I have always had my philosophic differences with The Economist magazine, starting with how they refuse (”Bah!”) to acknowledge that I, The Most Magnificent Mogambo (TMMM), am not just another run-of-the-mill conceited economic blowhard who is, alas, nowhere near as smart as he thinks he is.
To the contrary, I am a genuine hero, using contempt, scorn and vague threats as weapons to bravely dissuade Earthlings from committing the economic follies of expanding the money supply via fiat currencies and fractional-reserve banking.
Of course, it is possible that the editors of The Economist are ignoring me because people following my constant advice to buy gold and silver have been getting hammered lately, and I look like an idiot and a failure, which seems to delight everyone.
And when I laugh in their smug faces (“Hahaha!”) and hurl insults at them (“Not buying gold and silver means you are a moron!”) they get all huffy and pugnacious (“Who you calling a moron, you Irritating Mogambo Pipsqueak (IMP)?”), like I had said something wrong to these, as previously alluded to, morons.
In my defense, I remind them that they are ignoring the stark, inescapable fact that in the last 2,500 years, thousands of governments, one dirtbag government after another, some of them using fiat currencies, borrowed themselves into bankruptcy.
Continuing with this sad tale, all of them went down, down, down the Big Economic Crapper (BEC), despite their frantically flailing about, enacting ruinous laws, regulations, tariffs and taxes, until the people got really, really, REALLY tired of the inflation in consumer prices, and the deflation of asset prices, and the inflation in the pain of governments eating them alive.
Then, one historic, day (look it up!), they finally rose up in noisy revolt, shouting things like “Sic semper tyrannous!” and “We should have listened to The Mighty Mogambo (TMM)! Well, we would have listened, had he been born yet, but whose immortal message of the Austrian school of economics shines so brightly in the future that we thought it would have traveled backwards in time, illuminating us ignorant savages here in the past, and sparing us the horrors of the aforementioned Big Economic Crapper (BEC)!”
The moral of the story? At the end of all of these episodes of monetary sins, gold and silver reigned supreme, immediately stabilizing the money supply. Reigned supreme! Which is not the same as a delicious pizza supreme, heaped with yummy toppings, although both of them are exactly what you want.
But who knew the government and the Fed were going to shockingly manipulate the prices of things, especially gold and silver, and unbelievably monetizing debt and assets? Who could have anticipated extortion by the IRS and the Justice Department to punish those who didn’t play ball? Who? Who?
And so when people come up to me and whine about how much money they have lost as gold and silver have declined in price, thanks to all this government corruption, I say “Me, too, so shut the hell up! I have problems of my own because a corrupt, desperate government, a foul desperate Keynesian central bank and slimy market insiders are frantically, forcefully controlling every market.”
And they are particularly troublesome, in their controlling, fascist way, in the gold and silver markets, where their expected rapidly rising prices would be a tipoff of what we professional economists term Something Is Very Wrong Here (SIVWH).
To calmingly inject a little sense of proportion, you will be happy to know that it could be worse, and could be Something Is Very, VERY Wrong Here (SIVVWH), such as you coming home and finding all your clothes and stuff are thrown out onto the front lawn.
And she’s shouting “Your boss called and says you’re fired!” while she is shooting at you with a .30-.30 deer rifle. Ping! Ping!
So relax. It’s not that bad. Yet.
And so the government, and the Fed, and banks, and the financial services industry all desperately want to make sure that nothing bad happens to the overpriced stock market, the overpriced bond market, the overpriced housing market, the resultant gigantic debts and the incomprehensibly, overwhelmingly huge derivatives market.
Yet, I, The Most Magnificent Mogambo (TMMM), am shunned by The Economist magazine! I, whose every idle muttering is a real gem about Austrian economics, and who waxes especially eloquent in my dour disdain and disgust for fiat currencies (because the money supply always gets over-expanded), and for fractional-reserve banking (because it is always abused by the corrupt banking industry).
Doubtful? You, like most people, probably think “The reason The Economist ignores you is because you are stupid, just as your stupid advice to buy gold and silver has proved lately. And The Economist is a classy magazine, whereas you are a lazy, lowbrow, lay-about loser, just like your wife says.”
Lowbrow? In rebuttal, I ask “Could a lowbrow upstage Shakespeare with my now-classic soliloquy that I just made up?”, which thunders forth “Hark! What forfends, Horatio? Does thy heart dwell as the sickly sorrow sages, befitting the bilious humours of a man such as yourself, of letters and erudition, schooled well enough in middling matters of money to now gag up blood, clotting dry and foul in thy parched mouth, at the evilness of the satanic Federal Reserve? Verily are thee vexed by the Federal Reserve, which cravenly countenances grievous over-issue of a foul and fatal fiat currency, outrageous fractional reserve banking and actual monetization of government and private debt, so that (rising to a thunderous crescendo) Thou Art Freaking Doomed (TAFD)?”
And as for profundity? Check this out: As befitting my colossal conceit in calling myself The Great Mogambo (TGM), I am proud to say it don’t get no mo’ profound than “The foul Federal Reserve is a detestable bunch of blundering boneheads, piggishly wallowing in the completely discredited Keynesian econometric nonsense, used to justify ‘replacing falling consumer spending with increased government spending.’”
This matters crucially matters because the foul Federal Reserve is always trying to constantly increase the money supply, which constantly increases debt, and constantly increases consumer prices! That’s the problem in a nutshell! Inflation!
It increases consumer prices, which gives the overwhelming majority of people a chronic, constant fall in their standards of living, since they can constantly only buy less and less with each dollar since things cost more.
Okay, perhaps not so profound. Sorry. But it is, to my credit, nonetheless true that this permanent inflation in the money supply, and in the resultant increase in prices, is a stinking systematic and systemic stupidity, which is highly alliterative, and thus self-proving to be true.
In short, it’s a repellent inbreeding of false economic signals with corrupt stupidity, such that it can only, by the mathematical necessities of an exponential function that must one day zoom asymptotic, end in the grotesqueries of catastrophe and war, as far as the eye can see.
But in the meantime, you find that inflation in prices is constantly squeezing you, a little bit more and more every month. And when you ask your boss for a raise, she whines about how the company is suffering because inputs cost more, and margins are down because customers are balking at paying higher prices when faced with higher input prices of their own.
And how the board of directors is getting a lot of heat from the shareholders to increase sagging profits and dividends. And she desperately needs to cut expenses, like saving money by getting rid of some deadwood employees, and you know you are the biggest deadwood loser in the whole company since all the ones worse than you have been fired already. Yikes!
And to make inflation worse, year after year the kids are constantly whining louder and louder about how I don’t give them more money, since things always cost more, and how I am a stupid old man who doesn’t understand how price inflation works, and about how they genuinely NEED more money, and how they are perfectly justified in hating me for being such a terrible, stingy father, and throwing food at me from across the table when they think I can’t see them and blah, blah, blah.
And, sadly, it will continue to get worse and worse, as TheBurningPlatform.com has the latest monthly report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) about the rate of inflation in prices, as measured by the poor, tortured CPI.
Even with all their hedonic adjustments, redefinitions, ignoring facts, segregation of data and outright lies, they admitted to an annualized rate of 3.6% inflation! Yikes!
3.6% inflation is – and you may quote me! – terrible news!
So, already having a HUGE personal grudge against inflation, you can understand how I am perfectly peeved that The Economist, over the years, has spent a goodly amount of its time and pages of print screeching about how the world needs more and more quantitative easing, to increase debt, to increase the money supply, and thus to increase price inflation! I bellowed in outrage the whole time!
Quantitative easing! Always more and more quantitative easing, which is a euphemism for “driving the cost of debt down, making debt easy to acquire, so as to increase the money supply which will, according to ridiculous Keynesian economists, somehow make the problems of unbelievable loads of bankrupting debt, the problems of assets selling at far more than their real value, and the problems of cancerous government spending, somehow – and follow me closely here – magically, wonderfully, disappear!”
Poof! And all things financial will, magically delicious, be perfectly fab-u-lous!
Now (cue ominous music) they have gone off the deep end. They are actually presenting the work of two World Bank jackasses who think that poor countries should (wait for it…wait for it…wait for it…) increase taxes!
I know what you are thinking. You are thinking “What in the hell…?”
They say taxes should be raised because it “allows developing countries to invest in education, health and infrastructure, and, hence, in promoting growth”! Hence! Hahahah! Hence!
They actually believe that “an additional dollar of public investment increases (private investment) by two dollars”! Hahaha! Just like that! Money comes rolling in! This must be the “hence”!
It’s freely admitted, right off the bat, that poor countries already collect taxes at a whopping 13% of GDP. This is compared to the more “normal” taxation at 34% of GDP in the rich world, which is, believe it or not, deemed low. More than a third of economic activity going to taxes is low? Wow!
And the reason that taxes are not higher in poor countries? It’s because “lots of their citizens are penniless,” and yet they want to raise taxes anyway! Wow! Levying taxes on the penniless! How low can a Keynesian economist stoop, anyway?
Oddly enough, it doesn’t mention how much money the penniless would have if 13% of the national income was not taxed away!
“So,” you are wearily asking, “does this relentless, and entirely boring, tirade have a point?”
You bet it does! Regardless of what sneering contemporaries, disappointed clients, rude neighbors, hateful children and The Economist magazine say, take my advice and the advice of 2,500 years of history: Invest your money in gold and silver.
And keep buying it because the legions of ludicrous Keynesians can, and will, do many, many more stupid mistakes like increasing the money supply and raising taxes on the poor.
It’s all so blindingly obvious that I can’t help buy happily exclaim “Whee! This investing stuff is easy!”
