Alan Abelson in his "Up and Down Wall
Street" column in Barron's writes, "Talk about
great entrances! For investors, anyway, they don't
make them any better than the memorable one staged
by that precocious calendrical infant, 2008. That
is, if you're an investor who happens to have a
portfolio chock full of gold and overflowing with
oil."
And if you have your investments
aligned with the Fabulous Mogambo Portfolio (FMP),
then he is talking about you! Gold! That's all you
have! Gold! Lovely, lovely gold! And for the
seventh year in a row, the FMP has beaten the
piddly results of almost
every other money manager in
the world, but does The Mogambo get any credit, or
even get somebody to make him up a lousy plate of
nachos, like I'm asking so much of worthless kids
laying around the house all the time? No!
I have to be content with making lots and
lots of money as gold rises, instead of being
given meaningless awards or being invited to
appear on the television show with Regis Philbin
and Kelly Ripa [1], so that they can tell me what
an honor it is for them to meet me because what a
freaking genius I am to have come up with creating
the Fabulous Mogambo Portfolio Theory (FMPT) that
has been kicking investing butt for seven years in
a row now, the underlying theory of which is to
own gold, gold mining stocks, gold ETFs
(exchange-traded funds), and marry someone who has
a lot of gold fillings, gold crowns and gold
dental bridgework, as a sort of portable store of
gold, "on the hoof" in a manner of speaking, just
in case you need to, you know, get out of town in
a hurry again.
And after the
introductions, I will look into the camera and
say, "Thank you very much, Regis and Kelly! But to
be truthful, in developing the Fabulous Mogambo
Portfolio Theory (FMPT), I merely looked at the
last 4,000 years or so of watching governments
want to spend more than they could get out of the
people, and finding out what happened when such
governments got the bright idea that a way to
create more money was to increase the money supply
by making gold and silver coins smaller, or mix
cheap metals in with the gold and silver in the
coins, or use paper money, or, in the ultimate
example, make money the mere electronic storage of
computer blips."
Then I will say, "And I
will tell you, and the audience, and all the
viewers at home who want me to sweep Kelly up in
my arms and start kissing her all over, the Big
Freaking Lesson (BFL) that is thus gleaned from
those 4,000 years of economic history!" Then I
will lean forward, all confidential and secretive,
and say, "Come closer! Closer!" while lowering my
voice to draw them in, lower and lower and closer
and closer, until I suddenly and unexpectedly
explode, "Buy gold! Buy as much gold as you
freaking can! Buy gold when the government is
creating too much fiat money, spending too much
money, which is made possible because the banks
are creating too much money and too much credit
for someone to borrow, with which to buy the debt,
which gives the government the money to spend!"
And then I will walk right up to the
camera until my face is right in it, getting
Little Droplets Of Spittle (LDOS) all over the
lens as I hysterically shout, "We're freaking
doomed! Don't you understand that, you stupid
people? The Federal Reserve has doomed the dollar,
and that means that you are doomed! It's klaatu
barada nikto [2] all over again!
To
allay the fears of the audience at home, watching
all of this on their TVs, I will soothingly say,
"Not Regis, of course, because he is smart and
witty, and he can always get another job. And
Kelly is not only smart and witty, but really hot,
too, and I think I can turn her into a terrific
porn star! We'll make millions!"
The worst
part is that nobody will ever believe me when I
say that I was on the Live with Regis and
Kelly TV show because the episode will not be
aired, and Kelly will never even return my calls
about any of my great ideas for a whole series of
terrific adult-themed films we could make in her
backyard.
And it's too bad, too, although
soon nobody will need the money, as I am certain
that there will be a massive fiscal stimulus very
soon, which will probably be a replay of the "tax
rebate" checks that President George W Bush sent
out to taxpayers right after being elected in
2000. I figure that $1,000 per taxpayer has just
the right amount of desperation and panic, and
gold will soar as a result of such blatant
deficit-spending stimulus.
And Ambrose
Evans-Pritchard of The Telegraph writes that I may
be onto something here, and he says, "Bears
beware. The New Deal of 2008 is in the works. The
US Treasury is about to shower households with
rebate checks to head off a full-blown slump and
save the Bush presidency."
The problem is
the same one. Will it work? The answer is "no". Mr
Evans-Pritchard correctly says, "Not even a Bush
New Deal can hold back the post-bubble tide that
is drawing in across the globe."
The part
that baffled me is when he figures that,
"Fortunately for America - and the world - the US
budget deficit is a healthy 1.2% of GDP ($163
billion). Washington has the wherewithal to fund a
fiscal blitz."
This is where I laughed out
loud, "Hahaha! The budget deficit is a 'healthy'
1.2% of GDP? Who told you that? I laugh a laugh,
'hahaha', of scorn that you forgot to check!"
I was hoping he would ask me what I meant
by that rude remark so that I could tell him,
"What in the hell has the budget got to do with
how much the federal government spends? The actual
spending deficit, from the government's own report
of the Treasury Gross Public Debt, is up over $600
billion dollars from a year ago! There's your real
deficit, dude! The budget itself is over three
trillion freaking dollars, including the laughable
budget deficit estimate of only 1.2% of GDP.
Hahaha! Try 4% instead!"
Mr
Evans-Pritchard ignores me, and says, "Britain has
no such luxury. Our deficit is 3% of GDP at the
top of the cycle," to which I rudely say maybe it
is just a matter of measurement, too! Again
ignoring me, he says, even more provocatively,
"Gordon Brown has shut the Keynesian door," to
which I again say, "Hahahaha! I don't know who you
have been talking to, but they are wrong, wrong,
wrong!"
And I say this not because I love
to hear the sound of my own voice, which I do, or
how I have the power to charm with my Musical
Mogambo Laughter (MML), which I don't, but because
having a fiat currency and allowing insane levels
of fractional-reserve banking in the slavering
service of a huge, expensive, desperate, idiotic,
bankrupt, corrupt government means that there is
no such thing as "shutting the Keynesian door", as
nothing could be simpler than to flood a country
with government deficit-spending ("stimulating
aggregate demand").
And when that
government check hits my mailbox, brother, I'll
show you exactly how giving people free money
stimulates spending! Whee! Insanity in economics
is fun! And it will be ironically profitable if
you use the money to buy gold! Whee!
Notes 1. Live with Regis and
Kelly, a popular morning talk show in the
United States.
2. Klaatu barada
nikto originates from the Cold War-era science
fiction film The Day the Earth Stood Still
(1951). The phrase was used to stop the robot Gort
from destroying the Earth: "Gort! Klaatu barada
nikto!" There is no known translation,
although "Klaatu" is the name of the humanoid
alien protagonist in the film, "barada" is Russian
for "beard" (written "boroda" and pronounced
"barada") and "nikto" is Russian for "nobody".
(Wikipedia)
Richard Daughty is
general partner and COO for Smith Consultant
Group, serving the financial and medical
communities, and the editor of The Mogambo Guru
economic newsletter - an avocational exercise to
heap disrespect on those who desperately deserve
it.
Republished with permission from The Daily Reckoning.
Copyright 2008, The Daily
Reckoning.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
