In short, we are screwed
Richard Daughty
Archives
The
Daily Reckoning
...the angriest guy in economics
The Mogambo
Guru
November 11, 2004
- Last week was just another week, which consists mainly of the
usual yelling and screaming, and people threatening to sue me,
or kill me, or both, and then one thing leads to another, and
shots are fired, oops, I mean "alleged" shots were
fired, it all ends up pretty ugly. But that is just the local
news. On the national scene, the Fed created another $2.8 billion
in Fed Credit, bought up (monetized) another $1.9 billion in
government debt, and thus committed yet another huge fraud on
the American people (and when the revolution comes, somebody
is going to answer to the Mogambo for that!) The Treasury printed
up $1.8 billion in actual currency, and foreigner central banks
gobbled up another $1.7 billion in US debt and stashed it at
the Fed.
Thus it goes on and on, and there seems to me that there is some
quote, from somebody famous, about how the same economic sins
are committed time after time after time, as each little dirtbag
country elects the same kind of dirtbag politicians, who get
their countries into one stupid dirtbag bankrupting mess after
another, with the same aftermath, which is, if you go to the
window and look out, what we are seeing right now.
Perhaps I am thinking about Jim Puplava, of FinancialSense.com,
who writes "History often repeats itself. Famine and depression
have followed booms and bull markets. What I'm saying here is
nothing new to anyone who has ever picked up a history book and
studied civilization. Mankind hasn't changed much in thousands
of years of recorded history. From events recorded in the bible
and hieroglyphics on the walls of the pyramids to the writings
of the ancients, human drive, ambition, emotion, fear, greed,
evil, avarice, and benevolence are evident for all to see. In
the words of wise King Solomon, 'What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again, there is nothing new under
the sun.' "
"As the chart of the markets over the last 100 years illustrates,
bull markets are constantly trading places. They rotate over
time from intangible assets (paper) to tangible assets (things).
Behind these alternating bull markets has been the inflationary
policies of central banks. Periods of loose money and credit
give birth to paper asset booms during their initial stages only
to be followed by their inflationary consequences when money
rotates out of paper and into things to protect purchasing power.
It should be clear to investors at this point that what worked
during one twenty-year period did not work in the next twenty-year
cycle."
Well, taking a look at these graphs, he notes that "The
graphs of energy stocks, the CRB index, and gold and silver attest
to this fact. 'The Next Big Thing' is taking shape. It is reflected
not only in the charts of the commodity indexes, but also in
the charts of individual resource stocks."
I think his point is that equities are crap, bonds are crap,
and that the only things that will NOT be crap for the next cycle
are commodities. And there is no more portable commodity than
gold and silver. Like I say, I THINK that this what he is trying
to say, but when I call him up to ask him, all he wants to talk
about is when I am going to pay back the money I owe him and
when am I going to bring his barbeque grill back and blah blah
blah until I just hang up.
As proof of what he and I are saying, the headlines are blaring
out "Gold at 16-year high!" Meanwhile, the clueless
stock touts are all over the TV wanting you to buy more common
stocks, especially the ones that they recommend. And the part
that makes me shake my head in total disbelief is that none of
them are recommending the one investment that is at a 16-year
high! Listening to them and their overpriced advice, you already
missed the entire rise in gold to the current 16-year high! And
not only that, but the recommendations that they DID make have
stunk like my big old Mogambo stinky feet (BOMSF)! And now that
they have completely missed that train to glory, and gotten you
a coach-class ticket on the train that is stuck at the station,
they think that you are so stupid that you will trust their advice
again? Hahaha!
- Sean Corrigan is one of the brighter lights in the economics
firmament, and whose business card says Investment Strategist
at Sage Capital Zuerich AG, which is how the Swiss apparently
spell Zurich. And since we are talking about it, I don't know
how the Swiss got such a great reputation, since they can't even
correctly spell the name of their own damn country, for crying
out loud. But he has an essay posted at Mises.com entitled "Another
Sibling in The Flation Family." In it, he talks about how
John Maynard Keynes came up with a way to deliberately debauch
the currency so that the money illusion would work its magic
in disguising governmental and Federal Reserve incompetence.
Well, he did not say that exactly, as I am putting words in his
mouth that more accurately reflect the opinions of me, The Mogambo.
But please notice that I am, out of respect, not putting my real
words and feelings into his mouth, because if I had, he would
be standing on the roof of his apartment building, laying down
a withering suppressive fire from a machine gun, and screaming
at the top of his lungs, "The corrupt little bastards that
are mismanaging the Federal Reserve system, the monetary policy
of the United States and, by extension, the whole freaking world,
are out to kill all of us with their dizzyingly incompetent malfeasance!"
And what this incompetent malfeasance consists of, and you may
want to write this down, is creating more money and credit, to
let more people borrow and go deeper into debt, which is monetary
inflation, which leads to price inflation, which leads to me
screaming at the damn teenage dork behind the checkout counter
"What? You want HOW much money? Do I look so stupid that
you don't think I know what the price of this was last week,
or last month, or last year, or anytime in my whole freaking
life? Do you, punk?" And then I have to explain this whole
inflation thing to the manager, and then explain it to the police,
and then explain it to my lawyer, and then explain it to the
judge, and it's all a big damn hassle. Which leads me to conclude
that there is more to the downside of inflation than mere rising
prices, as you might well imagine!
About Keynes he says "Thus, though his own prose can be
turgid and his chains of false reasoning tortuous, the message
was eventually made clear enough to all: monetary inflation can
price people back into work so long as they are under the illusion
that they are not suffering a real cut in their wages. With this
shallow piece of knavery did Keynes consolidate his overblown
reputation and, at the same time, prise open wider the Pandora's
Box of Boom and Bust, of the rise of the Money Trust, of the
unceasing encroachment of Big Government into our lives, and
of the eventual extinguishing our freedoms, amid the decay of
our morals and the erosion of our prosperity."
In short, just what I have been saying the whole time. Only he
does it with class, wit, erudition, intelligence, style and grace,
while I take the easy, fun way out by screaming obscenities at
high volume.
Then he goes into how the horrors of price inflation obediently
follow in the footsteps of monetary inflation, and concludes
that stagflation -- a stagnant economy with inflation -- is "a
fairly horrid experience," which is, according to things
that I have read about stagflation, somewhat of an understatement.
In short, we are screwed. And so today it is with some hilarity
that I read Alan Murray's "Political Capital" column
in Tuesday's Wall Tuesday's Street Journal, entitled "President's
Agenda Will Require Flexing Of Political Muscle." He is
writing about how during his first term Bush cut taxes and spent
like crazy, and rang up a monstrous new entitlement (prescription
drug benefit for seniors). Now Mr. Murray reports that Mr. Bush
"rejects the free-lunch approach." The Mogambo says,
"Hahahaha That'll be the day!" Then, Bush says, "There
are going to be costs." And again the Mogambo says, "Hahahaha
That'll be the day!"
And what are these "costs" that Bush says are "going"
to "be"? Well, to reform Social Security will entail,
and you are going to love this because it is EXACTLY what I have
been saying all this time, "Real Social Security overhauls
have to include gradual increases in the retirement age and a
reduction in cost-of-living adjustments." This is the very
definition of inflation! You are going to get less money in retirement
because your retirement has been shortened! And on top of that,
when you actually DO get to retire, you are going to have less
buying power, because prices will go up more than the increase
in your Social Security check. Hahaha! Sucker! And not only this
year, but every year until you die, and then you hopefully won't
care anymore.
And it is funny that he would bring up Keynes, because I admit
that I had never read much of Keynes' book "The General
Theory of Employment, Interest and Money," although I have
read about it, and heard a lot of critiques of it, and have been
dismissive of it all my life. But over the weekend I was in a
bookstore, and was poking around the store trying to find the
Adult Section, and it turns out that they don't even HAVE an
Adult Section, and I am raising hell with the management about
this blatant censorship and what a bunch of prudes they are.
To prove my point, I reach out and grab a copy of this very book
of Keynes that happened to be sitting there, and I am screeching
"I can't get this month's copy of "Hot Naked Babes",
while at the same time you have THIS piece of obscene garbage
sitting out in the open where innocent children can see it? Where,
oh where, is your consistency, sir?"
And then the manager asks, "Well, sir, have you ever read
that book?" and I had to admit that I had not, but sort
of, some of it, a long time ago, but I have heard about it, and
probably should have read it, but the little bit that I have
read told me that it was a real drag. But, always ready for a
lark, I buy it.
Well, I bring the book home, and I immediately see why Sean Corrigan
says that Keynes' "prose can be turgid and his chains of
false reasoning tortuous." I could not read more than a
few pages at a time, because all I can think about as I am reading
this is "This stupidity was accepted at face value by American
economists? My God! How stupid WERE we? And ARE we?" I will
not bore you with the details, but every page is filled with
merely ripping off standard, classical, Austrian economics, reiterating
what others have already said, and then using that as a springboard,
makes a mockery of himself. For example, I offer this as a good
example of his level of comprehension of economics: he writes
"But, given that the rate of interest is never negative"
(page 168), which is, of course, stupid, because the REAL rate
of interest is the nominal rate of interest LESS the inflation
rate. And since nominal interest rates are less than the inflation
rate today, which I indicate by jumping up and down and screaming,
"Right freaking now! Look around you!" this is proof
positive that interest rates ARE negative, regardless of what
this moron thinks! And just because he chooses to look only at
nominal interest rates does not mean that you can make some dumb-ass
theory about it!
And it gets worse. As anyone who knows me can readily attest,
my big worry in life is inflation, and if you had taken the time
to read the horrors of inflation through the ages, YOU would
ALSO be a big worrier about inflation. So I go to the
index of this Keynes book to see what HE has to say about inflation.
Guess what? He is not very interested at all. There are only
six, count 'em six, references to inflation, and even when you
go there, there is nothing much there at all. To Keynes, inflation
was of zero importance.
What he IS interested in is his own precious theory of Liquidity
Preference, and there is lots and lots and lots of space devoted
to Liquidity Preference, according to the Index. And what is
Liquidity Preference? Pretty much just the old Austrian School
idea of time preference (spend now, or spend in the future?).
But Keynes gets it all dressed up in new rags, and he trots it
out with the new title, Marginal Propensity to Consume, along
with its twin, Marginal Propensity to Save. Big deal. Yawn.
But being able to use selected bits and pieces of the universe
yields interesting stuff, one of which, picking one at random,
he calls the "investment multiplier" (p 115) which
is signified by the letter "k." This is all wrapped
up with the marginal propensity to consume by algebraic manipulation,
and he says this shows that when there is "an increment
of aggregate investment" (i.e. investment goes up), it has
the marvelous property that "income will increase by an
amount which is k times the increment of investment"! Hahahaha!
Profits are guaranteed! Keynes is proving that you will make
money every time you invest money! Now you see why I heap such
disdain on this Keynes moron!
And the weird part is that the whole book is full of this crap.
- The Presidential election is all over, The Mogambo did not
win, and my legal challenge went nowhere. So, the bottom line
is that I spent all those hours and hours, all those days after
days, filling out absentee ballots until my hand was cramped
and numb, all for nothing. But toward the end, I was running
out of names to forge on the ballots, so I had Alan Greenspan
vote for me twice, figuring that either 1) I will be elected
President and then I would fire him and disband the entire Federal
Reserve System and thus save America, making me go down in history
as the Mogambo Savior Of America (MSOA), or 2) he would end up
being thrown in jail for election fraud, and then he wouldn't
be chairman of the Fed anymore. So either way we all win!
Alas, and you can tell by the way I use that word that I have
some bad news, the result was something else entirely, and it
was due to the Mogambo Unknown Alternate Option (MUAO) which
is my new theory that I hope will snag that elusive Nobel Prize,
because to tell you the truth, I could really use the million
dollar prize money that accompanies the award. In this case,
the MUAO was that neither option 1 nor 2 came to pass, and Bush
was re-elected, and now the election people are coming after
ME! Committing election fraud is somehow okay if you are a Republican
or a Democrat, but let The Mogambo try and work a little of that
electoral magic, and suddenly they want to make a federal case
out of it! It's not fair!
And the reason that we could all use a few extra bucks is that
our incomes, which you will notice have not actually gone down
in raw dollars and cents, have nevertheless NOT kept pace with
the rise in prices for the last five freaking years in a row!
Our incomes all went down in terms of buying power, and so we
can only afford to buy less and less stuff! And if you want a
Mogambo News Flash (MNF), I will tell you that as gloomy as this
sounds, our incomes will not keep pace with prices for the next
umpteen years in a row, either! How do you like THEM apples?
As predicted, I see a number of hands shoot into the air, as
the news media reporters all have a question, although I keep
telling them that they should raise their hands if they have
a question, and NOT just raise their middle fingers, which could
be misinterpreted as a rude gesture. I call on the prettiest
female in the audience, who says "No, I'm sorry Mogambo,
but I don't have a question. I was just giving you the finger."
Then we go to the SECOND prettiest girl in the room, who says
"Oops! Me too!" After methodically going through everybody
in the room, I exclaim in my exasperation "Doesn't ANYBODY
here have a real question?" Finally, this little guy stands
up in the back of the room, and says "Yes, I have a question,
Mogambo! I have a three-part question. The first part is; are
you aware that nobody pays any attention to you, and the second
part of my question is, why don't you just shut the hell up?
The third part of my question is, does this have anything to
do with the falling of the dollar?"
My answer to the first part is yes, to the second part is because
I don't want to and you are not heavily armed enough to make
me, and the third part is another yes.
In fact, the dollar has fallen to new lows against other currencies,
as the laughably incompetent buttheads at the horrid Federal
Reserve with their stupid little economic theories that are always
wrong keep creating more and more credit and money to try and
keep this malignant economy from imploding on itself.
All that new money immediately devalues all the rest of the money.
Devalued money thus has less buying power. Which means that things
will cost more. Which means you can buy less stuff. This is stuff
you want to buy, things you could have bought, and things you
would have bought, if your income had gone up, in dollars and
cents, to offset the decline in buying power of each dollar.
Which it didn't.
And when considering the fact that a lot of what we buy are imports
(i.e. oil), then a falling dollar means that either 1) imports
will cost more in dollars and cents, or 2) foreigners will make
less profits, because when they exchange those dollars that they
receive from us back into their local currency, they will end
up with less foreign currency in their grubby little foreign
hands. And then they have to go home and fight the rush-hour
traffic, and by the time they get home they have a splitting
headache and all they want to do is have a nice, quiet dinner,
sit in front of the TV and watch something to keep our minds
off their troubles, which is, in case you forgot, that they are
not making as much in profits. But noOOooo! They are hardly inside
the front door when the wife wants to know why they are not making
as much money as before, and don't hand me that crap about the
exchange-rate, because all you have to do is raise prices!
And then they think to themselves "Hey! The old shrew is
right! I could raise prices!"
And that is not the end of our trouble! Oh, no! Now I have to
re-write that entire sentence to read "And when considering
the fact that a lot of what we buy are imports (i.e. oil), then
a falling dollar means that either 1) imports will cost more
in dollars and cents, or 2) there is no 2."
And now you ask me what is so bad about a falling dollar? The
answer is simplicity itself: things cost more, and you don't
have more money to pay the higher prices, which means that you
buy less and less stuff every month, and pretty soon you run
out of things to cut off the shopping list that SHE wants to
buy, and pretty soon you are whittling away at the things YOU
want to buy that are on that shopping list. Damn!
And what's more, foreigners would have to be real morons to buy
our debt, seeing as how they are guaranteed to get back less
purchasing power than they paid for the debt! And you can say
what you want about foreigners, such as how they speak with these
weird foreign languages that don't seem to make sense and they
eat strange food that you wouldn't give to a dog, but you just
can't rely on them to be stupid, no matter how much it would
benefit us Americans. Plenty of them ARE stupid, of course, just
as there are plenty of AMERICANS that are really stupid. You
just can't RELY on them to be stupid and to keep being stupid.
And this brings us to the Big Important News That Makes The Mogambo
Very Nervous (BINTMTMVN), and when the Mogambo is nervous you
should know to wear something bulletproof when you come snooping
around here. The news is that China is saying with some increasing
frequency that it plans to "create a more flexible exchange-rate
mechanism.'' This means that they will soon no longer support
the dollar at the current peg to the Chinese yuan. This is in
response to the idiots here in America and the International
Monetary Fund, and lots of other idiots in lots of other places,
namely the universities which are chock-a-block full of economic
dimwits and poseurs that love to flash their PhD's in economics
in my face, as if that alone can justify the stupidities that
come out of their mealy mouths, all of whom, for reasons that
are not really clear, think that altering the current the peg
between the yuan and the dollar is a good thing (GT). It is not.
It is a Bad Thing (BT) as you will soon see.
And you don't have to listen to that idiot Mogambo, and if you
DO listen to that idiot Mogambo then you must have something
seriously wrong with you. You can instead listen to Randall Forsyth,
who writes this week's "Up & Down Wall Street"
column for Barron's this week. Commenting on this exact same
thing, he notes "It should be remembered that most of the
major market breaks have begun in the currency market, most recently
in 1987." And if you take the time to go and look at charts
of the market averages, you will notice that in 1987 it was very,
very ugly, and when lines go sweeping down like that they make
my heart go boompa loompa loomp. And while you are there looking
at this chart, take the time to look around, and notice that
we are now near the top of a big, big rise in the market averages,
and there is about to be a change in the currency market. A big,
ugly change. A change that will not be to our advantage from
the perspective that it will make things cost more. A lot more.
It makes you think. And that makes you nervous. And that makes
you glance nervously at the AK-47 leaning against the wall, and
how far away it looks, and how you would feel just a little more
secure if you had it in your lap.
The idea that this is NOT a bad thing, but is instead a good
thing (GT), in case you are not all that up-to-speed on idiotic
economic theories, is that a dollar that is more worthless will
make our exports cheaper. Foreigners will say "You mean
I can buy a copy of "Hot Naked Babes" for a few of
these worthless green scraps of paper you call 'dollars' which
I can pick up by the basketful for peanuts? What a deal!"
Now this cute little theory may be nice for some dinky little
country whose entire economy is less than what we Americans spend
on waxed paper per year. But we are a third of global GDP, and
the cute little theory does not work anymore. The whole rest
of the world is not big enough to buy even a tiny fraction of
what we would need to export to get things into balance. For
one thing, all those foreigners live in tiny little houses and
they do not have nearly enough closet space to buy that many
American products!
- If you want to see who the real morons are in this world today,
take a look at who is buying long-term bonds, as these investment
geniuses are locking in abnormally low, low rates for a long,
long time to come. And if you want to see the most stupid of
the stupid, I quote from a column entitled "Aptly Named"
in the 11/6 issue of the Economist magazine, which concerns junk
bonds. They write "There are, possibly, worse investments
but, Nigerian scams aside, it is hard to think of a surer way
to lose money than buying lowly-rated bonds issued by American
companies at their present niggardly yields." They even
quote Warren Buffett, who "dismissed the junk-bond market
as weeds priced as flowers." Hahahaha! That Warren! What
a card!
They even provide a few interesting factoids about the junk bond
market. "Over the long term, a bit more than 13% of issuers
(of junk bonds) rated B- will default within a year; for those
with a CCC rating, the figure is just over 30%. Within five years,
the numbers rise to 39% and 53% respectively." My Mogambo
eyes (MME) popped out at that! I had no idea that the default
rates were that high! So let me get this straight; people are
spending perfectly good money to buy junk bonds paying, let me
check those yields again, diddly-squat, and expecting that piddly
diddly-squat yield to make up for default rates that are ten
times higher than the yield? Hahahaha!
So yield-hungry dullards are going to lose ten times as much
in capital losses on the bonds that default as they make in yield
on the bonds that don't default? And yet they are bidding them
up until they are paying less than 3% over the yield of risk-free
Treasuries, which are themselves paying diddly-squat? Hahaha!
Leading the world in stupidity!
- George Ure of UrbanSurvival.com keeps abreast of a guy named
G. Lammert, who uses fractals to predict market movements, which
is about as good as any, I suppose. Well, recently this guy shows
that he has the guts to say some brazen things. He says "barring
hyperinflation," we are seeing price rises that "will
be the high for the world equities for the next 2 decades."
Sounds about right to me!
- "The Candy Economy" is an entertaining essay by Jeffrey
Tucker at the LewRockwell.com site. He writes "Dale
Steinreich once wrote that Halloween has a 'socialist tenor'
because 'menacing figures arrive at your door uninvited, demand
your property, and threaten to perform an unspecified 'trick'
if you don't fork over. That's the way the government works in
a nutshell.' " Hahaha!
But this witticism aside, the essay itself concerned the aftermath
of Trick Or Treating by a group of children of the author's acquaintance,
who sat around a table with their hoards of candy accumulated
during an evening of Trick or Treating, and proceeded to trade
them with each other, each trying to maximize his or her satisfaction.
I will not go into the whole thing, because it is very instructive
and very well written, and it has a lot a neat stuff about what
money is, and how the kids were demonstrating some perfect examples
of Austrian economics and inflation, and I suggest you go and
read
the essay.
And when you read it, reflect that there is no central bank creating
candy out of thin air, and there are no foreigners willing to
accept capital losses so that American kids can get all the candy
they want.
- As a perfect example of what is wrong with America, I turn
your attention to the Economic Viewpoint in the 11/904 issue
of Business Week , where we are treated to a laughable essay
by a guy named Robert J. Barro, who is "a professor of economics
at Harvard University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution."
He starts right of with the incredible statement "The Bush
Administration's economic policies are a mixed bag of sound tax
and monetary policies" which immediately makes me gag in
disbelief that somebody with a reputation to protect would actually
say such a thing, and then finishes the sentence off with the
notion that these "sound" policies are "offset
by poor spending discipline and inconsistency on free trade."
He does not grace us with how the laudable tax policies are divorced
from poor spending policies, although he is apparently sure that
one is good and the other is bad, and that they have nothing
to do with each other, or the colossal level of debt that is
thus incurred, which he doesn't feel inclined to mention for
some reason. But I would not be the Mogambo if I let this guy
get away with saying something as preposterous as suggesting
that the Bush Administration has a sound monetary policy, because
it is anything BUT sound, which is assuming that the government
can even HAVE a monetary policy, which is usually regarded as
the province of the Federal Reserve, although if you consider
issuing government debt by the literal ton to be a type of monetary
policy, then okay with me.
But just as I cut him some slack on this monetary policy thing,
he figures he is safe, and that he can say something like how
wages are wonderful and robust, and he figures that the price
deflator is only 1.9%! Hahaha! 1.9%! Inflation is 1.9%? Hahahaha!
- "$80 Oil, Here We
Come!" is an essay by Bill Powers, who is editor of
the Canadian Energy Viewpoint. He writes "the price of oil
will not significantly pull back from today's levels and is likely
to reach the $80 mark within the next 24 months." He notes
that oil is getting harder and harder to get out of the ground,
and that they are using massive amounts of water injection to
extract the oil. Specifically, he writes "High water cuts
at Ghawar (7 million barrels of water a day according to Simmons)
are a clear indication that the world's largest field is about
to head into a steep and irreversible decline."
- Chet Currier, Bloomberg columnist, has penned an interesting
column entitled "Grantham, Gross Gloomy Over Troubles and
Bubbles," which is, I think you will agree with me, a nice
bit of alliteration and rhyme. He is referring to Jeremy Grantham,
who is chairman of Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Co., and
Bill Gross, who is THAT Bill Gross.
Mr. Currier notes that "Gross's views are so glum he himself
speaks of them as 'the economics of despair' " and that
Grantham says "the history of investment 'bubbles'' argues
for a drop of about 35 percent in the Standard & Poor's 500
Index, on top of the 40 percent slide already endured in 2000-02."
He also quotes Mr. Gross as saying "Asia has hollowed out
our manufacturing base and is now making inroads into services"
which is, of course, old, news, but also that he figures "We
can't really educate or innovate our way out of this.''
But he doesn't ask us to merely consider his opinion.
He has also looked at the history of bubbles, and has discovered
that our current equity bubble is the actually the 28th bubble
that he found while looking at currency, commodity and stock
markets. "All the other 27 bubbles broke and went back to
the pre-existing trend.'' To get the current bubble back to trend,
the S&P500 would have to fall to, and I assume these are
rough numbers, 720, as compared with the current level above
1100.
- Michael Levy as revealed, in an essay that he penned for MBL
and Associates entitled "A Shot in the Dark" that "Over
a period of time the Bureau of Labor Statistics has gradually
narrowed its definition of unemployment to a point where only
those who have actively looked for a job in the past four weeks
are considered to be unemployed. If the labor force participation
rate were the same as it was in early 2000, the current unemployment
rate would be a far higher 7.5 percent." This is just another
example of government trying to cover its butt with lies. And
there are lots of other people who say that the real level of
unemployment, as computed the way it has historically been computed,
is actually over 10%.
- Of course, nothing matches the exuberance of total ignorance
better than the DJ Transportation Average, which sells at a level
of $3,572 and has, instead of earnings, losses of $10.94! As
a result, the reported Price/Earnings ratio of the Transports
is, and I quote, "nil." Nil? As in zero? Hell, if the
same stocks had even one lousy dollar of earnings, the P/E ratio
would be 3,572! Hahahaha! A P/E of 3,572! And yet people are
buying these stocks every damn day of the wee, which accounts
for the P/E of 3,572! Hahahahaha!
- Silver, which for the last few years I have been pounding the
table is a screaming buy, and now the table is all wobbly and
has been seemingly pounded, is up 49% in the last twelve months.
Not too shabby! But the time is coming, and soon, when even this
stellar gain will seem paltry.
- If you have emailed me within the last several days, my computer
was down due to a slider worm. It was not a total loss, since
I learned that you cannot kill a computer worm by smashing your
computer with the butt of a rifle. So it was an educational experience.
An expensive educational experience.
Ugh.
*** The Mogambo Sez: Things are proceeding as they always
do. Destination: Hell.
November 10, 2004
Richard Daughty
Archives
 The Daily Reckoning
Richard Daughty
is general partner and C.O.O. for Smith Consultant Group, serving
the financial and medical communities, and the writer/publisher
of the Mogambo Guru economic newsletter, an avocational exercise
the better to heap disrespect on those who desperately deserve
it. The Mogambo Guru is quoted frequently in Barron's, The
Daily Reckoning
and other fine publications.
321gold Inc
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