If you want to see why the damned
government is continually raising your taxes,
spending more and more money, growing bigger and
bigger all the damned time and locking up a full
one percent of the population in prison, part of
the answer is in the Pinellas Park Beacon
newspaper, which reported that federal search
warrants were executed at three local pharmacies
as part of an investigation into healthcare fraud.
So far, so good.
The funny part is that
"the agencies involved in the investigation are
representatives of the Florida Department of Law
Enforcement, Pinellas County Sheriff's Office,
Florida Attorney General's Office - Medicaid Fraud
Control Unit, Health and Human Services - OIG,
United States Office of Personnel Management -
OIG, Drug Enforcement Administration, Defense
Criminal Investigative
Service, United States
Attorney's Office and the Federal Bureau of
Investigation."
It's like when there is a
simple, everyday accident on the road, and
suddenly the whole highway is completely shut down
because there are police everywhere, police cars
all over the place, hazardous materials handling
people trundling around in their bulky suits
testing for dangerous substances, bomb disposal
people trundling around in THEIR bulky suits, SWAT
teams taking up positions in the surrounding area,
fire trucks, ambulances, police helicopters and
even K-9 units swarming all over the highway.
I mean, it's amazing how many government
employees are seemingly standing around looking
for something to do with their latest equipment
upgrades, and itching for a chance to put all that
expensive training to work, to (I assume)
hopefully show how all of those huge departmental
expenses are "proving" to be of compelling value
during the upcoming city/county/state budget
reviews.
In fact, this has inspired my
latest poem, which doesn't have a title yet, but
the opening stanza is:
The governments have firepower out
the wazoo, Looking for something to
do. One of these days, in dozens of
ways, They'll be coming after you, too, and
you'll be in deep doo-doo.
Well,
those who have any familiarity with poetry
whatsoever recognize right away that I have
absolutely no talent, and it is obvious that I
spent less than 20 seconds writing it, including
thinking up the original idea, writing it,
re-writing it, then editing it before giving it
that final polish that turns it into a shining gem
of literature.
With it being so damned
easy to write crap like that, the reason that I
have not already published an anthology of my
Immortal Mogambo Poetry (IMP), of which the above
is but a small sample, is that I am not sure that
it is exactly true that the levels of governments
will always have such firepower.
I mean,
the whole economy is based on the stupid idea that
the government only exists to do more and more
things and give money to more and more people,
which it has faithfully done for half a century,
all built on the nominal gains of all that new
Federal Reserve money cascading through the
economy like anabolic steroids in otherwise
mediocre athletes.
But now, with all these
losses in every freaking thing, there will
(horrors!) necessarily be a sharp reduction in
profits, and thus (horrors of horrors!) a sharp
reduction in taxes paid on those profits and, thus
(horror of horrors of horrors!) a sharp reduction
in spending and a downward spiral in the economy,
as the government spending IS the economy
nowadays!
In short, the lifeblood of
governments is going to be choked off unless taxes
are raised, which would, unfortunately, make
everything even worse, all of which means there is
no painless way out, and which always reminds me
of the phrase "We're freaking doomed!"
Alas and alack, it is not just the
governments around here that are full of do-gooder
spenders, and if you want proof that the
International Monetary Fund is a disgusting
collection of morons, quacks and politically
connected halfwits, too, then page 13 of last
Monday's Financial Times newspaper is all you
need.
To start with, Wolfgang Munchau
again makes the point that Milton Friedman was
exactly right when he said, "inflation is always
and everywhere a monetary phenomenon". By this he
means that prices rise in a general inflation
after the money is created, and thus if you create
too much money, then prices are going to rise too
much.
The big difference this time is that
the inflation monster is now everywhere, not just
in stocks, bonds, houses and size of government
anymore, but now in consumer staples such as food
and energy, where governments everywhere are
aghast that, as Mr Munchau notes, "The global rate
of headline inflation is 4.5% and rising." Yikes!
I was right: We're freaking doomed!
The
funny part is right next to Mr Munchau's column,
and actually touching it, is a piece by Dominique
Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the
International Monetary Fund. The laughable screed
penned by this nitwit is titled "A Global Approach
Is Required To Tackle High Food Prices."
If you are like me, you are delighted that
now, after all of these many, many dozens of
centuries of the world's people having to
periodically endure higher food prices because of
environmental mishaps or governmental stupidity
(or both), now there is a solution to the problem
of high food and energy prices! So what is this
"global approach" to "tackle high food prices"
that is going to be so wonderful? Huh? You wanna
know? Huh? Do you? Huh? Hahaha!
Well,
you're going to love this: The idea is to let the
IMF start giving money away to pay the higher
prices! The IMF, glorying as ever in its failures,
just like the Federal Reserve, now promotes the
laughable idea to "tackle" rising food prices by
having donor economies give other people money to
pay higher food prices! Hahaha! THAT is the
"global approach" to "tackle" higher food prices?
Hahaha!
And if you think that government
throwing money at a problem, especially one as big
as this, is going to be successful, and that
buying gold, silver and oil is therefore
unnecessary and old-fashioned, then my lip curls
into a sneer and I laugh with Utter Mogambo
Disdain (UMD) "Hahahahaha!" at you, and wish only
to be there to see the look on your face at the
instant that you realize, to your own terrifying
horror, how wrong you were! Hell, I'm laughing
just thinking about it! Hahahaha!
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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