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>Let's do the math.
>
>A 4.4% growth in the economy at the same time that the
>government is running a 4.9% (as a percentage of GDP)
>budget deficit is NOT healthy by any stretch of the
>imagination. And believe me when I say that. My imagination
>is so huge (right off the bat, the audience shouts out "How
>huge, Mogambo?") that I can imagine women actually spitting
>on me, kicking me in the groin, and spraying Mace in my
>eyes, are really just flirting with me in the cute way that
>they do... (at least as is alleged in official court
>documents).
>
>I don't know who these people are that are being called
>"economists," but I say that anybody who thinks that the
>economy will grow "a healthy" 4.4% is a world-class idiot.
>As a world-class idiot myself, I am in a position to know.
>
>These "economists," I assume, are the same lackluster
>dimwits as the "they" in this follow-up sentence: "They
>also expect inflation excluding food and energy to rise
>half a percentage point, to 1.8%." This proves two things
>at once, showing a huge increase in productivity, because
>most of us can only prove one thing at once. One is that
>inflation, which is already higher than 1.8%, cannot "rise"
>to 1.8%, by mathematical imperative. And the other follows
>naturally, namely that American economists are obviously
>numerically illiterate.
>
>"Remember Inflation?" asks John Lipsky, chief economist for
>JP Morgan, on the op-ed page of the same edition of the
>WSJ. "The Fed is going to wait longer than investors
>currently anticipate before raising rates. But once
>inflation risks begin to rise, the Fed will act quickly to
>withdraw the existing stimulus." Hahaha! Every single
>indicator of inflation is rising, and HAS been rising, and
>yet the Fed is still holding interest rates to absurd lows!
>
>As I write, the Reuters CRB Index, an indicator that tracks
>17 different commodities, from live cattle to crude oil,
>has risen 11 percent this year. Gold is $407 an ounce, up
>17 percent over the past year. Copper is up 39 percent, oil
>31 percent, and natural gas prices are 51 percent higher
>than at the end of October. In addition, the dollar has
>dropped to record after record low against the euro and has
>fallen to its lowest in more than a decade versus the
>British pound. "The fall of the dollar," adds Bloomberg,
>"helps boosts the price of gold and other dollar-priced
>commodities on international markets and also makes
>imported goods more costly."
>
>So... what kind of jerk does this Lipsky character think I
>am that I would believe that the Fed would act with any
>haste, at ANY level of inflation, when they are already
>proving that they have absolutely no interest in inflation,
>OR its deleterious effects, whatsoever, and in fact, and
>this is the important point, they are doing everything they
>can to create MORE inflation?
>
>At that I abruptly stop laughing.
>
>"Central bankers became convinced that maintaining low and
>stable inflation produces the best possible outcomes," Mr.
>Lipsky writes. Huh? I mean, what planet am I on? Is this
>still early twenty-first century Earth or not? If so, then
>the damnable Fed is on record, Greenspan is on record,
>Bernanke is on record, and I assume that even the mailroom
>clerks at the Fed are on record as saying that they WANT
>higher inflation! They are screaming loud and clear that
>they do NOT want, as Mr. Lipsky says, "low and stable
>inflation!" That is the whole freaking point of their
>monetary insanity!
>
>And yet, here is this Lipsky fella telling me the exact
>opposite? The mind reels, and I stagger and collapse into a
>chair, clutching my chest and gasping for air! I sense the
>world fading to black, as black as my mood, and as I mouth
>the words "Goodbye, cruel world!" I suddenly remember, and
>am cheered, that I don't have any money under management at
>JP Morgan.
>
>While us bozos out here in the real world still live in our
>fantasy world, where rising prices are evidence of
>inflation, the Fed says "no". They figure that
>productivity, output per hour of labor, is rising,
>offsetting the rise in raw materials. "While the supply of
>some commodities may be temporarily scarce, raising their
>price," writes Lipsky, "the supply - and price - of workers
>is not. That enables companies to absorb the commodity
>price increases without passing price increases on to
>consumers."
>
>To which I say, hahahahaha! You crack me up! Hahahaha!
>
>I am already laughing like a hyena, when I spy, right there
>below Lipsky's effluence, on the same page, another piece
>of ridiculous fluff, this time by Joshua B. Bolten, who is
>the director the Office of Management and Budget, which is
>apparently an office of government wonks that employs
>mental defectives as another affirmative action-type thing.
>His asinine screed is entitled, "We Can Cut the Deficit in
>Half."
>
>First off, Mr. Bolten traces the "roots of today's
>deficits" to the economic slowdown as Bush took office,
>three freaking years ago. Next, he implies that deficits
>are not as important as Bush's policies, namely national
>security. Wow! Talk about your government-speak! Fiscal
>rectitude is not as important as policy!
>
>Mr. Bolten is clearly a government spin-meister. Of course,
>deficits don't matter as long as they pay for something
>nifty and wonderful. We are doofuses for sure, if we can't
>see that. Mr. Bolten goes on to explain how three-quarters
>of the deficits are directly related to the post 9/11
>"enhanced homeland security and the global war on terror"
>as if, somehow this justifies immense budget deficits. As
>if this bottomless pit of spending madness will somehow
>metamorphose into healthy economic growth... or something.
>
>Then Bolten, and notice that I have dropped the "Mr."
>because I am obviously working myself into one of my foul
>moods and I am this far away (let the record show that I am
>holding up my thumb and forefinger, and that they are
>almost touching each other) from calling him a lowlife
>insect, probably something that crawls around in sewers,
>then says that the budget deficit is "entirely manageable,
>if we continue the president's strong pro-growth economic
>policies and sound fiscal restraint."
>
>The audience spontaneously laughs at my exaggerated double-
>take, my head snapping around comically and my hair
>standing straight up into the air - fweep! - as I perfectly
>portray a man who cannot believe what he just heard.
>
>"Restraint"?!?
>
>This is the same guy who has run up the national debt by
>$1.3 trillion dollars in three short years! This is the
>same guy who is running a budget deficit of 4.9% of GDP!
>This is the same guy who has not vetoed a single spending
>bill in the entire three years of his administration! "Not
>one?" you ask in that darling and delightful way that melts
>my heart. "Not one lousy veto of any spending bill?" Nope!
>
>And this is, and you would laugh if you saw me because I am
>comically rubbing my bloodshot eyes in stunned disbelief at
>what I am hearing, what the author calls "fiscal
>restraint?"
>
>Huh? Did he say "fiscal restraint?" Did he really say
>"fiscal restraint?" And right around in here someplace is
>where court-appointed experts figure that I was overcome
>with emotion, and, compelled by forces that I could neither
>comprehend nor control, was propelled to action. I grab a
>fully loaded AK-47 that just, you know, happened to be
>leaning against the desk, and jump up on that selfsame desk
>and scream at the top of my lungs, "Did he say fiscal
>freaking RESTRAINT? I can't believe my ears! But I thought
>he said that the President of the United States is showing
>fiscal freaking restraint! RESTRAINT? You want restraint?
>I'll show you a little dang-blang restraint!" I proceed to
>throw that rifle into full-automatic mode and, holding it
>down low against my hip like John Wayne storming a machine-
>gun nest on some God-forsaken Pacific island in WWII,
>proceed to empty an entire banana clip of full-metal
>jacketed mayhem, shooting out all the lights in the place,
>plaster exploding off the walls and ceiling, framed
>pictures shattering in a hail of glass splinters, passersby
>and process servers ducking for cover, a cascade of smoking
>empty shell casings beating a tattoo of tinkling sounds as
>they hit the floor.
>
>Well, at last, the fusillade of gunfire is finished, and
>the silence that follows is punctuated only by the ringing
>in my ears and the sound of approaching sirens, and I sink
>to the floor, spent and exhausted, too weary to even reach
>for another full clip of ammo. But it isn't really needed,
>as I am sure that you get my point, which is to demonstrate
>"restraint."
>
>But the next day, Friday, the Wall Street Journal had an
>op-ed piece by Brian S. Weebury, entitled "Keeping the Bush
>Boom Alive." In it, he owns up to the horrific state of the
>economic world, and says, "Nonetheless, beneath the surface
>problems are brewing. Government spending is soaring,
>business regulation is on the rise, and protectionism is
>gathering some momentum. At the same time, excessively
>accommodative monetary policy threatens an increase in
>inflation." Later he reprises that with "Big government and
>easy money is the perfect recipe for inflation."
>
>And he has some suggestions on how to make this all work
>out, as if there is anything anyone can do to make it all
>work out, and I am charmed by his brave self-confidence,
>and the Mogambo smiles to himself, as if to say, "Ahh,
>little grasshopper! The sunny optimism of youth! To hear
>you is to make me remember my own youth, and I smile."
>
>
>Sincerely,
>
>The Mogambo Guru
>
>
>--- Mogambo Sez: We are getting to the end of the portfolio
>fraud season, where the accounts are totaled up, losers are
>sold and the winners accumulated, and blame and losses are
>shifted to somebody else, and things are done and mistakes
>are made, and all of the other slimy things that occur
>whenever huge amounts of money are involved, because if
>there are huge amounts of money involved, then the
>government is not far away, and that is the path to utter
>ruin, QED.
>
>But soon it will be the new year and a new game, and it
>will get worse and worse in every material respect, day
>after day, until some unforeseen event causes the whole
>thing to just, one day out of the blue, go "bang!" And
>that, and I am talking about at that exact moment, when you
>fully comprehend, in a flash of incandescent, total
>enlightenment, the real value of gold.
>
>And soon after that you will have another epiphany, in
>which you will comprehend the great value of cannons, and
>guns, and bows and arrows, and knives, and pitchforks, and
>machetes, and axes, and slingshots, and clubs, and sharp
>sticks with which to fend off the mobs of suddenly
>impoverished people who ALSO have suddenly comprehended the
>real value of gold, and they don't have any, and in fact
>they don't have anything anymore, except debts and
>creditors hounding them day and night, and then after a
>while you get tired of answering the phone and trying to
>explain to one collection agency after another that if I
>had any money then I would certainly be happy to send it to
>them, but as it turns out I don't have any money and so why
>don't they just stop calling, but they never do, and then I
>finally just stop answering the phone, and turn off the
>lights and cower in the corner behind the sofa and use some
>throw pillows to cover my ears to try and muffle the sound
>of the phone as it rings and rings and rings and rings...
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