Proving that I never have an original thought, I recently received an epiphany from Alan Greenspan, evil erstwhile chairman of the Federal Reserve who is directly responsible for the fatal mess we are in. He was recently casually “explaining” how it was absolutely necessary for him to destroy the United States by creating so much excess cash and credit that it created horrendously huge bubbles in stocks, bubbles in bonds, bubbles in business and personal debt, bubbles in size of governments and their growing legions of dependents, and an expensive housing/real estate market, all adding up to an incomprehensibly gigantic Huge Freaking Boatload (HFB) of debt, all made possible by the evil Federal Reserve, and all priced to yield at negative real (inflation-adjusted) rates!
Mr. Greenspan sadly says he discovered that he was, alas, forced to do bad things, like engaging in insane monetary policy to satisfy insane fiscal policy, because if he didn’t, he would be ostracized into insignificance, instead of “going along to get along” to have a wonderful, star-quality career as chairman of the Fed and a very lucrative retirement.
So, bright and early one sunny morning after my belated awakening to The Way Things Are (TWTA), I breezily announced to the family that “Saving money is incompatible with a hedonistic/self-centered life.”[amazon asin=0989510913&template=*lrc ad (right)]
In reply to their looks of disinterested boredom, despite my telling them that this was a profound pronouncement, I explained how this new lifestyle means I am quitting my job, playing golf and hanging out at strip clubs a lot. A LOT.
Actually, nobody cares what I do, and if you ask them, as many people do, they will shrug their shoulders disinterestedly and say “He can die for all I care.”
Rather, what they anxiously and fearlessly wanted to know was what it meant to them, the greedy little leeches who were draining me dry as it was.
I carefully explained to the family that this new theory was not, repeat NOT, my idea, so shut up with the whining and complaining, but is an actual, bona fide operating principle of the Federal Reserve. Thus, cutting to the chase in response to their increasing hostility, this meant that, henceforth, we would be borrowing as much money as we can, with me, personally, having a wonderful, expensive time slowly sliding into a sinful and slothful happy degeneracy, whilst they will be having a not-so-wonderful, much-less-expensive time exploring the thin frontiers of bleak urban-subsistence living, until we reach a point in the future where nobody will lend us any more money, everything is repossessed, we end up with nothing, and are living in the gutter.
Well, actually, the dirty secret of it all is that the family will end up in the gutter, not me. The bitter actuarial facts are that, at my age, the family unit will still be financially sailing merrily along on a torrent of new debt [amazon asin=1612930123&template=*lrc ad (right)]financing my wonderful life of dissipation when I, as they say, “bite the big one,” never having suffered in any way.
Leaving them, parenthetically, holding the bag. Hahaha! Suckers! I mean, it’s not like they weren’t warned, for crying out loud. “What part of hedonistic/self-centered life don’t you understand, morons?”
Obviously, I did not carry through on my plan, damn it, which I always fondly think of as Mogambo Achievement Of Heaven On Earth And Screw Everyone Else Plan (MAOHOEASEOEP).
I succumbed to my usual cowardice. I mean, it’s one thing to watch out for a corrupt Federal Reserve and government, and then buy gold and silver to thwart them, but it’s quite another to literally always watch your back, suspecting an attack from the rear, to guard against vengeful family members who never actually say out loud that they want to kill me, but you can see that’s what they are thinking, the little rats.
Oh, you can tell by the way their beady little eyes narrow to slits, and how their words are spoken through those fake smiles and clenched teeth, sounding like the hissing of sneaky little snakes, which is what they are, like when you walk into the house and yell out “Who in the hell left their stupid bicycle in the damned driveway again?”, they all stop talking! That’s how you know that they are planning to kill you.
Like I said, cowardice on my part.
Actually, Mr. Greenspan (aka demon from hell) said, with some paraphrasing because I am too lazy to actually transcribe something, “A gold standard money is incompatible with a welfare/entitlement economy.”[amazon asin=130068240X&template=*lrc ad (right)]
Put aside for the mere moment that I spent most of the time since watching this interview actually gagging up blood and faintly burrito-tinged vomit in a fit of Hyper Mogambo Outrage (HMO), livid at the thought of some treacherous monster doing such a vile thing, considering that the whole history of the last 2,500 years shows such a moronic monetary policy to be suicidal and devastating.
Yet, the dismal fact is that he is absolutely right; a stable money supply cannot support the growth a vast welfare/entitlement economy.
And grow it has! Now, half the population is receiving a government check each month. Half!
Worse, almost a third of the purported working population of 139 million on non-farm payrolls, out of a total population of 310 million people, are employed by a local, state or federal government, or a school system, or a government-sponsored and/or non-profit organization, none of whom pays a dime in taxes on profits. A net drain, all around.
“Perhaps,” you think to yourself, “that is why the total local, state and federal government budgets combine to a hefty $6 trillion, in a purported $17 trillion GDP, which, with a derived multiplier of only three to account for the entire GDP, means that government spending is such a huge proportion of the economy that We’re Freaking Doomed (WFD) if government spending goes down by as much as a dime!”
But, but, but! But without any more quantitative easing, how else can governments keep spending more and more, so that the government-centric economy can grow more and more? You certainly can’t get that kind of [amazon asin=0990463109&template=*lrc ad (right)]moolah from taxing the few people and businesses who pay taxes out of profits!
Thorny questions. Instead, we elect to have fun, since both “Saving money is incompatible with a hedonistic/self-centered life” and “A gold standard money is incompatible with a welfare/entitlement economy” are both, sadly, true.
Fortunately, most people at the breakfast table, and across the globe, cover their ears with their hands, pleading “Shut up! Just shut up! Stop talking about how We’re Freaking Doomed (WFD), and how we ought to buy gold and silver, and if we don’t, then it proves we’re morons! And now you want to spend everything until we are literally penniless! I hate you, everybody hates you, so just shut up, shut up, shut up!”
If they had asked, I would have told them that there is always a foolproof way to stop my personal tyranny, as an implacable Overlord controlling their puny Earthling lives, as they have proved many, many times.
Alas, there is no way to stop quantitative easing of monetary policy, nor is there any way to stop a system of noble-minded yet stupid government in a headlong deficit-spending quest to solve everybody’s problems and guarantee equal outcomes, once you get started.
Well, there is a way, but it is hideous, and it involves starting over by rising from the ashes, which is never popular. That’s why it won’t be tried, and will instead be forced upon us.
But please note that nothing is forcing you not to buy gold and silver bullion! You know you should. 2,500 years of history guarantees you should. But you probably won’t.
Whatever reason you have for not buying gold and silver, you had better crystalize it in your brain right now, because your children and your grandchildren are going to want to know “Why in the hell did you not buy gold and silver bullion when it was So Freaking Obvious (SFO) that even a brain-damaged moron like the Stupid Mogambo Butthead (SMB) could see it clear as a freaking bell?”
I think you agree that it would be better to buy gold and silver. It would ultimately be so much more pleasant for everybody concerned. And the best part is that buying them is so easy (Audience yells “How easy, Mogambo?”) that you will be also able to happily exclaim “Whee! Not only did we make out like bandits, to live in opulent splendor, by buying gold and silver, but that whole ‘investing thing’ was so easy, too!”
Whee, indeed!
