The quicksand of deficit
spending By The Mogambo Guru
Caroline Baum at Bloomberg News writes,
"President Bush and his Treasury secretary, Hank
Paulson, are pumping out plans as quickly as
aggrieved parties (homeowners, financial
institutions, consumers, businesses) can ask for
help, even as they tout the economy's fundamentals
as 'strong'. In other [words], aside from a house
of card[s] built on a mountain of debt, everything
is fine." Exactly!
She is obviously
referring to the, "economic stimulus bill"; a
ludicrous bit of economic insanity where the
government will be, literally, sending out money
to people, to the tune of US$168 billion. It has
now been passed by Congress, and is on its way to
President Bush for his (I assume) enthusiastic
signature.
Where was Nancy Pelosi, one of
the most idiotic Marxist losers
in
all of Congress? She was running around grinning
like a demented baboon, embarrassing herself
saying, "We are making history. What has passed
the Congress in record time is a gift to the
middle class and those who aspire to it in our
country." Hahaha! A gift! Hahaha! This is too, too
rich!
Then I thought about it some more,
and I discovered that I can use this! Without a
moment's hesitation, I immediately put this
fabulous new "gift" philosophy into action: I wait
until my wife goes into the kitchen for something,
and for that split-second when her vision is
obscured and her purse is unattended, I quickly
run over and grab it, snag the wallet inside the
purse, and hurriedly take all the money out, which
looks to be about $67.
By this time, my
wife has heard my footsteps racing across the
floor and heard my little girlie giggle of
excitement and decides that this can't mean
anything good. So she comes flying out of that
kitchen, screaming, "Get out of my purse, you
Thieving Mogambo Bastard (TMB)!"
This,
then, is when I put this new Pelosi idea into
action; with a big smile just like the one Ms
Pelosi had plastered all over her face, I say,
"Hold it right there, Hateful Old Woman (HOW)!"
Deftly, I take the two singles out of the little
handful of cash I had just taken out of her purse,
and flip them to her, saying, "Here's two bucks!
I'm giving you a gift! How can you accuse me of
stealing from you when I am actually just giving
you a gift? Can't you see I am making history
here? I'm giving you a gift of two bucks! So shut
the hell up about people stealing money from you,
you paranoid whackjob!"
Stunned, she just
stands there, too flabbergasted at the sheer
stupidity of it all. I quickly take advantage of
the hesitation, and in a flash I am gone! Carefree
and happy, out into the world with a big 65 bucks
burning a hole in my pocket, and I'm looking for
trouble, tacos, tequila and topless dancers, where
we learn the sad lesson that inflation has gotten
so bad that $65 doesn't last very long anymore in
that paradigm, even in the seamier gentlemen's
clubs where they never throw me out, no matter how
drunk or obnoxious I am, as long as I have some
money left.
Alas, the money was soon gone,
thanks to the higher prices, then (as usual)
nobody liked me anymore and I had to go home,
whereupon I also learned that if you are going out
to party down in the hedonistic gutter with a
measly $65 left over after you gave your wife a
gift, use it all to buy intoxicating beverages,
because you are going to want to be heavily,
heavily anesthetized when you get back home.
But the lesson is the same; somebody is
going to catch hell, and Nancy Pelosi has
absolutely no idea what in the hell she is doing,
because this $168 billion has to also be paid for
with more government borrowing, which means the
Fed must create more money and credit, which turns
into more money when somebody borrows the money
from the banks to buy these bonds, which further
inflates the money supply, which causes more
inflation in some consumer prices as this new
money enters the auction in the marketplace of
goods and services, and then inflation appears in
other consumer prices, too, more and more and more
until it has caused inflation in all prices, and
then everybody is worse off than when they
started; my wife is out 65 bucks, I am broke and
in trouble, and the inflation in prices is making
life more miserable for everybody.
Or, you
could do as my neighbors do; listen for the Death
Wail Of The Mogambo (DWOTM) reverberating, who
howls into the night, "Ah-oooooooooooo!",
conveying to man and beast alike that we are
freaking doomed by inflation in prices, which
history has shown to be similar to being a
bit-player in a low-budget jungle B-movie who
accidentally steps into quicksand at the beginning
of the movie, not long after the credits have
stopped rolling. You instinctively know, without
being told or given any clues, and despite the
best efforts of everybody else in the movie, that
the poor bastard is going down and out.
That is probably why Congresswoman Nancy
Pelosi never spends any time around here, as the
haunting sound of my DWOTM is bad enough, but even
worse is that DWOTM can be made to sound like
"scrotum", which I intend to use with maximum
effect and a can of spray paint if I can think of
anything to rhyme with "Pelosi" that could
simultaneously attain a "PG" rating and also
convey my Utter Mogambo Revulsion (UMR) at the
sheer hypocrisy of characterizing a $168 billion
"economic stimulus" package, achieved by
deficit-spending, as a freaking "gift" to anybody!
Hahahaha! I mean, what can you do but laugh at the
sheer, laughable stupidity?
And you want
to hear the worse news? The poor, the
disadvantaged, the crippled, the aged, the sick,
the criminals, the unemployed, and the teeming
outcasts and refuse of the world yearning to
breathe free if only they could get a nitwit
government to pay their way, all have one thing in
common; they, along with every body else, will all
pay higher prices for everything, and everyone
will end up worse off than they are now! Hahahaha!
And it's also guaranteed that they will
never get as much money next year as they need to
offset the price hikes from this coming year, just
as they did not get the money this year that they
needed to offset the prices that were higher than
they were last year, too! They are always, "Behind
the curve!" Hahahaha!
This is how you die
of gradual financial death by inflation, which is
the plot of the latest movie from Mogambo Film
Industries, which used to be call Mogambo Literary
Industries, a niche publishing firm that
specialized in that last little bit of free-lance
pornography that literally nobody else would
publish because it was so tasteless and
disgusting.
But now we are coming out with
a terrific adventure movie, where the plot has Ms
Pelosi leading a big safari into the jungle to
deliver free goods and services to natives along
the way, and one of the bearers of the treasure
chests (in the script he is referred to as
"Taxpayer Number One") steps into the deadly
quicksand of deficit-spending a fiat currency via
unlimited fractional reserve banking.
It
is then that the movie turns into a farce, as Ms
Pelosi is crying out, "Quick! Give him some more
money!" Hahahaha! Nice work, Ms Pelosi! Groucho
Marx would have been proud of us both!
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
