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!"

Mogambo Hunka Hunka Bunker (MHHB)

October 10, 2012

Mogambo Guru

 

I was hunkered down in the Mogambo Hunka Hunka Bunker (MHHB) after having worked myself into another panic about the inescapable inflationary terror that will surely follow the monstrous amounts of money being created by the corrupt Federal Reserve and other central banks, including the horrid International Monetary Fund.

 

I was trying desperately to calm down, hoping to feel safe behind triply-locked doors, armed to the teeth and surrounded by microwave burritos, gold, silver, oil stocks.  After awhile, and after a hastily-consumed burrito, I knew I was going to be "fine."

 

In fact, I will probably "a lot more than fine," with the wide sweep of possibilities ranging from the mundane "I'll be fine" to the classic "I'll be astronomically wealthy in terms of the sheer tonnage of neat stuff that I can buy, including enough money to pay off the wife and kids and finally shut them up about how I don't give them enough money to spend on their worthless trinkets, doodads, shoes, medical treatments and all that dental crap because I maniacally invest all our money in gold, silver and oil, demonstrating that I am smarter than all of them put together, entitling me to reap the rewards of a snazzy new car, maybe with some fancy mag wheels, in which to haul my worthless butt to the golf course, or just use the car to ride around looking for more things to buy, playing the radio and honking the horn at pretty girls walking down the street who are (as I am perfectly aware so I don't need to hear it again from you) young enough to be my granddaughters."

 

Finishing off a second burrito, mid-bite, out of the corner of my eye, I could see the Mogambo Monetary Seismographs (MMSs) going crazy, their inky needles wildly scritching and scratching frantically across the paper.   I thought to myself "That's odd!  How could such tinny sounds actually be the hoof beats of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse?" 

Well, that was entirely too melodramatic, I admit, but that's the kind of crappy mood I was in, detached, as if in a dream, and not the good kind of dream where beautiful ladies run their fingers through my hair, breathing huskily and saying "Oh, Mighty Manly Mogambo (MMM)!  I am thrilled by your raw, seething antipathy towards the evil Federal Reserve creating so much excess money and credit because it will destroy the dollar, destroy the economy and destroy us, and I am enthralled and entranced by your seething hatred of the corrupt, low-IQ Congress that lets them get away with, as you would charmingly call it, Monstrous Monetary Crap That Will Destroy Us All (MMCTWDUA)."

 

Normally, I am eager to fall into such a dream state and resist anyone rousing me from it, especially saying something like "Wake up! You are going to be late for work!" or "Wake up! The boss wants to see you in her office right now!"

 

But no such luck.  I was brought back to stark reality and the fullness of its ugliness by my eyes falling on the 5-Minute Forecast, written by Addison Wiggin. 

 

"As of Monday, Oct. 1," he writes, "the national debt stands at $16,159,487,013.300.35. This means the government racked up $1,369,146,684,743.20 in new liabilities last year."

 

If you are intimidated by incomprehensibly large numbers, or your brain refuses to understand what it sees, or you are like me and just too slow-witted to immediately comprehend what the hell is going on, then permit me to simplify.

 

To wit: The usurper Obama and his horrid, neo-Marxist administration overspent the government's revenues by a whopping $1.4 trillion dollars in the last twelve months! 

 

How much is $1.4 trillion?  This is more than all the individual and corporate income taxes paid to the federal government, combined!  In fact, it is more than half of the $2.3 trillion total federal tax receipts, including Social Security and Medicare taxes!

 

The $1.4 trillion deficit -- alone!  -- is a gigantic 9% of the Whole Freaking Economy (WFE) of the USA!  Choking on my outrage, I stammer out "Unbelievable! One out of eleven dollars of GDP is deficit-spent by the federal government!"

 

Of course, this always sets me off about the horrible Supreme Court, which made it all possible by ruling, over and over again, that the Constitution of the United States did not really, really, really mean it when it was stipulated that money "shall only" be silver and gold, which would have prevented any undue expansion of the money supply, and which would have prevented any of this bankruptcy crap from happening, and which was the whole purpose of the Founding Fathers writing into the Constitution the requirement that money be only gold and silver.

 

But it was the Congress that created the Federal Reserve, which is not federal and it has no reserves, yet it was given the power to completely control our money, despite it being owned and run by a large, shadowy bunch of greedy people, including foreigners.

 

So, who is to blame, Congress or the Federal Reserve?

 

Steve Saville of The Speculative Investor says that "We've speculated in TSI commentaries that unwavering devotion to bad economic theory (a type of stupidity) is the most likely reason for the Fed's introduction of a new inflation program at this time. There are other plausible explanations, but in general terms it boils down to this: the Fed is either stupid, or evil, or stupid and evil."

 

Later on, he admits "We'll go with evil and stupid."

 

And if the Federal Reserve is evil and stupid, and the Congress is corrupt and stupid, what is the smart thing to do?

 

I'm glad you asked!  Buy gold, silver and oil!  Gold and silver because that has always been the smart play for the last 4,500 years when governments behaved so despicably, and oil because it is now so completely vital, to so many people, that they must pay any price.

 

And with the insane overproduction of new money and credit by the filthy, foul Federal Reserve, the price of oil can go nowhere but up when the purchasing power of the dollar has nowhere to go but down.

 

And you need but look deep, deep into my bloodshot eyes to see the utter, utter sincerity there to believe me when I say, with the aforementioned utter, utter sincerity, that it doesn't get any easier, or smarter, than that. 

 

That's why I say "Whee! This investing stuff is easy!"

Too Much Money And Credit (TMMAC)

September 28, 2012

Mogambo Guru

 

I put it off as long as I could, and as distasteful as it was, I finally broke it to the family that I was, alas, being forced to cut expenses, mostly because I don't have a job anymore, and will almost surely never get another one. 

 

"Never get a job," I think, silently chortling to myself, "until they start advertising for 'Lazy old man to work, when he is in the mood, for premium pay and generous benefits for doing practically nothing, if anything, a couple of days per week or month."

 

Immediately, the members of the family unit were, as expected, hostile and defensive, obviously remembering the last time when I "cut expenses" so that I could, as they never tire of pointing out, buy something expensive and act really stupidly.  

 

And they no doubt remember, too, that they got exactly nothing from me that time, keeping all the money for myself, and I how I rudely laughed at their pleas for money, telling them, in a snide, snotty and sarcastic tone of voice, "Get a job, loser!", and they were, as I remember, really grumpy about it.

 

Naturally, the first thing out of each of their mouths was (distilling the essence of their lengthy, and loud, remarks) was "No!  Don't stop giving me money! Stop giving money to those other family-unit losers, but not me!"

 

The "family meeting," such as it was, immediately devolved into a weird, ugly fight about who could make my life more miserable, and thus, apparently, deserving of more money than the others.

 

Finally, as if at a signal, they turned to me and asked "So how much money AM I going to get from now on?"

 

I could see the fear and panic in their faces.  Being the considerate, loving father and darling husband that I am ("He's a real peach!"), I gently replied "None, you morons! You get nothing! Nothing! There is no more money! Exactly what part of 'bankruptcy' don't you understand, you lowlife Earthling halfwits who now get what they deserve because they would not buy gold, silver and oil with their miserable few pennies?"

 

Well, at the instant their deafening howls of protest rattled off the ceiling, I realized that this was the wrong way to say what was, actually, correct, and I should have said "I am so sorry, but I fear that you will get almost nothing, and it breaks my heart because I love you so much and I feel your pain." 

 

But the shrieking, cacophonous, angry, panicked result would be the same, no matter how I said it, as I am reminded by riots in Europe. This is also by angry mobs of panicky, busted-out people who are displeased about getting what they deserve for spending themselves, decade after decade, steadily into total bankruptcy, which every other idiot in history knows is a Very Bad Idea (VBI).

 

So it must be a kind of a karma thing, I guess.

 

Anyway, since "what goes around comes around," it will happen here, and everywhere else, too.  And all for the same reasons, too:  Imminent bankruptcy and utter ruination of a ridiculous, bloated, mal-invested, government-centric economy, financed by the evil Federal Reserve creating excess money and debt to finance it all.

 

To gauge how bad it will be in America, an article by Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute will perhaps prove instructive.  He writes "The federal government runs 126 separate anti-poverty programs. Altogether, seven different Cabinet departments and six independent agencies each administer at least one anti-poverty program."

 

Together, these federal anti-poverty programs "cost taxpayers more than $668 billion last year," but that "if one includes state and local welfare spending, government at all levels will spend more than $952 billion this year," or, if you prefer, a whopping 6% of GDP. Yikes!

 

That breaks down to the dismal statistic that "combined with state and local spending, government spends $20,610 for every poor person in America - or $61,830 per poor family of three."  Wow!

 

He continues without even a hint of the irony or the angry, screaming outrage that it deserves, and would have gotten in a scornful, screaming, spittle-spewing Mogambo Howl Of Complete Outrage (MHOCO) if I had written the article, which I did not, both because I don't have Mr. Tanner's talent writing or obvious intellect, and also because it looks like it took a lot of work, which doesn't interest me that much. At all.

 

In fact, I am actually repelled by the idea of work.

 

So, irony-less, angry-less, screaming-less and outrage-less, we are left to ourselves to calculate that this government giveaway of $61,830 per poor family of three is a Lot Of Money (LOM), especially "given that the poverty line for that family is just $18,530, we should have theoretically wiped out poverty in America many times over."

 

Hahaha! I laughed at the sheer, monumental incredulity of such a thing!  I am dumbfounded! Hahaha!

 

But there are a lot of weird things in a huge federal budget that includes a deficit that is already an unbelievable $1.4 trillion, which alone is an astounding, unbelievable, incredible 9% of the entire economy of the Whole Freaking Country (WFC)!  We're doomed!

 

And it's a deficit which will be - hold onto your hats!  -- higher next year, and the year after that, and then, apparently, forever after that ! Double doomed!

 

If your eyes are bugging out and you think to yourself "We're freaking doomed!", then you will be happy to know that you understand the situation perfectly. This explains why your gut is twisted into a knot, and why your primitive brainstem is itself sending the loud message to buy gold, silver and oil stocks continuously (dollar-cost averaging), and with a feverish tenacity.

 

As their prices rise through the years, this will allow you to laugh merrily and heartily -- Hahahaha! -- as you watch in rapt fascination at the weird, unbelievable things that the government, and the Federal Reserve, will do in  raw desperation and suicidal panic as the economy is destroyed by the inflation, deflation and misery caused by irresponsibly creating Too Much Money And Credit (TMMAC) on top of TMMAC on top of TMMAC of top of TMMAC.

 

If you do NOT buy gold, silver and oil, however, you won't have anything to laugh about.

 

And speaking, as I do, for all the stupid people in this world who prefer to watch TV, eat, drink, have fun, or simply stare off into space like some kind of brain-damaged mental-case rather than have to deal with boring investing stuff, we are very thankful that simply buying gold, silver and oil stocks is the smartest investment anyone can make when the money supply is being increased by so much, for so long.

 

That may explain why those who buy gold bullion, silver bullion and oil stocks, in a desperate, fearful response to the Federal Reserve creating so much excess money, are known to say "Whee! This investing thing is easy!"

$2 Trillion in New Money (TNM)

September 24, 2012

The Mogambo Guru

 

Ben Bernanke is the panicked and clueless chairman of the evil Federal Reserve, and he has just shocked the world to announce that, henceforth, the Federal Reserve will create enough money to buy $40 billion per month of mortgage-backed securities.

This comes to a cool $480 billion a year in new money right there.

And this does not even mention the additional $1 trillion or so that the Fed is going to have to create over the next year to buy the tons of new government bonds necessary to pay for what seems to a terrifying $1.4 trillion budget-deficit of the loathsome Obama administration.

So I figure that we are looking at close to $2 trillion in new money this year! That's a 20% increase in the money supply! In One Freaking Year (OFY)!  Gaaahhh!

Now, people who are even vaguely familiar with Austrian School economics, or Milton Friedman's famous quote that "Price inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon", are running around in fear, probably also shrieking "Gaaahhh!" when they should be buying gold, silver and oil with that same terrified abandon, horrified at the certain prospect of ruinous, calamitous inflation in prices that all this new money will cause.

Mr. Bernanke, for his part, has declared himself an expert on the Great Depression, and has concluded that it was caused by -- get this!  -- the Federal Reserve not burying America under an avalanche of new money and credit.

If it had, he solemnly pontificates, everything would have been, in a word, peachy.

Thus, it is easy to see how he would decide that he, armed only with this crazy idea and his arrogant conceit, can easily prevent the regrettable repeat of the Great Depression that is darkly descending upon us.

He would do this by the obvious, happy expedient of burying America under an avalanche of new money and credit!

Many of you, no doubt, have noticed that twice I used the exact same phrase "burying America under an avalanche of new money and credit", and you are saying hurtful things like "This is mere mindless redundancy, the same kind of Worthless Mogambo Crap (WMC) that I have come to expect, which handily explains why everyone thinks The Mogambo is stupid and has cooties, and why I am ashamed to be reading this WMC, and why I am angry with myself for wasting my time reading that selfsame WMC!"

Well, mister or miz smarty-pants critic, for your information, I have done that on purpose for Two Important Reasons (TIR).  Not one, but two! Two Important Reasons (TIR)!

The First Important Reason (FIR) is that I am not very bright, and could not immediately come up with anything new or original by virtue of my also being too lazy to even take a lousy second to think about it, and the Copy/Paste function was right there, begging me to use it, saying to me "Oh, so you're a real tough guy who's brave enough to write that the Federal Reserve creating so terrifyingly much new money and credit that is going to destroy us with an inflation in consumer prices, a roaring price inflation that will, percentage-wise, match the monstrous monetary inflation of the evil Federal Reserve, but you are too chicken to copy one lousy little phrase, which wasn't very good to start with?  Is it because you aren't very bright and you probably have cooties? Huh? Cootie-man?"

And then it Copy/Paste function made squawking noises at me, like a chicken, mocking me! How could I not rise to the challenge?

The Second Important Reason (SIR) is that it is my clever way of saying that the outcome of burying America under an avalanche of new money and credit is The One Damned Thing (TODT) that actually caused BOTH the Great Depression and the current inflationary "recession" that will soon, in case you were wondering, turn into a terrifying stagflationary depression.

So creating more money sure as hell will NOT be a cure! Hahaha!

Hey! Maybe I can turn this into a classic joke, and the people will say "The Mogambo isn't very bright, but he writes a funny joke!

The doctor says "The tests show that you have cancer" and you say, aghast, "How are you going to cure me, or am I going to die a horrible, lingering death while you and the healthcare system bleed me dry?"

The doctor says "No! I'm going to cure you! I'm going to cure you 'Federal Reserve Style', which is to give you MORE of the cancer that is killing you!  I am only sorry to say that I cannot bleed you dry, because that's not the way Medicare works, although if someone finds a way, I'm coming after you.

"I'll be coming for you because I know that you have a lot of gold, silver and oil, and thus you have a lot of money.  I know this because you have been coming into my office, year after year, lying to my face about how much you smoke, lying to me about how much you drink, lying to me about how much you exercise, and lying to me about how you eat only healthful food with lots of vegetables and fruits, but expecting me to cure whatever it is that you are whining about, or actually suffering from, by prescribing some magical pill or something."

Well, that sounds like me, alright, but what does any of this have to do with the joke? This was supposed to be a joke of some kind! My new career as a joke-writer is going down in flames!

Before I could say anything, the doctor goes on "And the part that irritates me the most is the way you were constantly telling me, with your irritating nasal voice, to invest in gold, silver and oil, like I am going to listen to some grumpy old man who is obviously an idiot and who lies to me all the time. And who probably has cooties, too."

Exasperated, I explode "That's not funny! None of this is funny! I thought this was supposed to be a joke, and jokes are supposed to be funny!"

And the doctor says "Yeah, well, drop dead then! Is your doctor telling you to 'drop dead' funny?"

I reply "No, it's really not. However, the idea of you actually knowing that you should be buying gold, silver and oil stocks because the Federal Reserve and other central banks are creating so much money, but you are not, makes me laugh.  Is that funny?"

The doctor says "No, I don't think so.  So, is there anything funny about this whole mess?"

That's when I say "Well, you can accumulate gold and silver so easily, and so cheaply, that it makes you squeal 'Whee!' with a kind of childish delight, which is kind of funny, coming, as it does, from an old, stupid man. Maybe with cooties!"

Alas, the punch line of the joke is that's about as funny as it gets.  If you don't have gold, silver and oil, however, you don't even get that.

And that's just sad.