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"Boogerhead"Richard Daughty - Being in a particularly bad mood, I was hoping that the Federal Reserve had increased Total Fed Credit again this week so that I would have an excuse to go up there and stand on the sidewalk outside their offices and yell "You bastards are killing our money by constantly creating more credit, which becomes more debt!" I had planned to dare Alan Greenspan to come out here and get a punch in the nose from me, and then maybe this new guy, Ben Bernanke, will look out the window and see me knocking the hell out of Greenspan, and maybe he would say to himself "Wow! I better start acting like I got some smarts, or that Mogambo idiot is liable to hit ME in the old bazoo, too!" But, alas, the Fed reduced Total Fed Credit by $2.3 billion last week, which I will call "piddly", just to add a little sardonic ugliness to the whole thing. On the other hand, the Treasury, bagman for the (being as disrespectful as I can manage) fascist morons in Congress, took fiscal insanity to a new level of, ummm, insanity, and exploded the national debt by a cool $21 billion. In one week! That works out to an extra $210 dollars in debt for every person in this whole country that has a non-government job! In one week! But let ME go out and put my little nuclear family unit into $210 more debt in a whole MONTH, much less a lousy week, and suddenly my wife gets all weird on me and is yelling at me about how we don't NEED another layer of razor-wire in the backyard (yes we do) or we don't NEED to be entertaining my hoodlum friends at Harry's Hothouse of Hooch and Hootchie Cootchie (yes we do) and wanting to know if there is something wrong with my stupid little brain that I cannot comprehend that no matter how much she yells at me (yes there is). But this is not about how I never have any fun or have nice things, but about how Congress increased the national debt by $80 billion in just the first 25 days of this month ($3.2 billion per day) and how America is only about $100 billion from reaching the limit on the national debt, again, which means that the jackasses of Congress will simply raise the limit again so that their insane spendthrift ruination of the United States can continue unabated. But let me miss a few payments on my credit card, and the credit card company gets real testy about raising my credit limit a lousy few hundred bucks! I don't know if you remember, but they raised the limit on the national debt, from $7.384 trillion to $8.184 trillion, less than a year ago! When George Bush took over, the national debt was about $5.7 trillion. So in five years he and the Congress borrowed and spent $2.6 trillion, which comes out to $26,000 for every non-government worker in the whole freaking country! In terms of the proverbial "every man, woman and child", $2.6 trillion it is a more manageable $8,950 each. But this is not TOTAL debt, but how much MORE debt! And anyway, I do not like the term "every man, woman and child" because, for one thing there are very few kids who make any money at all, and if you try to, you know, subcontract the damn kids out to some Asian sweat-shop for a little piece-work income, they and the busybody mother and their snotty teachers are all calling up the police, like it is some big emergency or something, and now it's ME that's in trouble, like I did something wrong in trying to turn the expense of having kids into a profit center! "It's the American way!" I tell them! It falls on deaf ears. Peter Schiff clues us in to why the crushing national debt will get MORE crushing. "Under normal circumstances, debtors would benefit from higher inflation, which would greatly diminish the real burden of repayment. However, these are hardly normal times. Due to the irresponsible debt management of the Clinton and Bush administrations, the average maturity of the eight trillion dollar national debt is now under three years. Therefore our creditors are not stuck holding low yielding, long-term debt. They can simply refuse to roll-over maturing paper, or demand substantially higher interest rates for doing so." But instead of concentrating on the stupidity of Americans, let's focus, for the moment, on foreign idiots. For example, foreign central banks poured another $11.5 billion into their account at the Fed last week! Hahaha! Buying humongous loads of US government debt at yields so low that they are already higher than simple price inflation! Hahaha! Hell, I feel brilliant in comparison! But why all this explosion in debt issuance? This may have something to do with how Ben "Call me Ben, because I've been (get it?) crazy since I was just a kid" Bernanke said that "The Fed could find other ways of injecting money into the system--for example, by making low-interest-rate loans to banks or cooperating with the fiscal authorities." The fiscal authorities? He means the government! Alarms went off in my head as I realized that this scares the hell out of me! Because I am both only marginally literate and very, very lazy, I have never actually read the original charter of the Federal Reserve, or its many subsequent distortions, but I am pretty damned sure (and when I say "sure", I mean the "look deep into my eyes so that you can see the utter, solemn sincerity of my words" kind of "sure"), that there is no freaking way in hell that the Federal Reserve was given the duty of, ummm, what was that word again? "Cooperating!" That's it! That's the word! Cooperating! Anyway, there is no freaking way in hell that they are given the mandate to "cooperate" with the government to debase the money! Are we insane? Are we so gol-dangity, ding dongity, damn damn damnity in-freaking-sane or something? This is madness! Maaaaaadnnneeeeesssssss! But even the Fed acknowledges that they can't do this. In a Fed paper, staffers write "As posed, though, the strategy has a major drawback: it violates the Federal Reserve Act. The Fed isn't authorized to purchase goods and services, apart from those needed for the operation of the Federal Reserve System." So I was right! They can't do that! But we underestimate the slimy nature of the Fed, as Ben "Bozo" Bernanke himself says, "The strategy can be implemented, however, by coordination with fiscal policy-makers. The Federal government, for example, could purchase goods and services and finance the purchase with new debt, which the Fed in turn would buy - in technical terminology, the Fed would 'monetize' - the resulting debt. By coordinating with fiscal policy, the Fed could even implement what is essentially the classic textbook policy of dropping freshly printed money from a helicopter." Of course you do not have to listen to me, and I would have no respect for you if you did. Rather, let's turn to Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. who is president of the Mises Institute and editor of LewRockwell.com, who has written a terrific essay entitled "Our Money Madness." He notes that "The real blame for the Great Depression lies with precisely the policy that Bernanke favors, that is, a steady and relentless increase in the money supply." See? And you thought I was crazy! And all of this increasing of the money supply comes through people borrowing money and going into more debt. So, thanks to the horrible Federal Reserve, we wind up with more money, which will result, because it must, in a steady and relentless decrease in the buying power of the money so created, which will show up as an increase in prices. And the credit becomes more money when people borrow money, and thus people are farther in debt! The worst of both worlds! Now you are getting a hint, a twinkling, a glimmer, even perhaps a subtle clue as to why, like the actor in the movie "Network", "I am mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" To illustrate how when I am in a bad mood I get real insulting, I will say that this abject stupidity on the part of Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, the entire Federal Reserve and everyone who has ever worked there, the majority of the lowlife mouth-breathers who infest the economics departments of colleges and universities all over this God-forsaken country, and the despicable slugs that leave their trails of slime all over the Congress are taking us down the same path, and I mean the EXACT same path, that resulted in the Great Depression. Only worse. A thousand times worse. A zillion times worse. And speaking of Bernanke, Aubie Baltin, PhD, says "The BIG danger is that Mr. Bernanke is a product of Princeton, part of an Ivy League clique of economists that have basically been controlling the world's economic theory at least since the 30's. That means that he is a disciple of Keynes and believes in the socialist philosophy, that recessions and depressions are caused by a sudden drop in aggregate Demand that must be made for up by more government spending. Bigger government, more government and more government intrusion and involvement in business has been the mantra in Washington since the 30's." I jump to my feet and shout "Bravo! Bravo! Exactly right, dude!" And since we are speaking of Mr. Bernanke, the clever John S. thinks that "Boogerhead" is a good nickname for Ben Bernanke, and I agree. And we both agree that "Boogerhead" is funny as hell and sublimely sophomoric, and the drunker we got, the funnier it got, too! It's a classic now! But this is not about how another "intervention" to try and straighten out the poor Mogambo has gone horribly awry, but how the Congress has just confirmed the nomination of Ben, and again I use another John-supplied nickname, "Bamboozles", to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve. The crowd was stunned to see the way I rose to my feet, stood on the bar, and thundered so loudly that even the police dog waiting for me outside, snarling in his impatience, finally shut the hell up. Slurring my words and waving a bottle of Jack Daniels for effect, I said "It seems a lot of people do NOT know it, but let me let you in on a little secret; The Federal Reserve is NOT a part of the government, but is," and here is where my voice rose to a fever pitch. "instead, the Top Dog Boss (TDB) of a lot of greedy and grubby privately-owned banks!" But this is not about how I laughed a big booming Mogambo drunken laugh (BBMDL), fell off the bar and spent the rest of the night throwing up into the toilet, or how the government and banks are slimy monsters out to get me, or that even police dogs salivate in anticipation of sinking their teeth into the tender portions of the big Mogambo butt (TPOTBMB), but that Mr. Bernanke is NOT bamboozling us! He's merely just exercising his First Amendment Rights and running his stupid mouth and showing his ignorance. He is merely trying to get a great job with a lot of perks and power, and so NOW when he goes to the Bodacious Burger Barn and tries to get, let's say, a lousy hamburger and fries, the cashier, who may be named Shirley who thinks she is so hot, won't point at him and make a joke in Spanish with the stupid cook, and he puts something disgusting in his food, and she laughs, and he laughs, and they look at him and laugh some more, and they are having a great old time. But now, being the chairman of the Federal Reserve and all, he can now jump up and shout "That's the last time you pull that crap on me, Shirley! And the reason those days are over is that when you are chairman of the Federal Reserve, like me, then you get Secret Service guys to keep an eye on you filthy creeps!" So Ben "No nickname this
time" Bernanke is being right up front, and entirely honest
about it. The people who are bamboozling us are Congress. Those
elected weenies sat right there during the Bernanke confirmation
hearings, listening to what he said, reading what he has said,
getting advice from all kinds of people, and they didn't bat
an eye when he said that he is going to destroy our money and
our economy. And now he is confirmed! Eric Fry, of the Rude Awakening column at the DailyReckoning.com, was also watching the confirmation hearing, and quotes Ben "Big dummy" Bernanke as saying that he intends "to be flexible and to learn from experience." Hahaha! As a proponent of the modern idiocy of neo-Keynesian/New Age Economics, he actually believes his silly little mathematical equations are economics, so the only thing he will learn from experience that he is a fool and he has wasted his life memorizing that crap. - Gold is nearing the $500 per ounce mark, and it will go higher from here, too, as I gather from the Fin24.co.za site where we read "Global gold production is set to decline dramatically over the next four years and this is set to generate a scramble for gold ounces, DRDGold chief executive officer Mark Wellesley-Wood said in the company's latest investor newsletter." So gold demand is higher than supply, creating a deficit, which is making prices go up. And don't think that there will be many new gold mines started to take advantage of this rising demand. Mr. Wellesley-Wood continues, "Expenditure on exploration peaked in gold mining in 1997, and has been pretty flat since then. There are 29 new gold mines in the pipeline right now and even if all these are developed, it would require a further seven projects every year to make up the deficit." Mr. Wellesley-Wood goes on to say "The reality is that not all these 29 mines will get the go-ahead as cost inflation, especially capital cost inflation for resources projects, has increased by a great deal more than the gold price. So where are the ounces going to come from?" Good damned question! And it is an especially good question because every jackass from the Fed, to the government, to "economists" on Wall Street are all in full agreement that there is NO inflation, regardless of prices rising alarmingly. Hahaha! Somebody is lying their heads off here, and of the two camps, I note for the record that Mr. Wellesley-Wood has never lied to me before, and I am pretty sure that he is not going to start now. But you don't want to hear about how your fascist government is lying to you, or that the despicable Federal Reserve is lying to you, or that corporate Wall Street hucksters are lying to you, because I know that you have stories of your own about that that would curl my hair if I heard them, and believe me I do NOT want to hear them because I just got my hair uncurled from the LAST time I heard some of those stories. But this rise in the cost to mine gold is a theme you hear all over the place, as it takes a lot of expensive energy and expensive labor, and expensive permitting, and expensive fees, and expensive equipment, and expensive taxes to mine gold nowadays, all of which have to be passed along in the price of the gold they mine, which means gold prices will have to go up just to cover the higher costs! For example he notes that "Newmont's cost per troy ounce of gold produced increased by 22% to an average of US$232/oz, while South African costs per oz doubled to an average of $395/oz. From 2002 to 2004, the gold mining industry was also hit by sharp increases in explosives, steel, fuel and water as well as other costs." He then gives us an additional boost to the idea of big price increases in gold. "The dehedging trend is set to continue," he says. And why are people dehedging gold? He replies "Who would want to be short gold in four years in this climate?" Hahaha! Exactly! They'd be financially wiped out if they were! Finally, he concludes with one last reason to buy gold, as if we needed any more. "Merger and acquisition activity and industry consolidation will continue apace - if you can't find it, buy it." Fortunately, we unwashed, mouth-breathing troglodyte investors out here can buy both gold bullion, helping to drive up the price by increasing the demand for gold, and we can also buy the shares of the gold miners, too, thus benefiting from the rise in the price of the shares as the price of gold goes up, due to the increased demand of us buying the stuff all the time! It sounds like it should be illegal, but it's not! Peter Spina of the Global Watch
Gold Forecaster also has an idea why gold is rising so fast in price, and it has to do
with Exchange Traded Funds. "E.T.F. share demand contributed
to 56% rise in investment demand for gold
in the third quarter of 2005, whilst total gold
demand increased 7% in tonnes and 18% in $ terms. Against this,
mine supply was up 3% year-on-year with the two big elements
increasing supply coming from more scrap availability and a drop
in de-hedging [Producers lowering their buying back of hedged
gold, so allowing production through to
the spot market]." - As my stupid neighbors stated in their umpteenth official complaint, I am always yelling that people should be buying oil, and that I think that anytime there is a pullback in the price of oil, then you should jump on it and buy buy buy like you have lost your mind. A police report and the testimony of neighbors reveal that it was at precisely 3:26 a.m. that I came unglued and started yelling that the price of oil will continue to increase for the rest of our lives. Jim Puplava of FinancialSense.com hears me running my fat mouth and sees my neighbors hurling lawn furniture at my house to make me shut the hell up, and with a sneering tone to his voice that implies "You ain't seen nuthin' yet!" said, "Remember, we've got new regulations that are going to drive the price of diesel up to $5 a gallon." Well, don't tell anyone, but I had no idea that we had any new regulations that are going to drive diesel fuel up to $5 per gallon! This is news to me! But, perhaps, like in most things, the husband is the last to know. But if there are, and they do, then there is yet ANOTHER damned thing that is going to drive up the cost of everything! I say this because everything you buy in the store was taken there by a truck with a diesel engine, which uses diesel fuel, and most of these trucks are driven by very rude people driving real slow and who won't pull over to let me get by them, no matter how much I honk my horn or make rude hand gestures to clearly indicate that I am both grumpy and in a hurry, and that they ought to pull that ugly truck over and let me by. But Mr. Puplava is not here to talk how truck drivers are a rude bunch of bastards who are all out to get me, but about inflation, and about how the boneheads in Congress are all up in arms about the "excessive profits" of the oil companies. He says "But no one ever points out that the biggest profiteer from oil is government itself. In the form of taxes. The government makes more than twice as much in energy taxes as the energy industry makes on exploring, finding, and producing energy itself. It's absolutely amazing because for every dollar of profit the industry makes, the government makes $2.30." Hahahaha! Go get 'em, Jim! I can see by that look in his eye he doesn't like me acting so familiar, and so I quickly say "I mean, go get 'em, Mr. Puplava!" I can see him clenching his fists in rage, but he merely goes on to quote Evelyn Garris, who is supposed to know what in the hell she is talking about, who said "Throughout this Winter, cold fronts are going to collide with abnormally warm, wet ocean air, and the East Coast will be buried in snow. Additionally, the wind chill factors of these storms are going to lower the temperature and raise heating bills. So, the smart money is long natural gas, the smart money is long heating oil, and regular oil, and the dumb money is short." So this is another famous Mogambo investment tip to make a lot of money (FMITTMALOM); go long oil stocks and all that energy-related stuff, because there is going to be some big money made. And when you add in the way the dollar is going to fall because the jerks in the Treasury Department are pressuring China to devalue the dollar, then you are going to make some serious money when oil shoots back up one of these days really, really soon. - Some famous guy said something like "You have a choice to either trust government, or to trust gold. And with all due respect to these lying pieces of dog crap who would sell your soul to the devil and strangle you with their bare hands to get re-elected, I recommend that you choose gold, because if you don't, then it shows you are not only a real stupid person who cannot seem to learn from history, but you are so damned stupid that you can't even stop slobbering all over yourself in your stupefied imbecility long enough to even dimly comprehend the concept at all, even when it is being explained to you using very small words, and that is why you will end up being poor and desperate, and your children and your grandchildren will hate you, and try and steal your stuff when they come over, and who are always whining and saying "We are poor because you trusted a fiat currency!" and I will laugh, "Hahahaha!" and say "Exactly, you stupid bastards! That's the lesson! When you let the banks create all that fiat money and credit, and all that debt, it destroys the currency and the economy! And then you suffer like hell! And for a long, long time, too!" With the scornful laughter of The Mogambo (SLOTM) ringing in their ears, I will scream in their faces, "That's the lesson! Get it? So congratulations, you dumb bastards! You have now learned something the Hard Way (HW), which is, from experience, a Bad Way (BW). And the last time this kind of BW mental deficiency overtook us, we had the Great Depression, which was caused by conditions a LOT more benign that this load of toxic, over-indebted, cancerous, consumption-addicted, huge-government economic crapola that we call "The American Economy." What can be done? Nothing. Nothing can be done, if there is anything to be learned from 5,000 years of history. So I don't know. I'm not sure Mr. Lansing knows either, and that is why he goes on to write, "To help bring about a smooth, orderly adjustment of the imbalance, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker has called for the United States to undertake a combination of policy measures to 'forcibly increase its rate of internal saving, thereby reducing its import demand.' " Paul Volcker, previous chairman of the Federal Reserve who had to choke off inflation in the late 70's and became a legend in the process, says "Policy options to increase internal saving include: (1) a decision by lawmakers to restore fiscal discipline in the government sector, (2) tax reforms that encourage saving by shifting the tax base towards consumption, and (3) the use of monetary policy to lean against asset price bubbles, since these stimulate consumption at the expense of saving." Hahahaha! This makes me laugh my big, fat patootie off! Like ANY of this is going to happen! Hahahaha! Hey, Volcker! Do a little reading, dude! And, if I may be so bold, I suggest the book "Empire of Debt" by Bill Bonner and Addison Wiggin. And when you read that book, try to find another episode when a government did ANY of these things, even as they lay dying on their backs, feet wiggling comically in the air, consumed by inflation and an angry populace! Hahahaha! And he thinks that now, for the first time since man stood up on his back legs and grunted "Get the government to gimme money and stuff!" we are going to be blessed with lawmakers who WILL? Hahahaha! - Kurt Richebacher has heard that companies are sitting on a huge hoard of money, and remarks "And you know why profits are up in the United States? It has nothing to do with healthy, growing businesses. Just the opposite. These businesses have stopped investing in new plant and equipment. So they have much less capital equipment to depreciate. As depreciation collapses, profitability goes up - especially when they're making money from financing activities. But this can't last." - And less I be remiss in extolling the virtues of silver, let me say, for the record, that you should be up to your ears in silver by this time, and if you HAVE been up to your ears in it, then you are also up to your knees in unrealized capital gains, as silver has been on a tear lately! Wow! - Paul van Eeden at PaulVanEeden.com writes that things are getting strange in the world of gold. "We are witnessing a change in central bank behavior. Last year Argentina bought 42 tonnes of gold and now Russia wants to increase the gold in its reserves from 5% to 10%. The Moscow Times quoted President Vladimir Putin this week as saying he supported the Central Bank in paying greater attention to gold in its foreign reserves." Perhaps this has something to do with the very weird stuff that is happening to the gold lease rates, as they are upside down! Short-term rates are higher than the long-term rates! You pay more to lease gold for one month than to lease it for a year! Weird! - Getting back to the thing that causes me to have nightmares, inflation, Kurt Richebacher writes "U.S. inflation rates of consumer and producer prices are now at the top in the world, even despite the Fed's gross understatement. As of September 2005, the PPI was up 6.7% year over year. A year earlier, in August 2004, the 12-month rise was 3.3%. As to the CPI, it showed a rise of 4.7% year over year in September, as against 2.5% a year earlier. Import prices are up 9.9%. "Annualizing the price increases over the last three months, the numbers become outright frightening. For the PPI, in September, it was 14.8%, for the CPI, 9.4% and for import prices, 20.5%." - Much has been written about how the Fed suddenly decided that they would no longer publish the money supply number known as M3. Bill Buckler, of the Privateer newsletter, writes "The US current account deficit is $US 730 Billion or 6.3% of GDP. That has to be funded on top of the US Treasury's budget deficits. Stop the flow of foreign funds and the US economy contracts by 6.3%. If these external funds don't arrive as loans, the only other 'option' in lieu of a US recession is for the Fed to 'create' these funds. If they do that, the US M3 will explode. That is why the Fed wants to hide it." - To show you the absolute intellectual impoverishment of the people who are teaching our children and/or writing our newspapers, let's turn to an article sent to me by alert reader JC, entitled "Precious Metal's Elusive Value", and written by Andrew Cassel, who is a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He quotes Jeremy Siegel, who is a professor at Wharton. Mr. Cassel quotes this, ummm,. "professor", who is so smug in his arrogance that he dismisses gold, "If you bought $100 worth of gold in 1802, Siegel says, your inflation-adjusted return would be about 30 percent. That is, you'd have a mere $130 in purchasing power after more than 200 years." This is exactly the damned point of the stuff, you preening halfwit! Gold preserves purchasing power! Hahaha! What a buffoon! What the lackluster professor Siegel did NOT mention is that if you had saved a $100 in fiat cash, even as late as 1913, then your loss in buying power would have been over 96%! Hahaha! So what do YOU want in your future? Depreciated and stupid fiat money, where you end up broke and bitter? Or gold, where you end up where you started in terms of buying power, or (as now) ahead of the game and making big, big money on gold's rising price? Hahaha! To show you that journalists are no smarter than college professors, Mr. Cassel, referring to the fact that gold is not usually an investment, comes to the exact wrong conclusion and ends his column with the phrase, "Takes a bit of the glitter off." No it doesn't, you ignorant little twerp! It makes gold shine more brightly than ever! And keeping with this disrespectful contempt of the idiocy of college economics professors, I cannot pass up a chance to heap some disrespect on Robert Pollin, who is a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts/Amherst, who said, referring to a proposed hike in the minimum wage and quoted in the St. Petersburg Times last Sunday, said "Businesses won't lose revenue, customers or profits." Hahaha! So hike wages all you want, dudes, as they are immaterial to everything! I bring this up mostly because I am a nasty and mean-spirited little creep, but also as an introduction to the campaign by Bill Bonner and Addison Wiggin to get the members of Congress and the Federal Reserve to read their terrific new book "Empire of Debt." To make it easy for them, a fresh copy was provided free to all 535 of them. I strongly urge you to read it, too, and to pester your Congresspersons to read it and heed it. But they won't, and the reason they won't is, paradoxically, given by Messrs Bonner and Wiggin themselves on page 255, "America's leading economic and political leaders are either rascals or numskulls." Ugh. ***Mogambo sez: Let me quote John Hussman of the Hussman Funds as he says "The current market condition is extremely overbought, and the constellation of internal divergences and interest-rate action has 'whipsaw' written all over it." In short, things will soon start falling apart, and if you are in equities or bonds and not in gold, you will soon be shown the tragic error of your ways, and your sleep will be disturbed as the words of The Mogambo ring in your ears "We are freaking doomed!" Nov 29, 2005 email: RichardSmithGroup@verizon.net
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