Bank-robbery index turns
bullish By The Mogambo Guru
I was surprised as hell to see that Total
Fed Credit (TFC) was down by another $1.7 billion
last week. This is Big Important Stuff (BIS)
because it is this selfsame TFC which creates, as
if by magic, new credit to be instantly available
in the banks, which is turned into money when
someone borrows it from the banks, which makes the
money supply go up, which makes the price of
something go up immediately (as this new money is
used to bid up the price of something, as why else
would you borrow money?), and which eventually
makes the prices of everything go up as the money
gradually diffuses throughout the economy, which
makes life miserable for people who don't make
more money with which to pay the higher prices,
and they get angry
and
desperate, which probably explains why the Orlando
Sentinel newspaper reports that bank robberies in
Florida increased 40% in 2007.
A relevant
piece by Paul Gores of jsonline.com had the
headline, "Bank robberies on the rise", with the
subhead, "And more criminals are getting away, FBI
statistics show". The point is that not only is
bank robbing 40% more popular than last year, but
the FBI used to solve 75% of bank robberies in
2003, but only about half now.
There are a
lot of reasons bandied about for this, of course,
including the fact that the FBI is spending more
of its time on anti-terrorism stuff with those
luscious big budgets, freedom from pesky Bill of
Rights restrictions or constitutional restraints,
and flashy news-at-eleven glory as they unleash
one expensive, intrusive, ineffectual-yet-showy
initiative after another to heroically "save
America from terrorism!", and now they must spend
less time on helping solve some stupid bank
robberies because that old-time cops-and-robbers
stuff ain't going to help anybody's career in this
day and age.
And, of course, everybody has
lots of suggestions for expensive ways for banks
to fight this scourge of bank robbing, including
glass shields for bank cashiers, turnstiles,
upgraded video surveillance equipment, employee
training, alarm systems, new vaults, new bank
designs, and blah blah blah.
The only
thing missing is the fact that people would not be
robbing banks unless they were desperate for
money. I mean, how desperate do you have to
freaking be to rob a place that you know has
beaucoup alarms, security equipment and cameras
all over the place, and where you have a
staggering 50-50 chance of being caught and
charged with a felony for which you will be found
guilty because you are guilty?
The irony
is that the REAL crooks are the banks themselves!
Hahaha! The Federal Reserve has been wildly,
childishly, stupidly moronic in creating so damned
much money and credit, year after year, expanding
the money supply (monetary inflation), that they
have stolen the buying power of your money.
This constant, new supply of money
cheapens the existing stock of money, and now the
compounded effect is that the filthy, foul Fed has
engineered the loss of almost a third of the
dollar's buying power in the last five years or
so, and in total the Fed has screwed us out of 97%
of the value of the dollar that existed when the
slimy legislation authorizing the Federal Reserve
was slipped through an almost-deserted Congress by
a few conspirators on Christmas Eve in 1913.
Thus, the Fed was born in sin, and then
lived in it, too, as it immediately set about
creating too much money and credit to produce the
boom of the Roaring Twenties, which naturally led
to the bust of the Great Depression. Nice work,
Federal Reserve! Hahahaha!
And now that it
has been a decade since that idiot Bill Clinton
repealed the Glass-Steagall Act that prevented the
damned banks from acting like idiots again and
profiteering in the securities markets, we are
paying for Clinton's corruption and stupidity.
And so now, alas, here we are again. The
world-record boom of the '90s, started by the
absurd Reaganomics with its ridiculous theories of
"cut taxes and borrow the money because deficits
don't matter", so popular in the '80s, collapsed
in 2000, was temporarily resuscitated by former
Fed chaiman Alan Greenspan's negative real
interest rates (the low interest rate is less than
the inflation rate), is now back and worse than
ever because a monstrous housing bubble and
collateralized debt markets that he also created
are collapsing, too!
The Federal Reserve
is, like me (according to my Employee Performance
Reviews), laughably incompetent beyond any shadow
of a doubt, and that is the One Big Freaking
Reason (OBFR) why it is imperative that Ron Paul
be elected president of the United States, and why
the rest of those clueless campaigning poseurs be
rounded up and charged with malfeasance, which I
am not sure is a real crime anymore, but it should
be, and it WILL be if The Mogambo has to run for
president and rig every damned Diebold voting
machine in existence since the rest of the
American people are too damned stupid to vote for
Ron Paul or rig the machines in his favor, which
explains why they cannot even vaguely comprehend
the enormity of what is happening, even though it
is so simple that children understand it
intuitively, which I prove by noting that even
newborn babies instinctively cry at the horror of
a fiat currency and unlimited fractional-reserve
multiplication of money by the banks!
To
prove it for yourself, go up to somebody with a
new baby, and say to the mother "Oh! What a cute
baby! May I get a closer look?", and then get
right in that baby's face and yell, as loud as you
can to get its scant attention, "Fiat currency!
Fractional-reserve banking!" You will immediately
notice that the baby will start crying! And the
mothers usually start yelling and screeching like
banshees, too! Everybody knows it!
Well,
the essence of the Austrian Business Cycle Theory
has nothing to do with babies, but shows how
irresponsible monetary inflation must produce
price inflation, that monetary inflation is a bad,
bad thing (BBT), and thus only a complete moron,
completely ignorant of the entire history of the
world, would dare to think that inflation in
prices is ever benign. It is not. Ever.
The stupid Federal Reserve, on the other
hand, actually hopes that the new money is being
borrowed and used to buy stocks and bonds, making
their prices go up, proving that the Fed DOES know
that monetary inflation causes price inflation,
even though they think it is a good thing! At
least in stocks and bonds.
But now they
are desperately hoping and praying that those two
major lynchpins of the economy are nice and
healthy, and then the banks will be healthy too,
even though the banks have been acting like
corrupt skunks for years, which is what banks
naturally do, and that is why government is
supposed to ride herd on those banker weenies
every freaking minute of every freaking day, like
my wife does me, as I am just as irresponsible,
although even she admits I only ruined her life
and the lives of the kids, and not the lives of
everybody in the country, and arguably the world,
like the Federal Reserve has.
But notice
how only I get the blame I deserve! And then
people want to know why I wallow in self-pity;
because it's the only kind I ever get!
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.
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Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
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