventing any inflation in the money supply, thus preventing the emergence of inflation in prices, and thus also preventing unsustainable, bankrupting bubbles in sectors like housing bubbles, stock market bubbles, bond market bubbles, size of government bubbles, size of debt bubbles, number of government dependents bubbles, and the entire, total tonnage of pure economic stupidity and simpleminded sophistry espoused by loathsome neo-Keynesian econometric halfwits like Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke and every other worthless butt-wipe who works, or ever worked, at the evil Federal Reserve, and the overwhelming proportion of the nation's colleges and universities, all of whom I blithely brand as a clot of clownish, intellectually-impoverished, poseur dimwits who see NOTHING wrong with ANY of this monetary and fiscal absurdity, when it is perfectly, blazingly, blatantly obvious that there is absolutely nothing right about it, and that is why it is a total failure and has achieved such disastrous results,  Decade after freaking decade! Dimwits all!

 

Whew! I pause to catch my breath, surprised at the raw anger pouring out of me, perhaps borne of fear that my wife will notice that I took a lousy twenty bucks from her purse when she, foolishly, was not keeping an eye on it, like I am personally to blame for her lack of responsibility and need to go to the bathroom.

 

Or perhaps I am upset about how the time is soon coming for rioting mobs of desperate people frantically flooding through the streets, their money inflated to worthlessness, ruined financially, economic zombies, looking for a handout and someone to blame for their plight, all because the evil Federal Reserve under the satanic Alan Greenspan, from 1987 to 2006, started the bank's treacherous trend of creating so incredibly much, so astonishingly much, so tragically too, too much money and credit, based on the sorry excuse of error-filled equations in worthless neo-Keynesian econometric lunacy.

 

And then these angry, desperate people, making the mistake of their lives, will think to themselves "Hey! That Irritating Mogambo Moron (IMM) was right!  If we had invested in gold, silver and oil like he said to do, we would be rich, instead of being poor and wretched!  Let's go over to his house, attack his stupid Mogambo Bunker Of Doom (MBOD), and if any of us survive the assault, we can split the gold and silver, and any leftover ammunition, we find inside!"

 

Through the periscope of the bunker I will, of course, see them coming. As they reach the perimeter that I have arbitrarily and secretly designated, I will give the klaxon a mighty, high-decibel blast, and the PA system will blare "Intruder alert! Intruder alert!", all of which has a very, very intimidating effect, as I found out the hard way when I came home one night, staggering from another alcohol-related incident, accidentally tripped the alarms and, just as accidentally, peed in my pants I was so startled and scared!

 

Well, it sure made a lasting impression on me! And on the family and neighbors, too, who came out to see what the fuss was about, and they saw me, and they laughed at me, mocking me, their insulting jeering and jabbering cutting through me like a Red Hot Knife Of Shame (RHKOS), yet they turn around the very next day and wonder why I hate them so much!  Stupid or what, huh?

 

Anyway, through the Mogambo Communication Portal (MCP), I will ask them "What do you want, or shall I startle you once again?"  They will say "We want you to give us some dry pants and some clean underwear; we peed all over ourselves here! And we want all your gold and silver, too, so that we can buy ourselves some food and get some nice clothes that haven't been slept in or peed in!"

 

I, of course, will say "No. But as true Democrats, you got the attitude down perfectly!"

 

After a lot of flustering and blustering, stumbling about in their confused stupidity, I will ask "Are you the same people who think that an idiocy like 'government deficit-spending to make up for lack of private spending because everybody is bankrupted under a massive load of debts, which is why they stopped spending' could possibly, possibly, ever in a million jillion years, work, when it never, ever has? Are you they? Is you them? Which or neither? Answer me! Now!"

 

Of course they will say "What? Uh, no, we are not those people, we don't think!"  I will laugh at them, and reply with a twinkle of amused merriment in my voice, "Are you telling me that you instantly, intuitively understand, like normal people with even half a brain, that a constant freaking flood of new, government money disastrously distorts an already distorted, government-centric economy, making a normal recovery totally, completely impossible, as seemingly proved --proved! -- because nobody has ever, EVER heard of a case, in all these thousands of years of history, of robust private demand, despite cancerous over-indebtedness (and impending pandemic bankruptcy) somehow, perhaps magically, growing to replace the artificial demand created with massive government deficit-spending of new fiat money?"

 

Having accumulated a lot of experience over the years, educating a lot of people about the inflationary horrors of allowing the Federal Reserve to create so much excess money and credit, and how you would have to be an idiot not to be buying gold and silver, I recognize that this is when the average person says "Huh? What? I don't understand!", as does, obviously, Ben Bernanke.

 

Don't believe me? Then find out for yourself! Call the Federal Reserve in Washington, D.C., and when they answer the phone, say "I want to ask that big butthead Ben Bernanke if he has ever heard of a case of robust private demand, despite over-indebtedness, replacing the artificial demand of massive government deficit-spending?  Now, put him on the line, and make it snappy, will ya? I ain't got all day!"

 

Go ahead! Call!  I'm betting that, like when I called and asked them this same question, they put you on hold and never picked up the call, or you were mysteriously disconnected when you called them back, over and over, getting more angry each time to helpfully let their Customer Service Department know how angry I am about Bernanke ducking my calls, probably because Bernanke DOES think this stupid crap!  Thus, it's proved, I tells ya! Proved! If he's innocent, why doesn't he come forward and deny it?

 

And that interesting-yet-terrifying tidbit of news is just another teensy, tiny clue to buy gold, silver and oil. All the other zillions of wonderful reasons to buy gold, silver and oil have 4,500 years of history backing them up.

 

And with evidence like that, against the foolish thinking of a guy who won't even answer the phone, what can one say except "Whee! This investing stuff is easy!"?

 

Laughing it up to keep from crying

November 29, 2012
Mogambo Guru

   Laughing it up to keep from crying

I was taking a much-needed break from keeping an eye on my weird neighbors, whom I suspiciously think are some of the idiots who elected the commie knot-head Obama instead of electing the religious knot-head Romney.
Of course, my heart was with Ron Paul the whole time, who would have been a good president -- perhaps even a terrific president!  -- forty years ago when there was still enough time to stop the suicidally-stupid deficit-spending, money-printing, entitlement-creating, government-centric, "impossibly huge government taking care of everyone," typical Democrat horse-crap nonsense.
And maybe back then he would even have gotten get us back on a gold standard monetary system, with no fractional reserve banking allowed, to automatically make the currency as strong as the inflation-free economy, because it would be based, as it should be, on real, sustainable demand, instead of relying on phony government deficit-spending-financed demand, with a crazy Federal Reserve creating the excess money and credit to buy up all the gluttonous globs of government debt.
And, as reasons to print money, let's not forget that Consumer Installment Debt astoundingly went up by about $250 billion -- a quarter of a trillion dollars! -- over the past year, and that money had to come from somewhere, too!
I mean, it's all freak, freak, freaking me out here! Gaahhhh!
So, I was trying to focus my Mighty Mogambo Mind (MMM) on something new to stop my thinking about what idiots we are and how completely devastating it will be when that far-left Obama (who has horrifically given himself, Stalin-like, the power to order Americans murdered without a trial!) really gets started.
I was thinking of starting a completely new career, never to think of that ugly economics stuff again.  Sleep well at night without waking up screaming in fear at the inflationary horror that awaits us, dreaming of devouring demons!
It's that kind of "fear" thing that makes me figure that people would LOVE to have some comedy when the whole thing starts falling apart because the evil Federal Reserve is creating so much, so much, so impossibly much money, and, predictably, inflation in prices is skyrocketing, people are rioting, cities are burning, murderous gangs roam the streets, zombies are eating the dead, aliens from outer space have landed, and blah blah blah. You know.
So, seeing the obvious opportunity, I was considering being a (ta-da!) stand-up comedian! 
I had even been working on my new act, as the other choice that occurred to me was "homicidal maniac," instead of being just an irritating, gold-bug, paranoid, angry, cynical old man and all-around nice guy.
And since it doesn't take a lot of planning or training to be a homicidal maniac, I chose that option as my "fallback" position, and was working on my stand-up comedy routine. In fact, I had already written one terrific joke! I was on my way!
It goes, "Why did the chicken cross the road? Because he wanted to get the hell out of this stupid country before the monetary and fiscal madnesses of, respectively, the evil Federal Reserve and the corrupt governments of the federal, state and local varieties destroy our money, the economy, the Whole Freaking Country (WFC), and probably the Whole Freaking World (WFW) with horrendous inflation in prices caused by such irresponsible over-creation of money and debt, all to create a huge, suffocating, government-centric economy, so that you slowly starve to death because you can't afford food. 
"But the 'all natural and organic' weight-loss makes looks you look fashionably thin the whole time! Hahahaha!"
After a brief pause, I deliver the boffo punch line, which is "Except for maybe, you know, that part at the end, right before you die, where your bones literally stick through your skin.  Hahahaha!"
I deliberately put that "Hahahaha!" at the end so that the audience --  and maybe Jay Leno would be watching! -- would all know that it was a joke, and that they should applaud like maniacs and laugh heartily at this classic Mogambo Dark Humor Of The Damned (MDHOTD).
So you can see that my life was, for a change, working out just fine, and I was really getting into this comedy thing, when I, coincidentally, got a devastating email from Junior Mogambo Ranger (JMR) Paul P, who had written a much funnier original joke.
After the obligatory sniveling and servile salutation "Oh Mighty Mogambo," JMR Paul humorously writes "With the economy being so crappy I have decided to join the army and change my name to Clifford Fiscal.  That way, during roll call when they call out 'Fiscal, Cliff', I can yell back 'It's here!  Here I tells ya!'"
I, of course, laughed, even as my Mighty Mogambo Heart (MMH) was breaking because his joke was better than my joke, all my plans are for suddenly and cruelly for naught, and I'm actually kind of pissed about it, now that I think about it.
So, I am laughing, sad, and angry, all at the same time.  You can see how that "homicidal maniac" idea seems suddenly so easy and natural.
Of course, when it comes to easy and natural, 4,500 years of history says ain't nuthin' easier than capitalizing on these kinds of inflationary idiocies of government:  Buy gold, silver and oil! And keep on buying them, gradually, more and more, month by month.  And when any one of them drops significantly in price for no apparent reason, as they mysteriously do from time to time because of all the corruption and manipulation of markets these days, then buy LOTS more!
See? It's easy! Repeat along with me: "Whee! This investing stuff is easy!"

At the Store

November 20, 2012

 

Mogambo Guru

 

 

                                               At the Store

 

As I stood in the line at the grocery store, I watched the family in front of me, which reminded me of a Norman Rockwell painting; an all-American family, out happily shopping together, what with the mom, the dad, and the two little kids.

 

As I watched, my heart went out to them, knowing that they had no clue as to the economic cataclysm that is going to befall all of them, especially the cute little kids.  So I kindly stepped forward to help them.

 

I leaned forward towards them and politely said "Pardon me, but I see that you are buying Froot Loops cereal for, I assume, your darling children. And speaking of Froot Loops, did you know that the horrid Obama deliberately deficit-spent a monstrous $1.5 trillion every year for the last four years, which was on top of the $2.4 trillion that the government already collected in taxes, fees, expenses, tip, tag and title?"

 

Well, bless their hearts, they predictably tried their best to ignore me, and I could see them furtively looking around for a way to get away from me.  Unfortunately, there were other shoppers in the checkout line ahead of them, blocking their path.   And I had cleverly stationed my shopping cart between them and me, both blocking the aisle to prevent their retreat, and (very importantly!) keeping out of range.

 

In their best interests, I earnestly continued my loud line of highly-instructional questioning by asking them "And did you know that his blithely increasing the national debt by a whopping, eye-watering, gag-inducing, terrifying six trillion bucks in 4 short years is equal to a staggering 40% of our $15 trillion GDP? That's almost half of our Entire Freaking Economy (EFE)!"

 

I could feel my panic growing as I continued instructing them "And did you know that it was all outrageously heaped on the aching backs of the 300 million overly-indebted men, women and children living in this country?"

 

Out of the corner of my eye I could see the store manager coming towards us, huffing and puffing, with that "Oh, no! Not you again!" look on his stupid face.  

 

Instantly I knew that I had to make a crucial tactical decision: Whether or not to abandon my groceries, leap atop the checkout counter, run to the end to make a glorious, fabulous, flying leap towards the door and thus making my getaway, taking my leave with my standard shout of farewell, "Buy gold, silver and oil, you morons!"

 

To do so, however, would be to suffer the sad, sorry loss of a lot of delicious "buy one, get two free" frozen burritos, and who knows when they are going to have a sale like THAT again? I mean, c'mon! What to do? What to do?

 

I thought to myself "My time to educate these people grows short if I am to, heroically, before the manager gets here, teach these morons about how the evil Federal Reserve is creating So Freaking Much Money (SFMM) that inflation in prices will destroy those who do not wisely buy gold, silver and oil!"

 

Quickly, I summed up by saying "And this is just the INCREASE in the national debt to an incomprehensible $16 trillion, which is already bigger than the aforementioned Entire Freaking Economy (EFE), which comes to a debt of $53,000 dollars for each of you two adults, and the two little tykes, too, which comes to a nice, round $212,000 just for YOUR little family. How you like them apples?" 

 

I was hoping they would, at least, enjoy my witty reference to apples as we are in a grocery store.

 

But no. Seeing that I was getting nowhere with the adults, I turned to the kids and said, "Kids, enjoy that Froot Loops cereal, because soon prices will be so high that you will be eating horrible, soupy, microwave gruel, making the huge assumption that your folks will have a microwave oven and can afford the electricity to cook gruel, unless your parents wise up and start buying gold, silver and oil!"

 

Just then, the little manager comes storming up and says, predictably, "You again?"

 

I said "Yes!  'Tis I, The Wise And Wonderful Mogambo (TWAWM), spreading the gospel of TWAWM, namely the revelation to buy gold and silver to capitalize on the guaranteed cataclysmic inflation in prices that you get whenever your idiot government is allowing the Federal Reserve to create so excessively much, so monstrously much, so stupendously much, so impossibly much money and credit. And proud to do so, sir!"

 

I was thinking to myself, of course, "And there ain't nothing you can do about it, you little bastard who probably has all his retirement funds idiotically 'invested' in common stocks and/or in the most ludicrously overpriced asset of all, namely bonds, and who is going to tragically get The Royal Screw Job (TRSJ) because of it."

 

The bad news is that the store manager stood there, glaring at me, the whole time I am in his stupid little store, and I am wisely keeping my mouth shut, just in case I put a lot of innocent frozen burritos in jeopardy.

 

But the good news is not only did I, Mogambo, heroically help a young family with TWAWM, but when their turn soon came to check out, they just pushed their cart out of the way and ran out the door!   I was able to start checking out right away! Great!

 

It just goes to show you one more way, on top of a million other ways, that good things happen to those who buy gold, silver and oil.

 

And that is, perhaps, also one more reason that people who buy gold, silver and oil say "Whee! This investing stuff is easy!"

 

Mogambo Time!

November 12, 2012

Mogambo Guru

 

                                                Getting it good and hard

 

 

The elections being over, I shall not unduly comment on the reelection of the horrid Obama, or the un-professional, traitorous hacks of the leftist media that kept his many scandals, incompetences and disgraceful lies out of the news, or about the trusting, gullible, ignorant, greedy and stupid people who elected him, except to quote the immortal Thomas Jefferson, who said "The government you elect is the government you deserve."

 

But it was H.L. Mencken who said it best, as far as I am concerned, when he quipped "People deserve the government they get, and they deserve to get it good and hard," which naturally brings to mind all those times in life when one has, indeed, gotten it "good and hard," dredging up, as it does, painful memories, usually replete with scars, either physical or mental, often both, and with a deep, dark, dangerous desire for some kind of vicious, bloodthirsty revenge on some worthless bastard who deserves it "good and hard."

 

So ol' H.L. (as I like to call him since it implies that I am a hotshot smart guy on a collegial, first-name basis with a fellow famous and cynical intellectual, but who died when I was seven years old, which is pretty weird, probably says a lot about OTHER weird things about me, when you stop and think about it) was exactly right with the getting it "good and hard" thing.

 

Now, getting it "good and hard" perfectly describes the current situation, which is that there is No Way In Hell (NWIH) that our aforementioned "current situation" CAN'T end badly, as in "very badly," as in "financially and economically fatal" because trillions and trillions of dollars pumped into the welfare economy via federal government deficit-spending Every Freaking Year (EFY), and tragically combined with "and there ain't nothin' you can do about it, moron."

 

Even worse, if the government truly reflects the population, then (not to put too fine a point on it) we are a nation of lying, corrupt, greedy, stupid, ignorant, superstitious, bankrupted, lowlife, low-IQ murderers and thieves.

 

My low, low opinion of the government and the general population of the USA is, by sheer coincidence, perfectly reflected in a CNSNews.com news item sent to me by Junior Mogambo Ranger (JMR) Phil S.   It read "On Aug. 2, 2011, President Obama signed a deal he had negotiated with congressional leaders to increase the debt limit of the federal government by $2.4 trillion. But, now, after only 15 months, almost all of that additional borrowing authority has been exhausted."

Now, to the casual reader who knows anything about economics, this seems like bad news. And it is! Congratulations on your perspicuity!

You know things are getting weird when I, out of the blue, use words like "perspicuity," and, I am sorry to say, it is worse than that.   This is to be expected since the government is (as previously described) a group of lying, corrupt, greedy, stupid, ignorant, superstitious, bankrupted, lowlife, low-IQ murderers and thieves, as is proved when, later in the same news item, we learn that "according to the Daily Treasury Statement (DTS), the portion of the federal debt subject to the legal limit was $16,222,235,000,000--just $171.765 billion below the $16,394,000,000 debt limit."

 

Did you see the part that read "the portion of the federal debt subject to the legal limit"? What?  What in the hell is THIS? There is a portion of government spending NOT subject to the debt limit?!?  There is some secret debt not subject to limits? What in the hell is going on here?!?

 

Oh! Oops! I forgot!  Lying, corrupt, greedy, stupid, ignorant, superstitious, bankrupted, lowlife, low-IQ murderers and thieves. Ah so! It all makes sense now!

 

Thus it is, I am horrified to say, a gigantic, gagging-up-blood, "We're Freaking Doomed (WFD)!" disastrous expansion of the money supply via the evil Federal Reserve creating the money to monetize the debt, thus committing the worst sin of central banking!

And if the words "gigantic,"  "gagging-up-blood,"  "We're Freaking Doomed (WFD)!" and "disastrous" are not enough to scare the hell out of you that inflation in prices from such a whopping huge increase in the money supply is going to destroy you and everyone you love, even when punctuated with an exclamation point for additional emphasis, then perhaps an actual number will convince you: $2.4 trillion over 15 months equals a massive 13% of GDP in One Freaking Year (OFY)!!"

Please note the TWO exclamation points, conveniently provided to you by yours truly, to instantly draw the appropriate (and only) conclusion without any thinking, of any kind, on your part, which is the handy kind of conclusion I like best, as do, I'll guess, you.

And if you are not buying gold, silver and oil with every dollar you have, and with every dollar you can weasel out of your wife's purse, or with every dollar gotten by shortchanging the kids on their allowances, then there is something very, very wrong with you, and you should see a therapist of some kind, or at least wear a sign around your neck that says "I am stupid!" so that people will have pity on you instead of laughing at you.

On the other hand, for those of us who ARE furiously buying the aforementioned gold, silver and oil with the aforementioned sources of cash, our "therapy" is the happy, secure feeling we get when we buy them, knowing that their values will soar, soar, SOAR in the catastrophic price inflation and social destruction it causes, and we are merrily thinking to ourselves "Whee! This investing stuff is easy!"

Scary Halloween Time

Mogambo Guru

 

                                                Scary Halloween Time

 

The horror of our economic situation is, for some weird reason, made even more terrifying on Halloween, when the little darlings from the neighborhood come to the door with their annual "Trick or Treat" tomfoolery, knowing that it is going to cost me money.

 

I find that I can no longer frighten them away by popping up with the usual scary masks, fangs, fake blood, or even screaming at them at the top of my lungs, my face bent down to theirs, nose to nose, "You're going to die!  Die!  You and your parents will die horrible, painful, lingering deaths because the evil Federal Reserve is creating so much money that it will cause so much inflation in prices that you will all starve to death! Have some candy! Happy Halloween!"

 

This year, I decided that I was becoming stale.   That is why, this year, I greeted them by saying "Happy Halloween! Have some candy!  Eat up! Enjoy it while you can, kids, and eat all this yummy candy to make yourself fat and sweet because your parents will soon have to kill you, probably while you are sleeping, and then use big, sharp knives to cut out your bones and organs to sell on the black market, and then cut up what's left of you into little pieces before they cook you.  And then they will eat you, maybe topped with some tangy barbeque sauce made out of your congealed blood sautéed in butter with some minced onion, brown sugar, maybe a little mustard, salt and freshly-ground pepper to taste, topped with a festive sprig of fresh parsley, all because the prices of food, and the prices of everything else, are so high that they cannot afford to buy regular food! Fatten up, kids!"

 

As I am dishing out handfuls Halloween candy to each of the kids, I continued in Fine Mogambo Style (FMS), loudly yelling at the kids anew, asking "And you want to know why? Huh? You want to know why you are going to be killed and made into hamburgers?  It's because the evil Federal Reserve is creating so terrifyingly much money, and thus creating horrifying, murderous inflation in prices. And they are doing it to -- incredibly! -- allow the corrupt, insane federal government to give money to literally half the population by irresponsibly deficit-spending the equivalent of a full 10% of the Whole Freaking Economy (WFE), and, in the process, racking up insane, suffocating amounts of painful, bankrupting debt that cannot possibly be repaid!" 

 

By this time, out of the corner of my eye, I can see the concerned parents are no longer patiently waiting in the street, but are coming up to see why I am yelling at their kids and the other trick-or-treaters, making them scream and cry, but still wanting for me to give them more candy, the greedy little beggars.

 

The parents call out anxiously "Angela! Are you okay? Why are you crying?", and "Jimmy, get away from the creepy, horrible man!"  

 

Immediately sensing that they are nervous and distressed, I soothingly tell the concerned  parents "Of course they are okay, you lowlife morons! They are crying in fear because they have seen the ugly future, a destroyed, nasty, barbaric world after an insane Federal Reserve has created untold more trillions and trillions of dollars in new money and debt, until the buying power of the massively over-produced dollars falls to zero. And it scares them, as it should!" 

 

Keeping the kids carefully herded into a tight group standing between me and their strangely-and-suddenly angry parents descending upon me, I quickly explained "I was just trying to help your children learn to buy gold, silver and oil to capitalize on the inflationary horror destined to devour them, since you seem to be too stupid to understand any of it!"

 

Then, surprisingly, one of them yells out "If you are so smart, how come the velocity of money is going down?"  Well, I gotta tell ya, I was pretty astonished at this odd turn of events!

 

And so was everyone else, apparently, as suddenly everything got very quiet, and everyone was looking right at me.

 

Well, of course, the reason is that the velocity of money is merely a plug figure, equal to GDP divided by the money supply. This comes from the famous Fisher equation where the Price of things sold, times Quantity of things sold, equals Money supply times the Velocity of money (turnover in financing transactions), or, more familiarly, PQ = MV.

 

Since PQ is essentially the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the idle calculation of velocity of money is made simplistically easy by simply dividing the money supply into GDP, which are two readily-available figures, thus perhaps explaining its popularity.

 

In general, when the denominator (Money supply) goes up faster than the numerator (Price times Quantity sold, or GDP), the calculation of Velocity will, by simple arithmetic, go down, and when things are vice-versa, vice-versa.

 

In this case, though, the question seemed apt, though the Halloween setting seemed odd, as the Money supply is undeniably rising rapidly, making Velocity go down, but Prices are obviously rising, making Velocity go up, and Quantity sold is disastrously going down, making Velocity go down.

 

But remember: Velocity is the result of three variables, and velocity could be rising (a supposedly good sign) although Prices were exploding upward (a bad economic sign) and the Money supply was rising (another bad economic sign) if Quantity sold was actually falling (a very bad economic sign).

 

With all due respect to the singer Meatloaf and his immortal song, maybe two out of three ain't bad, but not so when zero out of three is, without a doubt, bad.

 

So I answered, in that strangely cryptic, monotonic, robotic way that visitors from other planets have when addressing Earthling carbon-units, "Velocity has fallen because the ratio of the numerator to the denominator went down. Surrender, Earthlings. Resistance is futile."

 

I expected, if not a suddenly-enlightened crowd cheering and shouting my praises for my illuminating insight in interpreting PQ=MV, at least a brief smattering of polite applause for my pithy profundity.

 

Well, there MAY have been some of that, but it was drowned out by shouts of "You're crazy!" and "Quit trying to look up my wife's skirt!" and "Burn him and take all his candy!"

 

At least, I THINK that is what they were saying, because by that time I have scurried off, safe and sound inside the Fabulous, Fully-Fortified Mogambo Bunker (FFFMB), and all I hear is muffled voices through the thick walls.

 

In the sudden silent solitude, I realized that the kids got the candy treat, referred to in "Trick or Treat,", but their moron parents got the trick, in that I did not get a chance to tell them to frantically buy gold, silver and oil to prevent their looming and dooming calamity. 

 

But, then again, they would not have listened.  They never do.  That's the way it is with most Earthlings.

 

Happy Halloween, doomed carbon units.

A Valuable, Valuable Clue As To What To Do

October 25, 2012

 

Mogambo Guru

 

Junior Mogambo Ranger (JMR) Philip S. kindly forwarded an entertaining email to me, containing a lot of facts about, of all things, the year 1910.  

 

Now, I gotta tell ya,  I can remember a lot of things, mostly as a result of living a lot of years and thus spending a lot of years finding out about a lot of stuff, but 1910 was not one of them.

 

Accordingly, on the Mogambo Hierarchy Of Interest (MHOI), it always rated a big, fat zero since I have never heard anything about 1910 that I could use.  For instance, maybe in 1910 there was some wonderful hair tonic to grow my hair back, only fuller and more luxuriant, or some glorious elixir to give me a powerful, studly physique with bulging biceps and washboard abs, but without exercising, preferably in an inexpensive pill, that works overnight, while I sleep, so that I wake up refreshed, strong as an ox and looking like a million Hollywood bucks.

 

Now THAT'S as a 1910 I could use!

 

So, perennially scoring the proverbial "none of the above", I thought I would be immediately bored to death with some doofus email about 1910.

 

It turns out I was wrong!  It was more interesting than that, from an economics standpoint, by which I mean from an inflation standpoint, by which I mean prices going up, by which I mean the inevitable result of creating too much money and credit, by which I mean that the evil Federal Reserve is creating massively too much money and credit so that the horrid Obama administration can deficit-spend roughly $1.5 trillion a year, by which I mean we're talking about annually adding national debt equal to ten percent of GDP, by which I mean This Is Too Freaking Insane For Words (TITFIFW).

 

For instance, from the email we learn that in 1910, "The average US wage in 1910 was 22 cents per hour."

 

We later learn that "The average US worker made between $200 and $400 per year."

 

Well, I immediately sense that this is the perfect opportunity to show off my skills in using a calculator, and so I start to look for mine, and I couldn’t find it, eventually gave up after a fruitless twenty seconds or so, and reluctantly did the long-division by hand, over and over, seemingly getting a different result every damned time, until my hand got a cramp and I was really grumpy.

 

In doing so, I found out two interesting things. 1) Doing long-division with paper and pencil is more confusing than I remember, and 2) The average US worker (working 52 weeks a year) worked somewhere between 909 hours per year (a lousy 17.5 hours per week) and 1,818 hours per year (a more respectable 35 hours per week).

 

Immediately, the nimble Analytical Mind Of The Mogambo (AMMTM) concluded "Seventeen hours a week working? What a bunch of lazy bastards they were!"

 

Of course, I am not going to call them "lazy bastards" out loud since that would cause, as it always does, those people who are merely standing nearby to perk up, happily start talking trash about me, and how I am the King of Lazy Bastards, and that I am, by consensus, the laziest bastard in town, no matter what town I am in, and definitely the laziest man any of THEM ever met. Ever!

 

And it's not like I don't patiently and clearly explain to them that "I am not here to do any work, you lowlife morons! I am only here to (insert variously 'Get a paycheck,' 'Sit on my fat ass,' or 'Eat like a pig')!" 

 

Yet, unbelievably, they look at me like I am the crazy one!  Me!  I mean, why ELSE would I even BE here, ya morons? For my health?

 

"So," I can hear you asking yourself, "what does any of this have to do with anything?  Is there a point? Will he ever get to the point? Why am I wasting my pathetic life reading such Stupid Mogambo Crap (SMC), anyway? What in the hell is WRONG with me?"

 

Well, since you are so impatient, I'll tell you the point: It has to do with inflation in prices, and how intelligent people fear inflation, especially the kind where people cannot afford to buy food, which is the big killer of economies and countries, and then there is usually a war with somebody, and the whole thing is a Big Freaking Bankrupted Mess (BFBM).

 

More to the point, in 1910 "Sugar cost four cents a pound."

Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.

Crappy coffee was fifteen cents a pound.

 

That got me started thinking about how the prices we pay for these things are relatively low, according to the inflation calculator at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as they calculate that it now takes $23.37 to buy what one dollar bought in 1913 (the farthest back the program can calculate). 

 

And even though 1913 is three full years after 1910, that's still a whopping 2,337% inflation!  And that staggering loss of buying power of the dollar comes from just 3.14 % inflation per year, compounding!

 

So anybody -- and I mean anybody! -- telling you that 5% inflation is a worthy goal, "to prevent deflation" in the prices of stocks, houses and overvalued things in general, is a complete and irredeemable moron, which I deftly prove by noting that this outrageous idiocy is the actual opinion of the horrible Ben Bernanke, lowlife loser chairman of the catastrophic failure known as the Federal Reserve, and whom I nominate as King of the Keynesian Econometric Nitwits.

 

Now, after that unsavory-yet-satisfying bit of completely gratuitous rudeness and scornful disrespect, I will now, at last, add that spicy, piquant bit of extra horror that is so traditional during the Halloween season.

 

In this case, the terror of John Williams of shadowstats.com still calculating inflation the correct, old-fashioned way, and finding the chilling, terrifying result that inflation in prices is now over 9% per year, compounding!

 

And by "compounding" we mean, of course, "growing exponentially", which is the problem with debt growing at an exponential rate: After all these years and decades of creating massive amounts of debt (and therefore new money) to both spend and to pay the interest due on an even more unbelievably colossal amount of existing debt, the upward-sloping curve of debt ("curve of death!") is getting pretty steep, the required amount of new money necessary to "keep on keeping on" becomes truly unbelievable, and soon, after that, things will really start getting completely irrational.

 

What to do? Beyond screaming in outrage and vowing to use the upcoming elections to wreak righteous revenge on the elected scumbags who caused all this mess, you mean? What to do?

 

That's a good question! Hundreds of millions of people in the last 4,500 years of world history, in millions of other countries and governments, have faced this Exact Same Question (ESQ) because their rulers were this same kind of Stupid Corrupt Scumbags (SCS).

 

So, pray tell, what did those hundreds of millions of people do? What Did they do? What did THEY do? What did they DO?

 

I mean, if we knew what they all did, and how it worked out for them, it could provide a valuable, valuable clue as to what to do!  

 

Hmmmm! "A valuable, valuable clue as to what to do"! Catchy!

 

Anyway, my fabulous bon mot aside, what history boils down to is that when the value of the currencies kept going down and down because the governments acted like they always do, the people who owned gold and silver (and got the hell out of town with it) did very well.

 

Those who owned all other things did, unfortunately, not.

 

So, I ask incredulously, how can this "investing thing" get easier when it is so glaringly, grotesquely obvious that the corrupt Federal Reserve is now, year after year, creating enough money equal to a tenth of GDP?

 

Causing massive price inflation? So that the insane federal government can borrow and deficit-spend that selfsame tenth of GDP? All because the US economy is now disgustingly distorted, monstrously malignant, twisted and totally, totally dependent upon massive, gagging amounts of government spending?

 

If you suddenly feel sick to your stomach, like me whenever I think of it, cheer up! I have good news at last!

 

What to do? It's not for nothing that Junior Mogambo Rangers (JMRs) around the world eagerly accumulate gold and silver bullion, and who say to themselves as they do, "Whee! This investing stuff is easy!"

 

And with 4,500 years of history backing their play, how can they lose? Easy and guaranteed!  Whee!

The Fabulous Mogambo Rational Dullard Portfolio (TFMRDP)

October 17, 2012

Mogambo Guru        

 

If I was a betting man, a hard-core gambling man, I mean a real long-shot kind of man greedily looking to make a ton of money in a hurry, using minimal investment, without doing any work, I would start accumulating out-of-the-money SP500 put options and/or short futures, starting right around in here someplace.

 

However, I am definitely NOT a betting man, because I really, really, really hate to lose money.  That's why I invest only in gold and silver: They are a sure-fire, can't miss, "a winner every time" kind of thing, as definitively proven by 4,500 years of history, compared to almost everything else being a guaranteed long-term loser, as evidenced by that selfsame 4,500 years of history.

 

Instead of opening old wounds ("You bet HOW much money doing WHAT, you lowlife, irresponsible, deadbeat moron?"), let me show you why I am thinking of making bets again.   As is Completely Freaking Obvious (CFO) from a cursory glance at the graph at multpl.com, the SP500 price/earnings ratio has been clearly rolling over since 2001, when the market made its last high, and is seemingly on its dismal way to plumb new lows, making suckers out of people who bought-and-held equities over the preceding 30-year bull market that began in 1980.

 

In short, just as it has done 4 times since 1870, or roughly averaging every 30+ years or so, the bull market is again falling apart, and people holding equities are again going to lose their money, as they sadly must, since it is mathematically impossible for everyone to take more out of the stock market than they put into it.

 

Thus, the majority of investors take long-term capital losses, which is the cruel punch line of the biggest swindle of all: putting your retirement money into the stock market.

 

And how about adding the additional pain of inflation-adjusting those big losses?  Don't ask! For God's sake, don't ask!

 

So, hating to lose is why I completely quit making bets of any kind.  And my wife didn't help matters when her "loving support" consisted of, at breakfast one morning, saying "It's only a lousy dollar on the stupid lottery, you whining jackass!  If you are so upset to lose One Stinking Dollar (OSD) a week, why do you buy the damned lottery ticket when you know you are going to lose? I mean, it's not like they didn't TELL you that the odds of winning are 18 million to one, you whining bonehead!"

 

Of course, the kids cheerfully chimed in "Whining bonehead! Whining bonehead!"  

 

I, to my dismay, had nothing to offer in my own defense, except to cleverly say "Shut up! All of you just shut up!"  Unsurprisingly, their uninspired, dull response was "No, YOU shut up!" to which I wittily replied "No, YOU shut up!"   I expected that the repetitious repartee would soon end, but it didn't, and instead went on and on.

 

I will spare you the ugly details, except to say that there was a lot of yelling and screaming and crying (mostly me), and someone stole one of my waffles when I wasn't looking,

probably when I was busy throwing a childish tantrum because I was, firstly, righteously upset about my own children causing the eternal question "How sharper than a serpent's tooth is an ungrateful child?" to spring to mind.

 

Secondly, I was upset that I was rudely rebuffed when I carefully explained to them, in calm, cool, soothing tones, as befits a tender, loving father, "I am playing the lottery because we are freaking desperate, you little morons! The foul Federal Reserve is destroying us with a horrifying exponential/ logarithmic over-creation of money and credit, which means prices will have to rise in a terrifying inflation to absorb all of that new money coursing through the economy forever, and the response to such an economic horror is that the evil Federal Reserve creates even MORE money and credit, making everything worse!"

 

They were not impressed with that answer, as the odds of my hitting the lottery are probably better than the odds of my making money in the stock market, especially using a stupid buy-and-hold strategy. The fact is, as I never tire of pointing out, it is mathematically impossible for the majority of investors to take more out of the stock market than they put into it, thus the majority of investors will always realize a cumulative long-term capital loss, with the last guy to buy stocks taking the biggest hit.

 

And now, scarily, the current bull market that began in 1980, when Reagan started the fiendish fad of slashing taxes and making up for it by deficit-spending untold billions and billions of dollars, is -- sure enough!  -- about 30 years old, the P/E line is predictably rolling over, private debt is at a maximum, and the cyclical, boom-bust nature seemingly inherent in the history of economics is, again seemingly, repeating itself.

 

In case you were wondering, the P/E ratio is currently a tad above 16, which is sort of on the high side.  If things run to form, the SP500 will, with fits and starts, bottom-out about ten or twenty years from now ("mark your calendars!") when the price/earnings ratio is about 5 or below.

 

"So," I hear you asking, "How low will the SP500 actually go, since you think you are so smart and you run around shooting your mouth off like you know everything?"   

 

Well, consulting the Mogambo Triad Of Awesome Prediction (MTOAP), consisting of 1) mystical chicken bones, 2) things I vaguely remember from a long time ago, and 3) making up the rest to "fill in the gaps," the resultant Official Stupid Mogambo Opinion (OSMO) is that the index will probably fall down to around 100 (assuming there are 500 companies left to make up the index!), or less (assuming there are not), whereupon everyone gets squat, or, if you prefer, in the original German, "Squatzumwalletgebangenschlag."

 

I am so gloomily pessimistic because I expect a complete, cataclysmic catastrophe to strike (checking my watch) any second now, partly because of this eerie "every 30-year cycle" thing,  but mostly because of the fact that everything and everyone is up to their ears in suffocating debt, and so the horrid Federal Reserve is always creating so much, so impossibly much, so unbelievably much, so terrifyingly overmuch money (and corresponding more debt) over the last Half Freaking Century (HFC), and never more than Right Freaking Now (RFN)!!!

 

I will not go into an elaborate, jargon-filled scientific explanation about the concluding three exclamation points at the end of that last sentence, but suffice it to say that it doesn't take a Junior Mogambo Ranger (JMR) to know one important thing: That much more new money means that much more new inflation in prices, and thus (extrapolating to the obvious, horrifying historical and theoretical conclusion) We're Freaking Doomed (WFD)!

 

And when you couple this P/E thing portending disaster, with the government's promise of higher taxes for years to come, wouldn't the rational investor sell before the December 31 cut-off, so as to realize taxable gains this year when taxes haven't gone up yet, as they must soon?

 

And when you combine all that with looming, dooming specter of inescapable trillion-dollar federal budget deficits for years and years to come, all requiring the Federal Reserve to create massively more money and credit to both absorb all that new Treasury debt and to pay the gigantic, growing, gagging interest payable on the massive, monumental mountains of existing public and private debt, all at terrifying levels never before seen in history, it seems, even to a complete dullard like me, that a really rational investor would be selling equities and loading up on gold, silver and oil.

 

Thus, we behold the genesis of The Fabulous Mogambo Rational Dullard Portfolio (TFMRDP), holding only physical gold, physical silver and oil stocks, and destined, as it surely is, to be the best investment advice that any paranoid, angry, cynical and hateful old man, who has studied the Austrian School of economics and thus "seen the light," ever gave.

 

And did I mention easy? Why, that's the best part! It's easy, too, as I prove by gleefully exulting "Whee! This investing stuff is easy!"