Me And Manager Dan
September 19, 2016
By:
The Mogambo Guru
I have been advised many, many times that I would suffer a lot less
seething hostility from co-workers, neighbors and family members
(including the one, not mentioning any names, that promised to love,
honor, ‘til death do us part with this ring I thee wed blah blah blah) if
I would stop being so critical of people, to the point of cruelly
belittling these, what is the word I am looking for? morons.
Like the evil Federal Reserve and self-delusional Keynesian econometric
lunatics, for example.
As for the vast majority of people who do not, or ever did, deserve such
ill-treatment, I am ashamed of myself, and I apologize.
My defense is that I, of course, suspect treachery everywhere.
So, naturally, when I don’t immediately find somebody actually sticking a
knife in my back, putting poison in my food or wanting to borrow my car, I
keep looking for subtle signs of such treachery until I eventually find
them, cleverly unveiling dark, nefarious plots, logically deducted from
clues in something said, or not said, or did, or not did, done, did.
You’re all against me. I know it. You know it. We all know it.
Then again, there are (and this is the important part!) those who deserve
abject humiliation and the full weight of the Scorn Of The Angry Mogambo
(SOTAM) jumping up and down on their preposterously inflated egos.
One of these people has written an article in the Economist magazine, in
the category of self-proclaimed “Big economic ideas” wherein one can, I
assume, theoretically find true economic wisdom, which in this case
entails an explanatory subhead “What economists can learn from the
discipline’s seminal papers.”
Wow! With that kind of a buildup, I am sure that you are, as am I, as are
we all, breathlessly tingly with excitement! Hopes are soon dashed,
however, when the doofus writes “Much as doctors understand diseases but
cannot predict when you will fall ill, economist’s fundamental mission is
not to forecast recessions but to explain how the world works.”
Hahahaha! I am laughing so hard that my stomach hurts! Ouch! Hahahaha! Ow!
Call the aforementioned doctor! Hahaha!
“How the world works”, but recessions are not part of how the world works?
Again, hahaha!
Suddenly and surprisingly composing myself, I ceremoniously stand, reach
out my arm in a theatrically grand gesture, and thunder “Friends! Romans!
Countrymen! Lend me your ears! The Whole Freaking Point Of Economics
(TWFPOE) is to forecast recessions with enough lead time so that you can
stop the silly monetary and/or fiscal crap you are doing, letting the
body, in keeping with this ridiculous medical analogy, heal itself!”
Now, I admit that I am not, actually, a doctor. Nor have I ever portrayed
one on TV, although I am sure that I would be great at it.
Maybe have my own TV series, titled “Handsome Doctor Hollywood.”
Yet, even with my appalling lack of medical education, training or even a
bare minimum of intelligence, my credentials are sufficient to EASILY tell
that you are going to get sick and DIE -- and soon! -- when you drink
nothing but whiskey, eat nothing except yummy doughnuts, get no exercise,
smoke, take recreational drugs with borrowed syringes and are continually
swapping bodily fluids with strangers, or, as Frank Sinatra put it,
strangers in the night, exchanging glances, wondering in the night, what
were the chances.
Since we are surprisingly comparing the mission of economists to doctors,
I cleverly change direction to maybe make a few quick bucks.
So I change my name to Hotshot Doctor Mogambo (HDM), and say “Hey!
This doctor thing could be fun! Let’s put on a white lab coat, bring the
patient in, and look at the lab results!”
Glancing at the reports, I instantly see that this is the part of the
medical profession that is really unpleasant: Telling the patient bad
news.
Ideally, as a new doctor, I want my patients to be young and beautiful
women, in perfect health despite wearing scandalously little clothing and
having a fawning, father-figure fixation, or be a healthy guy who is such
a looney-tunes hypochondriac that he will pay outrageous sums of cash for
whatever quack therapies I can dream up at the prestigious Mogambo
Institute Of High-Priced Therapies For Miscellaneous Complaints
(MIOHPTFMC) to cure his imagined ailments.
With my spiffy new professional medical demeanor applied to economics, I
try to hide from the patient that the sad results from the economics lab
tests are, to be brief, that everything that can be bad (pause for effect)
is bad. Bummer.
Manufacturing is down. Prices are up, but wages and jobs are down. Bond
yields are less than squat.
Entitlement (transfer) spending and expansions of eligibilities are up,
government spending is up, the evil Federal Reserve is still busily
monetizing government debt (cash and credit created out of thin air to buy
new government-issued debt) by more than (yes, I said “more than”) a
terrifying trillion dollars (yes, I said “trillion dollars”) a year, every
year, year after year, and its effect on the money supply means that price
inflation, though curiously and bizarrely subdued given the extremes of
Quantitative Easing, is, nonetheless, predictably up.
The worst of all is that debt levels, public and private, which are
already at insane levels, are even MORE than (yes, I said “more than”)
insane and everyone is also MORE than (yes, I said “more than”) tapped
out.
Worst of all, the “misery index,” which sounds vaguely medical in nature
and thus entirely apropos for this doctor farce, is numerically just the
unemployment rate (which is now just fictional data manipulated by the
government), plus inflation (which is ditto manipulated), is, woefully,
up.
I say “woefully up” because, as we phony medical professionals say, you
ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Trust me. I’m a doctor, or at least pretending to
be, so you can believe me completely.
Well, unemployment is way up if you count the people who are not working
but would like to be working, but can’t find a job because jobs are
disappearing or, perhaps as in my case, everyone hates me and rudely
throws me out of their offices after contacting my previous employers, so
take your stupid job and shove it, jerk.
And the unemployment rate is REALLY up if you count, although the
government doesn’t, the people who are not working and SHOULD be working
instead of voluntarily sitting around the house, alternately swilling and
gobbling the aforementioned whiskey, doughnuts and drugs, which was where
my illustrious new career as a doctor began, if you recall from a previous
paragraph.
I know what you are thinking. You are saying “Enough with this playing
doctor crap! Go back to being
The Magnificent Mogambo (TMM), whose timeless wisdom shines like a beacon
across a vast sea of ignorance and stupidity as concerns things economic
(like the evil Federal Reserve), so that we may hear what to do to save
ourselves (i.e. get rid of the Federal Reserve and stabilize the money
supply by letting interest rates find a balance between borrowers and
savers). Thus may we happily prosper from your transcendent tutelage, even
though what you say is always the same monotonous harangue about listening
to the lessons of history and the Austrian school of economics, which is
the only true theory of economics.
And to the dullards amongst us, expound at length as to the horrors
of what happens when supplies of fiat currencies yield to corrupt
government pressures to expand, and for all clear-thinking, handsome and
intelligent people to properly respond by buying gold and silver bullion
with hysterical abandon because they are so Completely Freaked Out (CFO).”
Well, even though I am now proudly a newly-minted quack doctor to both the
economy and rich Hollywood stars, I know from years of experience about
the staggering corruption in every government agency and the horrid
Federal Reserve, and that they all know that it is important, important,
important that nothing, nothing, nothing bad, bad, bad happen, happen,
happen to the housing market, the stock market or the bond market because
the entire freaking economic well-being of the whole freaking country and,
by extension, the world (which, as a pointless acronym, would be
EFEWBOTHWFCABETW, which is, upon reflection, too unwieldy, so just forget
I even brought it up) is so vitally, vitally, vitally dependent upon these
markets not only remaining at these preposterous, scandalous, sky-high
valuations, but continuously getting even more, even more, even more so,
so, so! Theoretically
forever!
And with the ability of the evil Federal Reserve to create literally
unlimited amounts of cash and credit, they can keep these markets going
up, by the aforementioned theoretically forever, by literally buying the
assets by simply creating more, more, more cash and credit with which to
continue flooding the economy, which increases the money supply (and the
accompanying debt load), which makes prices rise more, which makes the
Federal Reserve monetize more debt with which to flood the economy, which
increases the money supply (and the accompanying debt load), making prices
go up, everything going around and around, and up and up, until it
(pausing for breath) literally can’t continue because prices increase so
fast that it is impossible to create enough cash and credit to pay them.
This is how price inflation comes to destroy everything.
And with the unbelievable corruption in the gold and silver markets, which
are the only sound money and the last refuge of desperate people being
destroyed as their money is destroyed, their prices will continue to be
suppressed.
You get the picture. We’re Freaking Doomed (WFD).
But take heart! I asked Manager Dan at the grocery store “Are you buying
gold and silver, currently at prices that are laughably low, or are you
some kind of idiot who needs a good dose of Doctor Mogambo’s Stupidity
Cure (DMSC), which is me slapping the hell out of your face (whap whap
whap!) until you get some smarts about buying gold and silver when your
own government, and governments around the world, is allowing and abetting
such terrifying expansions of the money supply? Huh? What’s it going to
be, Dan? Huh? What? Huh?”
He said, and this is a direct quote, “Yes! Yes, I am buying physical gold
and silver! Gold and silver bullion! Yes sir! Lots of gold and silver
bullion! Anything you want, mister! Just don’t hurt me. And please just
take your groceries and quietly leave the store! Nobody wants any
trouble!”
No trouble! See how easy and pleasant this whole thing is?
No trouble! Gold and silver bullion in hand!
Whee! This investing thing is easy!