Above That Rate, Calamity Awaits
February 21, 2014
By:
The Mogambo Guru
I remember, because
it is seared into my memory, every detail of the day when I watched, in
total disbelief and screaming outrage, as Janet Yellen testified in front
of Congress. She is, of course, the new head honcho at the evil Federal
Reserve, taking over after the spectacular failure of her predecessor, the
laughably benighted Ben Bernanke, and she said, frying precious neurons of
my already-depleted brain (“zzzt!”) the words “Inflation remains below our
longer-term objective,” which, as it turns out, she means 2 percent
inflation in prices!!
If you do not
understand the significance of the double exclamation points, then you are
NOT a Junior Mogambo Ranger (JMR), and thus you are ignorant of the
Austrian school of economics, and also thus you do not know that 2 percent
inflation is something terrible, as the historical cutoff for inflation
has always been 3 percent.
Above 3 percent
inflation rate, calamity awaits, which kind of rhymes, so you know it must
be true, in case the entire historical record of the world is not enough
to convince you that anybody deliberately pursuing the pernicious poison
of price inflation is either evil or a moron, and being driven by the
absolute desperation resulting from behaving like monetary idiots for the
last half-century is no excuse.
Of course, Janet
Yellen has long been a proponent of inflation-targeting, and that is one
of the reasons why I am so dismissive of her bizarre, mutant intelligence,
which seems to be centered around spewing that whole Keynesian “stimulus
spending” load of crapola, even though Keynes has been discredited so many
times, for so long, that it seems impossible that anyone would still be a
Keynesian economist.
So, why is she like
that? Being that the Winter Olympics are being held right now, perhaps
that is why I thought of “stimulus spewing” as an Olympic sport, which
brings up the question “How is stimulus spewing scored, and what are the
rules of stimulus spewing?”
The question seems stupid, and it is, but, then
again, why not? Merely have
Olympic stimulus spewing scored by how much price inflation per 4-year
Olympic cycle that the monetary inflation causes!
Alas, Janet Yellin’s apparent quest for an Olympic
gold medal STILL doesn’t explain why she is so deliberately, so
shamelessly, so horrifically evil that she is willing to punish poor
people and the middle class with higher and higher prices, year after year
after year! Evil, I tells ya!
Laughably, and
perhaps ironically (although I am not sure what “ironically” means
anymore, if I ever did), she actually said this “I want inflation because
I hate you and your nasty children” venom almost literally at the same
time as she was proudly reiterating the “missions” of the Federal Reserve,
the first of which is, of course, “price stability,” and is obviously
defined as “when inflation in prices is zero.”
Now, you may not
know it, but you are talking to a guy who happens to know for a fact -- a
fact! -- that stability means “zero change,” and I know it for a fact -- a
fact! In fact, the same fact!-- because of a very embarrassing Quarterly
Employee Review one time where my supervisor wrote that while my
attendance and attitude had “Deteriorated markedly,” she also noted that
“Job performance, such as it is, is stable,” which meant, as I
subsequently learned in the course of the evaluation, was “No change.
You’re still the worst employee I have.”
Leaving aside, for
the moment, the crippling damage done to my fragile ego by such a hasty
judgment by some boss whom I rarely even saw because I was usually goofing
off somewhere else every time she came looking for me, probably to whine
about some deadline I missed, or some stupid report I forgot about
writing, or about some lowlife, deranged, lying piece of crap client
complaining about something I did, or did not, do, but note that -- ergo!
-- and for the record, “stability = zero change”!
Ms. Yellen, seeking
2 percent inflation, is saying that she does not understand this concept,
but compensates by hating your guts and your entire family. And if you
watched any of her testimony, you could tell by the nervous way she acted
that, if she could, she would gladly come over to your house and kill you
and your whole family, including puppies and kittens and baby bunnies, and
steal your house and assets outright, instead of having to go through the
hassle of defending a disastrous monetary policy, although the Federal
Reserve has been such a disastrous failure for the last half-century that
(pausing for breath) We’re Freaking Doomed (WFD) no matter WHAT she does.
Instead, she is
going to make sure that all your assets (including all your cash, your
retirement plan, your house and all your investments), which are
denominated in dollars, LOSE at least 2 percent of their buying power
Every Freaking Year (EFY).
Inflation in prices
is already so high that the minimum wage is being increased again out of
“necessity,”, which will make the problem worse: Paying higher wages means
the employers are going to raise prices to restore their profit margins,
or replace workers with technology and robots, or both.
So, at the end of
the day, a few employees get more money, a few employees lose their jobs,
but everybody pays higher prices.
And it is not only
insane monetary inflation that is causing price inflation, but the old
supply/demand dynamic is being upset mightily, too!
Michael Snyder at theecohomiccollapseblog.com “Did
you know that the U.S. state that produces the most vegetables is going
through the worst drought it has ever experienced, and that the size of
the total U.S. cattle herd is now the smallest that it has been since
1951?” Ever! Worst ever!
Going back to the late 19th century!
And there is a lot
of evidence, such as in tree rings, that California has been
extraordinarily wet for most of the 20th century, and that, statistically
at least, it is possible that the California drought could continue for
another 200 years! What is THAT going to do to prices? Hahaha! I’m
surprised you asked!
Already, CBSNews.com, reports that “While the
government says prices are up 6.4 percent since 2011,” which is where I
insert that the government is a lying, cheating, manipulating piece of
low-IQ crap and we can’t believe anything they say.
Having said that and feeling better for it, we continue where we
left off, with “chicken is up 18.4 percent, ground beef is up 16.8 percent
and bacon has skyrocketed up 22.8 percent,” which jibes pretty well with
shadowstat.com calculating that inflation in prices is, and has been,
running about 8 or 9 percent.
As reported by
breitbart.com, higher costs are not being offset with increases in income,
as “median income has only risen 1% each year, while the cost of college
tuition has climbed 6% to 8% every year for at least forty years.”
Forty years!
And remember Olympic stimulus spewing, the new
sport so memorably introduced above? Well, another way to score stimulus
spewing is the results of price inflation (particularly vis a vis
stagnating incomes) causing the number of adults under the age of 35 that
live at home, with his or her parents, instead of being out living on
their own, throwing wild parties lasting the whole weekend until I finally
puke and crash on their sofa.
It’s now 29 percent,
so they say. Almost one in three!
In other depressing
news, rising prices reduces disposable income, and part of the effect is
that it now takes as long for car dealers to sell a new car as it took in
2009, which was the year after 2008, which is when bubbly things went so
badly from decades of Federal Reserve mismanagement that the Federal
Reserve completely lost its mind and began quantitative easing on the
scale of trillions of dollars per year, on the insane Keynesian theory
that two wrongs (creating the original debt and the increase in the money
supply to keep it afloat) make a right.
And homebuilding
permits and applications have collapsed.
And total debt
(government and private) are all at new record highs.
And the idiocy of
Obamacare continues destroying a sixth of GDP.
In summary, if ever there was a Sign From The
Mogambo (SFTM) to buy gold, silver and oil, the red-lining of my Mogambo
Fear And Paranoid Meter (MFAPM) could very well be it.
If everything collapses tomorrow, or even this year, then we’ll
know for sure. Otherwise it’s a reliable leading indicator.
So, obviously, with
iron-clad, indisputable proof like this, you should be buying, gold,
silver and oil stocks in some desperate, clutching-at-straws, frightened,
feral frenzy, a path so clearly indicated by the reference to the
infallible MFAPM in the very preceding paragraph.
And with that kind
of proximity to the best advice you ever got, you can hardly say that you
forgot, which kind of rhymes too, again proving it’s all so, so true!
Whee! And again I say “Whee!” And yet thrice do I say “Whee!” as in “Whee! This investing stuff is easy!”