Asia Times Online :: The Complete Henry C K Liu

The Mogambo Guru

Dry guide to 'recovery'
United States legislators, woefully ignorant of how the financial system works and how it got the world into the present mess, need only a glance at the exotic-sounding Baltic Dry Index to find out how strong the so-called recovery is - it isn't. (Oct 6, '09)

Sweet spots
Economic policymakers plan to leave emergency stimuluses in place as the global economy pulls out of recession, creating a "sweet spot" for financial markets, as if they weren't sweet enough already. That means the US Federal Reserve will continue its unholy mission to wreck the value of the US dollar - which also means an ever sweeter spot for gold!!!. (Sep 23, '09)

A short, happy story on silver
The silver net short position now stands at about a third of world silver mining production, which is just one more reason, along with the culpably stupid behavior of the US Federal Reserve, to buy, buy, buy before a whole lot of covering goes on. (Sep 22, '09)

It's not gonna fly
Hong Kong is pulling all its physical gold holdings from depositories in London and transferring them to a high-security facility newly built at the city's airport. Why the airport, of all places? Why not out in the middle of nowhere so you can see the enemy coming? (Sep 18, '09)

More taxes - of course!
Of course, governments could not resist spending their inflated revenues, and of course now that taxes are drying up they will not be able to resist raising money by creating - yes! - new taxes. And that, of course, means higher costs for you and me, and that means higher inflation. Which is great for debt-burdened governments - of course! (Sep 17, '09)

Garfield gets it
Cartoon character Garfield at least understands that a body needs more than worthless IOUs to live on. Others still to learn this horrible fact of life include the US Federal Reserve, while not far distant, overpriced US companies and their investors will soon learn the folly of paying more while making less. (Sep 16, '09)

Poll crapola
Japan's election victor says new spending will depend on shrinking both the bureaucracy and public works programs, which is ridiculous and impossible because, just as in the US, the government is the economy, and if you shrink one you shrink the other. Which shows that insanity knows no borders. (Sep 15, '09)

Mind reels
Michael Moore has somehow won financial backing from capitalists for a movie that launches an all-out attack on the capitalist system - which if nothing else helps to prove the utterly dreadful state of the United States education system. It is enough the make the mind reel!!! (Sep 11, '09)

Cash down the drain
The US Federal Reserve, in the past 12 months alone, bought more than US$1 trillion in US government securities. One trillion!!! Meanwhile the government is spending $260 billion in interest alone to cover the cost of the national debt! Just the interest!!! And you wonder why we are doomed? (Sep 10, '09)

Reality excluded
Times are desperate indeed when the only light in the ever-deepening hole of US budget deficits is a nonsensical number that excludes interest payments on the vast debt being accumulated year after year. Things then get even weirder - which shows just how doomed we are. (Sep 9, '09)

Clunker remorse
The "cash for clunkers" scheme ratcheted up auto sales in the United States, and burdened buyers with higher bills they cannot afford for purchase installments and insurance. And just when inflation is ready to take off. Duh!! (Sep 8, '09)

Mad, mad world
Businesses in the United States must be making money because the taxes they pay are on the up-and-up, despite their per-share earnings shrinking to miniscule levels and despite government becoming a main prop of economic activity. It's a mad, mad world in which only gold makes sense. (Sep 4, '09)

Soft number folly
Discounting inflation when calculating the cost of the ever-mounting national United States debt may soften the brute, hard numbers, but it is only one more way in which supposedly serious economists make fools of themselves. They are all doomed - because they believe this nonsense and are not buying gold!!! (Sep 3, '09)

Scam hell ahead
Bernie Madoff's US$50 billion scam may be small time stuff if fears that major scandals linked to the unregulated, US$600 trillion credit-default swap market come to reality. That will mean the dollar having even less value, prices will soar - and yes!, we will all be doomed more than ever!!! (Sep 2, '09)

Hit me again
The costs inflicted on the American people since the creation of the Federal Reserve are not only horrific but are now being multiplied, even as a quiescent population sits around and says "Duh! Okay with us!" There are, of course, a few (gold-buying) exceptions ... (Sep 1, '09)

DIY destruction
Not only is the US Federal Reserve doing what it can to destroy the value of the fiat US dollar, communities around the United States are now printing their own "currencies" at the highest rate since the Great Depression. Yet another sign that we are doomed - unless you are buying the real thing - gold!!! (Aug 31, '09)

Ben 'the wise'
If Ben Bernanke were really wise - a trait notably absent until discovered this week by a desperate White House - he wouldn't be willing to head up the Federal Reserve for the next four years. He would be out there buying gold while letting some other fool do the job. (Aug 28, '09)

Spewing out money
A twist of the US Federal Reserve money tap has enabled the possible creation of another US$4.5 trillion - trillion! - or more than a third of the annual gross domestic product in the United States, in one week. So much cash chasing so few pizzas and other good things can only mean inflation. Lot's of it. Including in the price of gold!!! (Aug 27, '09)

Down the drain
People may or may not be getting stupider, but the decision-making power of the US has clearly gone into the toilet, which means it is more urgent than ever for those with even a trickle of intelligence to save themselves from government irresponsibility, which means buy as much gold and silver as you can. (Aug 26, '09)

Basket cases
Trying to get a job in the United States has now become so tough that more than 140,000 people have "disappeared" from the dole list as their benefit entitlement expires. If they are staying home reading of stockmarket gains and praying for more, they are in for a horrible disappointment. (Aug 25, '09)

Trucking through
United States transport outfits, not surprisingly, are struggling to make a buck, yet their share prices are being driven to the stars. Stripped to the basics, it means the only link to sanity in this mad, mad world is made of gold. (Aug 24, '09)

Over-exposed
The "Government National Mortgage Association" doesn't easily trip off the tongue, but call it Ginnie Mae, and it rhymes pretty nicely with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - and its soon-to-be US$1 trillion mortgage exposure is another pointer to the doom awaiting the United States economy. (Aug 21, '09)

Money wanted
Retail sales in the United States fell last month - and anything otherwise would be a near miracle, given the ever-growing hordes of jobless folk, while those still at work are not getting paid more, the price of stuff is going up, up, up ... and every spare dime is needed to buy gold!!! (Aug 20, '09)

Time to get real
If economics can't forecast share prices a week in advance, how can the dismal "science" forecast the economy a year in advance - or five years ahead. It can't, especially when the big, big, assumption is that there is no crisis to blow up economic "simulations". No wonder we are doomed. Reality ain't like that!!!(Aug 19, '09)

Inflation craziness
The notion that central banks should deliberately drive up prices to rescue a collapsing economy is just so crazy it shows that even Nobel prize-winners have little idea of the incredible real horrors of inflation - nor that they are bubbling up around us even now!! (Aug 18, '09)

Fiat follies
Debt-burdened California saw a way out of its immediate woes by issuing vendors with IOUs - and has now finessed that trick by refusing to accept its own notes to pay debts or taxes. The joy of having not one but two fiat currencies in circulation knows no bounds!!! (Aug 17, '09)

Never say never
Good reasons are in short supply when it comes to explaining why the Barack Obama administration might start confiscating private holdings of gold. But "the more gold you have, the better" is a tried-and-trusted fact, and never say never where governments are involved. (Aug 14, '09)

Bank on inflation
Hard-up central bankers may be happy at signing up to another corrupt five-year pact on their gold sales. But that still won't be enough to mask the inflation they are causing. So buy, buy, buy, while the yellow metal is still cheap!! (Aug 13, '09)

Stupidity without borders
The value of shares traded in China now surpasses the combined amount in the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan. Which tells you, if nothing else, that investors there are as stupid as those in the West - and just as deaf to the imperative "Buy Gold!!" (Aug 12, '09)

Disappearing taxes
However the US government intends to pay for the numerous "stimulus" measures, bailouts, rescues, wars and all the other expenses it is totting up, it is becoming harder by the day, with tax receipts on pace to drop 18% this year. 18%! We are so, so doomed!!! (Aug 6, '09)

Job horrors
The US Federal Reserve's forecast that the US economy will add no net new jobs over the next five years is both terrifying and appropriate, given how close the banking system is to utter collapse. The one thing not close to collapse is - gold! (Aug 5, '09)

Wealth for the sensible
Just short of 40 years after president Richard Nixon ended the direct convertibility of the US dollar to gold, one clear lesson emerges from our subsequent spending power - if your money is dollars, things get pricier. If your money is denominated in gold, you live in a world where things get cheaper. (Aug 4, '09)

The only real dream
Dreamers who believe governments might cut spending systematically year after year to get out of the crises being created by their vast monetary stimulus packages are - well - dreaming. The only dream that has a basis in reality is - the price of gold will soar!! (Aug 3, '09)

The future made simple
There are plenty of reasons for the financial crisis, but they mostly fall into the categories of stupidity, ignorance, corruption and greed, as Michael J Panzner's account, When Giants Fall, makes clear. But no matter how bad things get, three things will now go up in price - gold, silver and oil. (Jul 31, '09)

The hole in our universe
In just six years, while the number of workers in the United States was unchanged and the country's output gained a mere US$4 trillion, credit soared $22 trillion. And some people are still not buying gold? We are so, so doomed. (Jul 30, '09)

Money to burn
Higher taxes being stuck on cigarettes will help some folk stop smoking, but the rest will just cut their spending on other, more useful, products. And the US government will have more cash to burn on non-useful stuff that IT wants. That means we are all more doomed then ever!!! (Jul 29, '09)

It doesn't work like that
People are morons if they expect that after all the times when it has been tried and failed, the government will - for the first time in history - finally be able to buy its way out of bankruptcy by printing a lot of fiat money. (Jul 28, '09)

Crazed misery
You might expect that prices would fall, given soaring unemployment and a drastic drop in demand - and not surge a whopping 1.8% in one month. That's the crazy world we live in. Even crazier, some people are not buying gold to survive the deepening misery that is engulfing us. (Jul 27, '09)

Negative folly
The wisdom of the late Adrian Rogers, who proclaimed that government cannot give to anybody anything it does not first take from someone else, was never so pertinent or horribly ignored as today, when "negative interest rates" are considered sensible policy. What is sensible is to buy gold, silver and oil!!! (Jul 24, '09)

Biden, oh Biden!
US Vice President Joe Biden is now telling citizens that the government has spend an added fortune on healthcare to avoid going bankrupt. When it is already running a US$2 trillion deficit? At least he seems to know that he sounds ridiculous. (Jul 23, '09)

Fiction upon fiction
The United States government claims the number of unemployed and the unemployment rate were little changed in June, nicely glossing over the number of fictitious jobs plugged into these numbers! Fictitious jobs, fictitious competence in government, fictitious wealth in stocks and houses, all made with fictitious money made of paper and bits of computer memory! We are doomed!!! (Jul 22, '09)

Awash in nonsense
The nonsense created by the vast amount of money now washing around the US economy includes the velocity of its movement dropping below one. It also means we are heading for inflation worse than at any time in the country's history. Gold can only soar!!! (Jul 21, '09)

Silver mismatch
Spiraling industrial demand for silver and the amazing failure of mines to meet demand can mean only two things: prices will inevitably have to reflect this mismatch and anyone not preparing for the inevitable is going to feel so, so stupid. (Jul 17,'09)

Toxic skills keep their appeal
Finding jobless folk from almost any field is an easy matter in the United States following the hollowing out of the economy with the subprime meltdown. The exception appears to be the financiers who actually developed, handled and sold those "toxic assets". They are still very much in demand. - Barbara Garson (Jul 15,'09)

California nightmare
California's leftist dreaming has made the state an economic, hugely indebted, increasingly jobless nightmare, with revenues crashing as unemployment in some areas nudges 27%. Yet rather than slash costs, it is paying with IOUs! As goes California, so goes the entire US of A. We are doomed!!! (Jul 14,'09)

Awash with cash
The US$102 billion decline in US bank reserves in one week means the banks are flush with cash after selling their toxic assets to the Fed and are not using the Fed-supplied reserves because nobody is borrowing any money. This must all be pretty unnerving to the foul Federal Reserve - and anyone not buying gold!!! (Jul 13,'09)

Shiny days ahead for silver
The US Senate's discovery that wheat traders failed to uphold commodity law sows the seed of hope that happy days are over for the slimy insiders in the silver futures and options market, which means a surge in price of the metal is just round the corner, which is great news for those of us buying the shiny stuff now!! (Jul 10,'09)

Double-digit doom
While some pundits still squawk about the risk of deflation, the recent explosion in US money supply growth could mean inflation being much worse than in the 1970s, when the prime rate hit 21.5%! That means poverty, empty stomachs - and soaring gold prices!! (Jul 9,'09)

Abandon ship
Stock prices soared in six bear market rallies during the first three years of the Great Depression. Our present rally is already higher than four of these in percentage gains and longer than all but the biggest and the best. We're coming to the edge of Previous Known Highs at hyperspace speed. Time to abandon ship!!! (Jul 8,'09)

How wrong can you get?
These huge waves of money sloshing around the financial system are not only making a mess of everything, they are forcing the World Bank to change its estimate of global economic contraction by 41%. And these folk still keep their jobs after a mistake on that scale? We are doomed!!! (Jul 7,'09)

Riches in store
With the bullion bank net short position in gold now at staggering and almost record levels, even as the US government talks of "green shoots", we can look forward to being able to buy ever-more precious metals at bargain prices. Whee!!! (Jul 2,'09)

Up, down, out and doomed
Blow away all the US government fudging of the past two decades and more and we find that, far from falling, consumer prices are now rising at around a 6% rate. Throw in plummeting household wealth and soaring unemployment, and there is only one conclusion: We are doomed!!! (Jun 30,'09)

Derivatives hokum
Nothing beats a crisis for bringing out the illiterate idiocy of self-proclaimed experts. The move by the US Congress to have a "second look" at derivatives after watching for years their monstrous development and catastrophic impact is already opening the flood gates. (Jun 29,'09)

From the US to Zimbabwe
The United States Federal Reserve is creating too much money, putting the US on the same path as Zimbabwe which, I guess you heard, has finally created so much money that its currency is now officially worthless. Worthless! (Jun 26,'09)

The mysterious omen that is 'divisor change'
It was easy to dismiss the new divisor in the Dow Jones Industrial Average as another of life's mysteries, until the Dow's earnings went from a paltry $198.96 last week to a suddenly robust earnings of $686.52, generating a yield of a mighty 7.80% this week! Wow! Something big happened. (Jun 24,'09)

Nightmarish financial numbers
It is probably wise to wear an adult-sized diaper when reading the first quarter figures. The ugly bottom line is that debt is exploding while the US economy contracted at a 5.7% annual pace and consumer spending rose only 1.5%. (Jun 23,'09)

Solar-powered downturn
The sun's surface has been unusually quiet over the past two years, with a worrying absence of sunspots and flares. This is connected to cooler temperatures, which means lower crop yields, which means higher wheat prices, which means higher prices for food, which is a big problem. But there's no great cause for panic - gold, silver and oil benefit mightily from such uncertainty. (Jun 22,'09)

Stupidity without borders
Perhaps envious of Washington's ability to burden the US with debt for generations to come, Beijing and chums from Russia and Brazil are splurging on bonds just when interest rates are set to soar. Truly, the stupidity of governments recognizes no borders. (Jun 19,'09)

Road to bank perdition
For all the talk of "green shoots" in the US economy, and even as money supply continues to soar, the state of the country's banks is deteriorating even further, with one in five losing money as bad loans climb more than 20%. We are doomed!!! (Jun 18,'09)

The only true insurance
It is not only the Chinese who are raising questions about the future value of the US dollar. America's third-biggest life insurer, for the first time in 152 years, is turning hundreds of millions of its dollars into gold. Which is more than depressing if you want to cling to the US currency. But great news if you have already seen the light. (Jun 17,'09)

China sets example to us all
China, in starting to accumulate gold and commodities, shows its skepticism at US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's claim that the US will do what is necessary to bring its budget under control. We should do the same. Right away!!! (Jun 16,'09)

Sense from overseas
At last, we hear some uncommonly correct monetary analysis, and from foreigners at that, or more particularly from German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who recognizes the "flawed" nature of the advice coming from across the Atlantic. At least she makes more sense than our own Ben Bernanke. (Jun 15,'09)

Counterfeit of just fake?
The seizure in Italy of US$134.5 billion in US bonds raised doubts whether the paper was real or counterfeit. Yet it is long known that "money" issued by the US Federal Reserve is devoid of any worth as a store of value and so is always as fake as money can ever be. (Jun 12,'09)

Economic hell
Unemployment in the United States is already close to the 20% mark, company earnings are tumbling, yet share prices are buzzing along blissfully as if all is right in heaven - even as plastic card companies are going to cut US$2.7 trillion of credit. All right in heaven? This is economic hell!!! (Jun 11,'09)

You just have to laugh
China's students responded with laughter to US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's assurances in Beijing that US debt held by their government was "very safe" and that he believed in a strong US dollar. It must be the way he tells it ... (Jun 10,'09)

Black and yellow treasure
Oil prices are gushing upwards, the prices of other commodities are surging, Treasury yields are doubling, and the US dollar is plunging. It is all horrible, terrible news - unless you own gold - black or yellow. (Jun 9,'09)

Government-backed theft
The US government's latest insane proposal to seize money from honest workers is to have every employee automatically enrolled in workplace pension plans, quite ignoring the impoverishing effect of long-term stock investments this entails. The only sensible "pension scheme" comes gold-plated!!! (Jun 8,'09)

Miracles to laugh at
United States government statisticians have found a sharp way to ramp up the second-quarter gross domestic product figures: include all those billions of dollars of bank rescue cash. Miraculous economic recovery on the way? Hahahaha!!! (Jun 5,'09)

The simple solution
It is no surprise to learn that "never in the history of the world have we faced so much complexity", but it is utterly scary when we hear that this is "combined with so much incompetence in understanding". So either you lie awake at night worrying - or do the simple thing: buy gold!!! (Jun 3,'09)

Taxed for nothing
With all the trillions of dollars of new money being spent by the US government, it is at least amusing to know that the country's taxpayers are paying taxes for nothing! Hahaha! And with the money supply jumping yet again, we are more than ever most certainly doomed!! (Jun 2,'09)

Bad, and worse to come
If the US money supply can double in one year, why can't it quadruple in one more year? And if the unemployment rate, measured the old-fashioned way, is about 20%, why should it stop there? And if you haven't already bought gold and silver, why should those that have care for your suffering now??? (Jun 1,'09)

Gold sense in high places
Germany wants its gold back from the United States and is advising Dubai to do likewise, while China is heading towards a gold-backed yuan. Which suggests not all governments are utterly stupid and incompetent - and that gold, for the moment, looks incredibly cheap, even as it shoots up in price. (May 29,'09)

The message is catching
Yet another staggering jump in US Federal Reserve total credit should be enough to persuade any sane person to do the only sane thing in this mad world. Buy gold! And with the gold index up 25% this year, the message is clearly catching. (May 28,'09)

Insanity gone rampant
Indications of insanity abound and are increasing, such as with the ludicrously high level of the S&P 500 price-to-earnings ratio as share values soar even as earnings plunge. No wonder the Chinese yuan is looking a saner reserve currency than the US dollar. Sanest of all, of course, is gold!!! (May 27,'09)

Last hope for survival
Economists' claims that the consumer is 70% of the US economy are, of course, utter nonsense because consumers are 100% of the economy. And as governments throw away vast amounts of their money to halt economic collapse, the only way out for consumers is to spend what they have left on gold!!! (May 26,'09)

Nonsense as usual
It's hard to believe anyone still listens to Alan Greenspan. His view that we are seeing "the beginnings of the bottom" is as nonsensical, useless and misleading as any of his mumblings when as US Federal Reserve chairman he led the global economy down the road to disaster. (May 22,'09)

Conjuring monster
In the latest display of its disastrous conjuring skills, the US Federal Reserve last week created a stunning US$75 billion out of nothing, then used half of it to buy US government securities for itself. What a great trick to drive up prices! And to bankrupt the rest of us - unless you have jumped a step ahead of this monster and bought - yes - gold!!! (May 21,'09)

Very bad - and getting worse
Call it a "discontinuity" or just "Something Very Bad", the era of revolving credit is over. With credit-addicted consumer spending accounting for 70% of the US economy, that is very bad news indeed. Now a lot more very bad events are going to happen - unless you own gold!!! (May 20,'09)

Jobless horrors
No matter how you play it, unemployment in the US is worse than horrific. Take off the rose-tinted glasses, and we are looking at 20% and climbing. It's lucky gold and silver are still so incredibly cheap that you can grab some before your own job hits the skids!!! (May 19,'09)

Sinking incomes
Subsidies to buyers are helping China auto sales soar, a move Washington might follow given personal income in the US fell as much as US$34.4 billion in March. Which doesn't leave much cash to pay for ever-more expensive oil for those new vehicles US consumers might buy. (May 18,'09)

Long and short of bond insanity
Industrialized countries would have to issue as much as US$33 trillion in debt to cover the costs of this financial crisis, which makes any sane person wonder just how long those morons out there are happy to bid up prices so high that the yield is driven to insignificance? Not for long. (May 15,'09)

Doubt no more
With traders at the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange heavily increasing their long positions, doubters of the one true solid investment for these troubled times should doubt no longer. These insiders know what is happening. Gold is going up! They know it! I know it! Now you know it!!!! (May 14,'09)

Inflation unavoidable
It is now being put about that the vast amounts of money being created by the US Federal Reserve and the US Treasury do not even offset the record contraction in the global banking system. As if that makes this flood of cash any less inflationary! These idiots are dooming us all!!! (May 13,'09)

Naked, blatant fraud
The grotesque form of market pornography termed "naked short-selling" is apparently fading from fashion, which is no bad thing as it involves a blatant, state-sanctified fraud against folk who contract in good faith to buy a share of stock but receive only a promise. The one protection against such indecencies is gold, the real thing. (May 12,'09)

Heading over the moon
Claims that gold could soar to be US$2,000 an ounce may so wide of the mark as to be laughable. Do the sums right, and look at the parlous state of government financing, and we are looking at a figure three times that, or 15 times. Or when the maths is all too weird - it is going over the freaking moon. (May 11,'09)

The only protection
President Barack Obama's claim to be ushering in an age of transparency is all well and good, but the nefarious dealings of central banks and the like remain a monument to opacity, which means skullduggery and other slimy deeds. The only protection is to actually own the stuff and trust nothing and nobody else!! (May 8,'09)

Ruin - then more ruin
The US Federal Reserve, having helped ruin the country's economy and forced interest rates down to zero, now has the bizarre notion that the ideal rate would be minus 5%! Which translates as prices rising 5% when interest rates are zero. These people are insane - unless they are already buying gold. (May 7,'09)

An inevitable blast
There's a simple explanation why prices in the US haven't exploded, even as Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke pumps ever-more money into the system. But they will explode - and no amount of Fed trickery will fend off that blast of inflation. (May 6,'09)

Heart-stopping circulation
The amount of cash in circulation in the US has surged in the past year to levels reminiscent of the horror-inflation days of three decades ago. The end point of this route is a dead currency. Impossible? Ask a Zimbabwean. Or just buy gold. (May 5,'09)

Sorcery of the doomed
The US Federal Reserve, not happy with the damage it has already wrought, managed to create more than US$70 billion of new credit in one week. Out of thin air. Then the same people threw away $94 billion buying toxic rubbish. And they try to tell us we are not doomed??? Hahahahaa!!! (May 1,'09)

Best in a crunch
The Chinese appeared to have got things right by sneakily building up their gold stockpile, but their fear of being stuck with illiquidity in a crunch if they have too much gold shows they have no idea. Unlike paper currencies, gold always has a buyer. Especially in a crunch!! (Apr 30,'09)

The storm yet to come
Bad though the present meltdown is, worse will come when surviving US homeowners have to stump up even more for their home loans - unleashing an even more horrific meltdown. Unless your cash has gone into gold rather than a too-big roof over your head. (Apr 29,'09)

Not so useless
Even as world demand for jewelry tumbled last year, investment demand soared, leading to an obvious conclusion that totally contradicts the view of International Monetary Fund pen-pushers who want to get rid of its "useless" stock of the stuff. Useless? When it is the only thing left of value?? (Apr 28,'09)

Unhealthy inflation
New Yorkers feeling vaguely assured by promises that inflation is low haven't been checking the cost of their health insurance, now climbing way above the price of renting a home! It's enough to make anyone sick!!! (Apr 27,'09)

Volcker punctures the nonsense
The legendary former US Treasury secretary Paul Volcker has broken months of silence with a short, polite and total condemnation of the Federal Reserve view that 2% inflation is a good thing. "I don't get it!" says the great man. But he does, he does. (Apr 24,'09)

Black-magic dollars
Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke is proving an ever-more adept apprentice of his predecessor, the sorcerer Alan Greenspan, as he creates yet more billions of dollars out of thin air, while a lulled and ever-more impoverished audience is told that inflation is actually falling!! (Apr 23,'09)

The inflation solution
The riddle of why the silver price is failing to reflect demand so high that storage space for the precious metal is running out shouldn't prevent all bar utter idiots buying up the stuff - the inflation being unleashed will resolve the riddle in due course. (Apr 22,'09)

Birds best kept in hand
The US Mint is recognizing that demand for gold and silver has been "unprecedented", even though a disconcerting number of US citizens appear blindly unaware of why their hands should be stuffed with Eagles. Would those gold coins not be safer in Fort Knox? No way!!! (Apr 21,'09)

Time the Fed got real
There is something refreshingly honest when a former governor of the US Federal Reserve admits the Fed is running a "laboratory experiment" on what drives inflation - except the real world is not a laboratory and we already know the result of the "experiment". And it is not healthy. (Apr 20,'09)

Help from the East
Washington will be more than happy to know that the Chinese are back in the market for US Treasuries as the White House, confronted by a black hole where tax receipts should be, prepares to redouble its efforts to drive up inflation. Which means we are even more certainly doomed than ever. (Apr 17,'09)

Inflation laid bare
The notion that prices are falling in the US sounds just great, except they are falling least for us consumers, and are actually rising - and fast - after the statisticians do their usual data stripping. The killer of economies - except for gold value - has been let loose amongst us. (Apr 16,'09)

Give and take
Even as the US government hands out food stamps to a record number of Americans it is increasing the amount of each handout - a sure-fire way to keep upward pressure on the cost of bread. And not just bread prices ... (Apr 9,'09)

The penny drops
It is at last dawning on those who should already know - such as foreign-exchange punters - that quantitative easing is a negative for currencies. And as the penny drops, golden coins can only go in the opposite direction. (Apr 8,'09)

So much nonsense
The nonsense being put about by the Chinese in favor of elevating the role of the International Monetary Fund's Special Drawing Rights is so ridiculous - until you realize that here is yet another reason to buy gold. (Apr 7,'09)

Give back that cash
A desperate public, not least the economically illiterate among us, will eventually open their eyes and see what their supposedly helpful governments are doing to their hard-earned money. Then they will want it back. (Apr 6,'09)

Hidden deficit horrors
There is something about the US deficit data that hints at concealment on a momentous scale, which means financial nightmares on a level not yet dreamt of. And that means more than ever there is only one place for sane people, even the super-rich Chinese, to park their money. (Apr 3,'09)

The only excuse
What sort of excuse for failure - and failure on a global scale - is it that things just became "too complex"? The only excuse for economic failure is if you fail to buy gold!!! (Apr 2,'09)

We still owe the rich
The very funny thing about the mal-distribution of wealth that has made very rich a few people who own the nearly everything while the rest of us have next to nothing is that it is us un-rich peons who still owe all the money that the rich now own!!! (Apr 1,'09)

Bond folly
The US Federal Reserve has committed the ultimate economic sin, so we had better get our money out of the US dollar fast, before it loses all of its purchasing power. And just laugh at the stupid bond buyers who think they know better. (Mar 31,'09)

Insanity finance
The borrowing to finance the US federal government spending now constitutes almost one-seventh of the total value of every goods and service that the country produces in a whole year. And rising just as industrial production is collapsing. How doomed can you get??? (Mar 30,'09)

Accidents can happen
Nasty accidents can happen when the US government pumps into the economy extra funds to half of the value of what the country makes in a year. Among them, mere fear of deflation can turn into the real horror of runaway inflation. Scary even when you are prepared ... (Mar 27,'09)

Total fraud
Of US$164 billion in total Federal Reserve credit that appeared, literally, out of thin air, last week a full $163 billion of it was used by the US Federal Reserve to buy Treasury and agency debt for itself! You can talk about fraud - or stop wasting time, get out there, and buy gold!!!(Mar 26,'09)

Job-saving nonsense
Former gold bug and Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan's latest claim to innocence for the financial horrors around us could at least be adapted to save our own job-threatened skins.
(Mar 24,'09)

Unconventional stupidity
The sheer, staggering stupidity of using "unconventional measures" is that they don't work; if they worked, they would be conventional. The US Federal Reserve finds this hard to figure out. Which is why we are truly doomed!!!! (Mar 23,'09)

Safe? But of course!!!
When the US government's largest creditor starts asking Washington for assurances that the buying power of all those wads of Treasuries is "safe", you have to wonder whether there is anyone sane in government anywhere in the world. Safe?? Hahahahaa!!! (Mar 20,'09)

Turning the screw
The decline in stock dividends means falling incomes for a lot of folk also now unable to squeeze extra cash out of their home values. That's a lot of consumer spending that is going missing - even before new taxes turn the screw!! We are doomed!!! (Mar 19,'09)

Excessive excesses
The word is spreading even to pushers of stocks and bonds that when governments give free rein to their idiocy and set about "saving markets from their own excesses" through even more excess, there is only one place to put your savings. (Mar 18,'09)

Value cross-over
Now that stocks have plummeted, dividends are going the same way - and with them the last reason for owning shares, so share values will drop even further. And you thought the Dow and gold could never have the same value??? Wheee!! Any day now ... (Mar 17,'09)

Enough is never enough
"Enough" is a pithy rallying cry, but the taxpaying classes' love of Ayn Rand's rebel John Galt and his notion of how to starve the government of revenue is misplaced. The government doesn't need their cash anymore. That's why they are doomed!!! (Mar 16,'09)

Bar-mat horrors
The monumental size of the US trade deficit per private-sector worker is utterly horrific, even when it is calculated on a bar mat, and yet more horrific is that the reason for all this economic pain is not new. But nor is our only glittering protection against these horrors!!! (Mar 13,'09)

Dodging the black hole
US job-loss figures are bad enough, but when Asian researchers decided to add up how bad things really were, they side-stepped the worst number of the lot, the black hole of losses in financial derivatives. And you thought we were merely doomed??? (Mar 12,'09)

Long and the short of it
One take on how we will emerge from the financial horrors besetting the world is that there will be a short squeeze on cash which will have to be covered by going long on cash and shorting debt - which ought to make your spine curl into a tight little knot. Unless you are well stocked up on chunks of gold. (Mar 11,'09)

Join the saved minority
When things go from merely "terrible" to "unprecedented", and that doesn't include the reasonable prospect of another 25% fall in the S&P 500, the great compensation is that when the majority of people lose money, the minority don't. And one minority is gold buyers. (Mar 10,'09)

Shining through the darkness
The US$8 trillion US mortgage debt surge over less than two decades is, like so much else, going into fast reverse, which as we all now know means a vast hole in a lot of financial circles. But one century-long surge shines out with value ... (Mar 9,'09)

The easy answer
There is, of course, a solution to our present financial crisis - it just isn't going to happen at the government and national level, which is why we are doomed. That leaves the solution of taking our future into our own hands ... which is so easy!!! (Mar 5,'09)

Back-breaking debt
The already monstrous debt the US national debt imposes on real workers doing real work for real profit will surge next year. And the so-called national leaders in the White House, Congress and Federal Reserve call this a "stimulus"? We are so doomed!!! (Mar 4,'09)

Sobering up
With the amount of currency in circulation in the US soaring, even barmen are beginning to grasp why the prices of their problem-banishing elixirs are going up. A sobering thought that helps leave us clear-headed enough to order gold along with the pizza.(Mar 3,'09)

Confidence crisis
As the confidence of US consumers plunges to a record low, the more intelligent among us will be wondering why do any consumers have any confidence left. They must be smoking something - or buying gold!!! (Mar 2,'09)

Running on empty
With US companies' earnings tumbling to levels not seen since 1995, you'd think share prices would reflect this torrid state of affairs, but in fact they are still amazingly high. Which means they have one way to go - and that gold also has one way to go, in the other direction. (Feb 27,'09)

The price of protection
The surge in new money created by the US Federal Reserve to bring Total Fed Credit to a drop in the ocean under US$2 trillion is a horrific reminder of the inflation horrors ahead - and that it is time to sell any asset, including your nearest and dearest, to get your hands on gold. (Feb 26,'09)

Plus side of stupidity
The criminally stupid US government has yet to grasp how the country has changed since the 1930s. For a start, its consumers weren't $14 trillion in debt. And few owned homes. At least that stupidity helps drive up the gold price!!! (Feb 25,'09)

Food for thought
The government scam of inflating prices by churning out vast amounts of money comes with at least the guarantee that those of us holding gold will be able to enjoy the horrible times that lie ahead - and be able to afford ever-more loaves of bread. (Feb 24,'09)

Saved in Indiana
Parts of Europe are apparently facing an economic, financial and corporate meltdown so bad it is being referred to locally and variously as a latter-day Stalingrad or even a Gotterdammerung. In the US, we call it Greenspanonomics. Whatever it's called, it means "doomed!!!" - unless you live in Indiana. (Feb 23,'09)

Inflation via another con
The collapse of US imports is bad news for Chinese exporters, workers, families and probably governments. But handing out shopping vouchers is just an alternative route to more bad news - inflation. And just more proof that most of us are doomed!!! (Feb 20,'09)

Holiday time!
President Barack Obama missed the easiest and most straightforward way to pump US$1 trillion in rescue funds into the economy - give everyone a one-year income tax vacation. It would cost much the same as his own plan, and at least give us cash to buy what matters - which is gold!!! (Feb 19,'09)

It will happen
All it takes is One Tiny Thing for the most brilliant ideas to become utterly unstuck, and when that happens, and it has happened, then the Worst Of The Worst Things will happen - though there is still time to buy a pizza and more gold. (Feb 18,'09)

Surcharge on insanity
The price of "buying American" as part of the futile effort of rescuing the country is more than just the risk that others will come up with their own insane variations. It means US taxpayers could be paying a 25% surcharge for the privilege. We are doomed!!! (Feb 17,'09)

Silence is golden
Even in a downturn, as company earnings plummet, fortunes are made by those in the know. But with the New York Stock Exchange now keeping silent on which insiders are cashing in, the rest of us have one place to turn!! (Feb 13,'09)

Gold lining to mortgage cloud
The amazing stupidity of government and its desperate efforts to shore up the housing market means it now pays mightily to hold back on mortgage payments. That means more cash is left over to buy the stuff that really matters!!! (Feb 11,'09)

Fortune-telling cookies
Day-dreamers who think falling prices mean inflation fears are unwarranted should ask themselves this: How much will a macaroon cost when nobody makes macaroons? And why are Girl Scouts ahead of the curve with their cookie boxes? (Feb 9,'09)

Peace of mind comes in yellow
As the economic downturn worsens, crazy people in the US are going off their meds - just when some tranquilizers are called for. But for true peace of mind, there is a better answer. (Feb 6,'09)

Bad news means bad news
Just because the bad news has been bad for so long, can it really follow that good news must be just around the corner? With so much new money sloshing around the system, there is only one way to go. (Feb 5,'09)

What a mess!!
The US retail sales plunge might be huge or even gigantic, depending on what trust you put in the weird terminology used to mask a reporting system designed to give good news. But throw in jobless figures and gold-shorting data and there is only one thing to do. Buy the shiny stuff!! (Feb 3,'09)

Credit you rode in on
Even as government deficits hit astronomical highs, the amount of tax credits is also proliferating to record numbers. With all that governmental support it is child's play to capitalize on the stupidity. (Feb 2,'09)

Money creation, Geithner and thin air between
The US Congress could have disbanded the Federal Reserve and gone back to a gold-as-money financial system, presumably with zero leverage, and put all of the Fed governors and their henchmen, past and present, on trial in a Mogambo Kangaroo Court of Vengeance. Instead, it confirmed Tim Geithner as the next secretary of the Treasury!!! (Jan 29,'09)

Bad news for food eaters
Scrape the dross from the headline "benign" inflation figures and we find a truer horror story about rising prices, particularly in things that really matter, such as food and medical care. When terms such as "unprecedented" start appearing, it is time to be really, really, scared!!! (Jan 28,'09)

Patching the world with glue
Forget the multi-syllabic verbiage with which Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke masks the dire straits facing the US economic and financial system. It's all about buying trash and paying cash - while the sane among us go for gold. (Jan 27,'09)

Ivory tower nonsense
The begging-bowl gobbledygook being churned out from Princeton, Harvard and the like demonstrate a monstrous failure in academia to read the wise words of the Mogambo. The sheen of gold shines ever brighter, as those ivory towers are stained with failure. (Jan 23,'09)

Gold sanity amid the madness
Showing that the wealthy are not all as idiotic as they can sometimes appear, even they are now turning to gold bars, the real thing, for safety. That's a lesson for all those who think they are missing fabulous, fabulous investment opportunities in all sorts of other rubbish. (Jan 22,'09)

A world of financial freeloaders
The latest budget deficit horrors don't even take into account hundreds of billions of dollars in "supplemental appropriations" that the US Congress authorizes and which in the past 12 months amounted to more than an incredible US$1.4 trillion of additional public debt. We are so, so doomed!!! (Jan 21,'09)

Government gone insane
The already thoroughly punch-drunk often jobless and maybe even homeless US consumer faces even more below-the-belt thumps from insane government officials as protectionism and unproductive state payrolls rise in ghastly tandem. (Jan 20,'09)

Bread misery index
Zimbabwe's destruction of its own currency, among other stupidities being inflicted with great pain on the people there, is at least a timely lesson to what lies in store for other countries trying to escape past stupidities by printing cash. Just watch the price of bread. (Jan 16,'09)

No taxation without inflation
As the US goes flat out to create ever-more government jobs, insane elected officials don't grasp that this is driving up prices with unwanted taxes, which is keeping people OUT of jobs!!!. There's only one thing to do with what cash you have left. (Jan 15,'09)

Manipulate your woes away
The slimy manipulation of gold by central banks and the International Monetary Fund sets a great example of how ordinary citizens can handle their bills, tax demands and other such nasty things - send them back to where they came from and claim they don't exist! (Jan 14,'09)

Troubled and trendy bailout route
Wrapping up debts and other financial horrors into "troubled assets" fit for a government rescue package is a cute and increasingly trendy way of solving financial woes. Has financial engineering ever been so profitable? (Jan 13,'09)

Every breath is needed
The imbecility of the US Congress in thinking it can spend America's way out of a recession caused by too much spending and debt takes the breath away - when there's something better to do with every breath you take!!! (Jan 12,'09)

Negative horror story
With the real returns on Treasury notes tumbling into negative territory, never mind a 50-year payback period, it is just a matter of time before rates soar. And while hogs might be one suitable alternative holding, gold is easier when it comes to upkeep. (Jan 9,'09)

A Federal Reserve thingy
Are US Treasuries safe? Of course they are. But are they worth anything? Not so much when the Federal Reserve is happy to keep on churning out so much money. (Jan 8,'09)

The smell of corruption
The US Federal Reserve's refusal to disclose details of how it handed out funds from the US$700 billion financial rescue package merely underscores what history has long taught - insanity, stupidity and corruption in things economic all mean - buy gold. (Jan 7,'09)

Steady diet of yuan
It may all just be part of China's progress towards world domination, but at least its plans to allow trade to be settled in yuan may help out debt-burdened Westerners buying Chinese products. And leave them with more cash to buy gold!!! (Jan 6,'09)

Silver lining to garbage
The use of silver to help clean up foul-smelling garbage trucks is an indictment of those stupid slugs too slow to buy into the shining stuff, and another testament to the value of the beautiful and increasingly precious metal. (Jan 5,'09)

Loaned, sold, gone - and doomed
Somehow the US Federal Reserve plans to detach interest rates from money creation, a trick last seen under the Fed's Paul Volker in 1979's "Saturday Night Massacre". We are so, so freaking doomed!!! (Dec 24,'08)

Too weird, and then some
Already, too much is too, too weird, too, too unprecedented. Now the US is looking to need US$2 trillion in borrowing in an economy of $13 trillion. No wonder "new financing methods" are being hunted down. Amid this insanity, only one thing offers safety!!! (Dec 23,'08)

Pseudoscience
The reduction of economics to the level of astrology leads to such weirdness as negative interest rates, the totally flat yield curve, and the US Federal Reserve looking to buy Treasuries on the open market. Not to mention the nonsense of safe assets in a fiat currency!!! (Dec 22,'08)

Emperor of the gold cartel
Whether or not gold is manipulated by a so-called gold cartel, the hard and shining fact is that gold bullion tucked safely under the mattress is keeping its value while gold shares have tanked like every other equity around the world. This investing stuff is easy!!! (Dec 18,'08)

No rest for the unemployed
One of the great government skills is to massage (always downwards) unemployment figures. That helps the gullible media and public swallow undigested the latest US jobless rate of 6.7% when the ghastly reality could be more than 16%. And you thought inflation referred only to prices!!! (Dec 17,'08)

Markets get an 'F' in P/E
The continuing high value of the price to earnings ratio of S&P 500 companies cannot last, especially as corporations have no option but to slash spending as consumers keep their wallets closed. That's good cause for panic ... unless you own gold!!! (Dec 16,'08)

How low is too low?
The idiocy of the US Federal Reserve is now being matched by the British authorities as they instruct banks to buy government debt. Not only that, but the Brits are hacking interest rates to levels unheard of in 300 years. Idiotic? Insane!!! (Dec 15,'08)

It's always about the money
The inability of government to fix deflation, depression or recession other than to throw money at the problem means all the conditions for inflation inevitably arise. With the breakdown of the gold futures market, there's even more reason for getting you hands on the yellow stuff. (Dec 12,'08)

The $85 billion non-event
The reduction of US$85 billion in a week in the amount of Total Fed Credit might seem a large amount, but given that the US Federal Reserve has doubled the stock of high-powered money to over $2 trillion in just the past couple of months, it's a non-event. (Dec 9,'08)

Hyperinflation countdown
Hyperinflation is something that happens to other countries where desperate governments produce ever-increasing amounts of excess money? Not in the well-regulated, cautious, ever-watchful US? Think again - and look ahead 18 months. And buy gold!!! (Dec 8,'08)

Wearing shorts in winter
OK! It's dumb to seek warmth in cold economic times by resorting to a cozy corner, in the arms of a fawning adorer and in a state of drunken melancholy. About as stupid as looking for some hedge fund guys prepared to go long on my attempted porfolio shift to the short side. (Dec 5,'08)

Word as good as their bonds
As if the world had not had enough of the deceit and nonsense spewing out of the higher echelons of finance, now a bunch of scumbags is failing to come good on trillions of dollars in US Treasury assets pledged as collateral for debts and bets. (Dec 4,'08)

A hitchhiker's guide to oil
US motorists who squawked about the oil price when they went stratospheric may think they're lucky now it has fallen back to Earth. With the flood of recycled petro-dollars now slowing, it won't be long before those drivers start squawking again - unless they've bought gold!!! (Dec 3,'08)

Laughable 'loans' to prevent the bust
The notion that American taxpayers can "lend" US$7.4 trillion is laughable, with taxpayers already up to their ears in debt. Not to mention local governments, now so impoverished they are confiscating overpaid taxes. In the face of such theft, there is only one thing to do - buy gold!!! (Dec 2,'08)

Salvation in the cheap oil army
The faster-than-expected declines in oil output around the world can mean only one thing - higher prices, and not just in what you pay for fuel. And that means financial salvation for folk who listen to the right music. (Dec 1,'08)

G-20 weenies on a golden spit
The Washington summit of 20 leading industrialized nations promised to keep spending money like mad instead of doing what should have been done, which was to install a gold standard. Dumb!! But it means that price inflation is a certainty, which is great for gold. Whee!!! (Nov 25,'08)

Finance, the American way
At least some Chinese are recognizing that the US way of finance involves running up vast debts through deficit spending while taking what we want and killing anybody that gets in our way. And Beijing has the cash to buy everything we will have to sell to pay off our debts. (Nov 24,'08)

Corporate earnings go cliff-diving
Almost everything in the US economy is falling off a cliff, from retail sales to electric power to factory shipments, or going up in smoke, from jobs to companies. And now earnings of surviving corporations are down to almost half of what they were a year ago. Which all proves the insanity of investing in stocks for the long term!! (Nov 21,'08)

Fed up with Fed credit
It is beyond amazing that more than half the total Fed-supplied credit to banks since 1913 was added in the past nine weeks alone. With president-elect Barack Obama planning to add to this with increased infrastructure spending, sure-fire investments for the next decade are obviously cement and inflation - and, of course, gold!!! (Nov 20,'08)

When inflation comes a-knockin'
The notion that woeful facts such as collapsing auto sales, rising unemployment and massive credit card defaults mean that inflation is dying if not dead ignores the amount of new money that will be churned out to resolve these crises. Inflation is bad and will get worse. (Nov 19,'08)

The government gong show
Not satisfied at throwing away squillions of dollars to bail out failed banks and goodness knows what else, the US Treasury is now providing up to US$540 billion to bolster the money market mutual fund industry. All that extra cash can only mean one thing - it shines and will go up in price. (Nov 18,'08)

Shielding the world from folly
The result of shielding folk from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools, so it's only neighborly to the spread the word on the consequence of surging Fed credit. Eventually they will learn that they should buy gold instead of calling the police. (Nov 17,'08)

Debt clock runs on borrowed time
Great Depression expert Ben Bernanke may have made a great mistake in his road to expertise by studying the wrong end - the bust - rather than the boom that led to the misery of the 1930s. Another mistake by the rate-cutting Federal Reserve chief is that he thinks folks want to borrow ever-more cash. Wrong, wrong, wrong!!! (Nov 14,'08)

The incredible growing government
The amount of cash US consumers have available to spend even as prices rapidly take off is tumbling in the opposite direction. As bad, the behemoth of a government is also raking in less to meet its voracious needs. Argentina's solution to such woes is enough to make you cry. (Nov 7,'08)

Yellow-brick road
Perceptive investors are in assault mode after noticing that precious metal values are a notch or two down from recent highs, thinking that the road to riches might have been smoother sticking to stocks. Think again. The road more than ever is made of yellow bricks. (Nov 6,'08)

Naked, short failures
The crazed race to safety offered by Treasury debt is catching an indecent number of gamblers in the repo market short and obscenely naked. They're not alone in failing to get their bets right. Stand up, Ben!! (Nov 5,'08)

Stability versus stupidity
The Founding Fathers of the United States knew what they were doing when they wrote into the constitution that the US dollar shall only be of silver and gold. That is more than can be said of professors who pronounce on the "instability" of gold by turning logic and events on their head. (Nov 4,'08)

Nightmares at hyper-speed
It is more than staggering. In a mere six lousy weeks, all of the total credit in the banking system created by the US Federal Reserve since 1913 has almost doubled! Six weeks, against 95 years (not to mention at random two world wars, the Vietnam War, the Great Depression, the Cold War). In six weeks!!! We are doomed!!! (Nov 3,'08)

Gold, faith and credit
The prospect of giving yourself a Christmas present by cashing in on the gaping disparity between gold and silver bullion prices and the value of the metals' futures is almost too beautiful to be possible. And by the time the lawyers have had their say, it will be. (Oct 31,'08)

A bull in a silver shop
More and more people are discovering for themselves that the legislators in Washington handing out billions of dollars to failed companies have no idea how the financial system works or what the credit crisis is about. Still, the longer it goes on the easier it becomes to understand - buy silver, buy gold, or you are doomed.(Oct 30,'08)

Mind-numbing oil
China's aim to double rural incomes in short order is scary enough when you think of the inflation that will result. Then you start thinking of all the oil that will be used in the process and that China has already increased its oil imports by almost 50% in the past year alone. Then you start thinking ... we are doomed!!! (Oct 29,'08)

Reserved seats for big spenders
The amount of fresh credit on US banks' books continues to climb by utterly surreal and insane amounts, along with other unbelievably huge numbers, such as those for gross national debt. We are doomed - except for those of us looking forward to a "breathtaking discontinuity event" in the gold market. (Oct 28,'08)

Unapologetic economic stupidity
The surge in US national debt above the US$10 trillion mark means that sustaining the government, consumer spending and the economy rests on the continuation of artificially low interest rates. To do that, the Federal Reserve must continually inflate the money supply. And inflate, and inflate and inflate. (Oct 27,'08)

The velocity of worthless money
The amount of cash the US government is throwing at the world's economies - Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke can't even guess at how much - is horrific beyond belief. Yet the real effect is of vast amounts more. Trillions more. Doomed? We are all utterly, utterly doomed!!! (Oct 24,'08)

An absent rebellion
The oppressed masses should surely be rising up in angry rebellion at the price inflation that dooms them all. Do they not know that universal investing for retirement is the stupidest Ponzi-scheme crap ever heard of? We must be morons! (Oct 23,'08)

A little thing called inflation
Inflation in the UK is at its highest in 16 years, British and other European governments are even then plowing squillions of dollar funds into their economies (courtesy the equally dumb US Federal Reserve) and the head of a funds firm is saying that inflation doesn't matter? Like nuclear bombs don't matter? (Oct 22,'08)

Theater of the fiscally absurd
Many things are beyond comprehension, but one clear thing is that this economic bailout stupidity will end badly for everybody (except those with gold and silver). If a government could buy its way out of massive indebtedness painlessly, it would have been thought of already.(Oct 21,'08)

Gobbled up by the derivatives monster
The notion that it is possible to generate even a 1% yield from the quadrillion dollars worth of outstanding derivative contracts is nonsensical. This is not a problem that can be "fixed". It will take a long, cold Kondratieff winter to sort this out. In other words, we're doomed!!! (Oct 20,'08)

Gulf spending, US style
Dubai's propensity for building big while also throwing funds at overseas banks has left it looking to its neighbors for spare cash as boom turns to crunch. How much in the way of silly lessons has it learned from the master, the US government? (Oct 17, '08)

No savings allowed
The consequence of living paycheck to paycheck is quite in line with modern financial theory, which says every dollar must be made to work, work, work - and says little about what to live on when your job goes into the trash can. (Oct 16, '08)

Inflation targeting for idiots
Try getting away at work with what central bankers such as Europe's Jean-Claude Trichet are lauded for in targeting inflation, then see how much your boss appreciates the company losses being targeted at an annual 2% rate. Idiots! Morons!! And they get away with it!!! (Oct 15, '08)

Yes!! It's a miracle!!!
The miracle of the rising US dollar when so much money is being thrown at the financial system defies belief, yet supposedly intelligent writers say this "may" tempt the US government to inflate away its debts by printing money. What on earth do they think Washington is doing already??!!! (Oct 14, '08)

Reserving the right to destroy
The US Federal Reserve has expanded its balance sheet more in one month than it has in almost all of its first 86 years of existence. This is a fundamental effect crackup - and means it is time to make some Big Wonderful Money. (Oct 10, '08)

The Russians get on message
The impossibility of the US ever paying off its vast debt obligations and the prospect of a continually devalued US dollar have the Russians wondering just how to bill others for their gas and oil sales. The logic of gold shines through. (Oct 8, '08)

Government spending spree
Banks are the focus of US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's vast bailout plan but it is the government that needs the cash because it employs half the workers in the country - and the Federal Reserve prints the money the government wants. (Oct 7, '08)

'Hoarding' is out
As folk with retirement cash stuck in stock markets see their pension hopes fade, knocking Germany as a gold "hoarder" shows a deep media misunderstanding of the world's economic realities. This is smart investing, and more folk than ever are waking up to it. (Oct 6, '08)

Fed up with Fed credit
The latest utterly astronomical jump in the amount of Fed-created credit in the US financial system is raising awareness of the "danger" our financial overlords are igniting of a great inflation in consumer prices to stave off a great depression. Danger? There is no danger!! There is total certainty!!! (Oct 3, '08)

The $200 million house of bread
Outrageous claims to the contrary by supposedly clever folk who should know better, there is No Freaking Way that the US taxpayer will show a real, inflation-adjusted profit from the bailout of the financial sector. Their time would be better spent buying gold. (Oct 2, '08)

Inflation in stereo
Thanks to the ceaseless creation of ever-more money and credit, inflation is seeping into every aspect of US life, and it doesn't just affect price labels. Just try getting a product warranty honored. All thanks to former Fed head Alan Greenspan. (Oct 1, '08)

The world's most powerful currency
Consumers who thought they could get a perpetual free lunch by borrowing money to pay for it are discovering that the bill comes sooner or later. But the golden lining to this dark cloud is visible in the East. (Sep 30, '08)

Big banks, bumbling idiots
The thieving, lying weenies at the epicenter of the biggest US financial catastrophe ever are being given the right to increase the money supply at their whim. And the legislators that have been spending money for decades as if there were no tomorrow also get their say in the matter. This is outrageous!!! (Sep 29, '08)

Cower before the great Mr P
US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson not only wants vast amounts to bail out the financial sector; he wants unprecedented powers over the economic and financial life of the nation ... and more deregulation to solve problems caused by deregulation. Insane!! Now look into my eyes ... (Sep 26, '08)

Who's doing who a favor?
As Total Fed Credit surges at an utterly amazing pace, part of the vast, global scheme "to fuel economic activity", we are finding out just who is small enough to fail. Only idiots who can't make payments on loans they already have are good for new handouts. For the rest of us - buy gold! (Sep 25, '08)

What is a gold bug?
The dedication of the gold bug in the face of short-term market fluctuations can defy the minds of even the keenest of analysts. Yet betting with gold against a fiat currency in the hands of politicians is the biggest no-brainer on the planet! (Sep 24, '08)

Budget insanity
US state governments are finding that growing losses on Wall Street and a declining economy mean tax revenues tumble. That still isn't stopping them from continually raising their budgets. And that means more inflation. And higher gold prices! Thank you, thank you, thank you. (Sep 23, '08)

Greatest-ever buying opportunity
As the US government, already spending half the country's gross domestic product, borrows and spends more and more money as more and more people turn to the government for help, prices will rise .. that means gold will go higher and higher. It's the greatest buying opportunity for the metals of all time!!! (Sep 22, '08)

Retirement on a pizza slice
Ten years ago, the average person invested a whole six-slice pizza. Now, they have as little as one slice of a pizza to show for their efforts. And somebody still thinks they can fund a retirement on that kind of performance. (Sep 19, '08)

Landing a broken airplane
The most recent decline in Total Fed Credit could be just one more bit of big bad news, given that the whole corrupt US financial system survives on the continual creation of new money and new credit. We are too far down the rocky road of destruction to stop now. (Sep 18, '08)

Bottom of the class
The stunning ignorance and blithe insouciance of the world's media minions regarding the hard facts of the financial crisis are a cause for deep shame. Only one fact has to be understood. There is No Freaking Way (NFW) that gold and silver will not shoot to the stars as the dollar collapses. (Sep 17, '08)

Spooky stats from the US Mint
The riddle of missing US gold and silver has several possible answers, some horribly ugly, such as: "It's all gone." With measures of gold prices at dirt-bottom levels, that is not such bad news at it appears. (Sep 16, '08)

Going into debt to buy a debt
Americans elected socialist morons who have now spent the country into deficit-spending bankruptcy by letting the Federal Reserve create the money that people borrowed (thus creating a debt) so that they could buy Treasury debt! Hahaha! Going into debt to buy a debt! (Sep 15, '08)

Deployed to the dole line
The latest report of employment showed that the US unemployment rate is now over 6%. Worse, only in government, education and healthcare is employment rising! Doomed? Doomed!! (Sep 12, '08)

Robbing the poor of Jeffersonian wisdom
The poor are being robbed at an ever-rising rate as the government continues to increase excess money and credit. But commodity prices have also not finished rising - and that includes gold! Whee!!! (Sep 11,'08)

Not quite like that
If the bull market in gold were over, it would mean inflation was under control, the dollar's problems had been solved, a new source of energy had been discovered and everyone was smiling. Which means of course that gold's future is as bright as ever. (Sep 9,'08)

The assets of penultimate fools
The chances of US consumers pulling out their wallets to stop the economy disappearing into a black hole are pretty faint as they are already borrowed-out and overspent enough to make eyes water. That's a big wheel to fall off the economy. And the US is not alone. (Sep 8, '08)

Pride in acting like a pawnshop
Down-on-their-luck Britishers streaming into pawnshops to hawk their gold and diamond baubles may not be doing the most sensible thing, but the pawnbrokers loading up with the glittering metal have the right idea. Accumulate, accumulate! It beats owning a house in the Californian sun. (Sep 5, '08)

Lightening the mood with a deflator
When the US government has consumer inflation staring it in the face at 8% and then uses a figure one-sixth of that to calculate the country's output, then claims the country is not in a recession, there is only one conclusion - we are doomed!! (Sep 4, '08)

Silver stats to salivate over
Given all the silver being demanded by industry and the screeds of ounces sold in totally unreal transactions, and look at the stuff actually available, and the case for buying is shiningly compelling. Now! Ahead of the inflation-ravaged horde!!! (Sep 3, '08)

No credit for central bankers
It appears from the Jackson Hole annual confab of central bankers and their like that the US Federal Bank and its counterparts are finally going to restrict credit and keep the money supply from growing. Unfortunately, central bankers are known as liars, and always have been. (Sep 2, '08)

Intaxicating rebate checks
Tax-refund-induced euphoria is a great buzz, until you realize it was your money to start with. Then a hangover-like throb takes over as you recognize double-digit inflation means the rebate is fast becoming worthless. And it used to be that 2% inflation was bad! Yikes! (Aug 29, '08)

Retirement wake-up call
Folks will finally realize - if only as they face what they thought was going to be their retirement - that it is impossible for even the majority to take more purchasing power out of the stock market than they put in. Chumps. Poor chumps. (Aug 27, '08)

Worthless money, worthless economy
Not only won't the crumbling financial services industry pay taxes for years and years, the banks are going to ask for tax refunds. Meanwhile, your pension plans are dissolving into worthless pulp. So much to weep about ... unless ... !!! (Aug 26, '08)

Profits hit with an ugly stick
Turning to food banks because you haven't been given a pay rise? This is disastrous. And with inflation ghastly even with fudged numbers, profits are being hit, which means fewer raises, fewer jobs, less money to buy gold ... all ugly and getting uglier. (Aug 25, '08)

Double-count magic
The family's money is gone, but the good news is that I have doubled our income by double-counting the money I took from them as still being in their accounts, although I spent it! Why not? The government does it. Accounting magic! (Aug 22, '08)

The new silver - made with paper
All the bad news in the world about inflation and conflict and a collapsing US financial system might make you wonder why gold and silver prices are not going through the roof. But then there's the paper trail ... (Aug 21, '08)

The profit potential of pork products
Inflation is a real screw-job because you have to buy twice as much at a cost that is three times as much merely to eat as much as you used to. Ask the pork-loving Chinese. It's a dance of death, and we are doomed!! (Aug 20, '08)

Unemployment survival guide
Suburban subsistence farming is the new trend in the US as food prices soar and as more and more people are finding time on their hands to plant potatoes. Yet academics remain blind to the fruits of Alan Greenspan's tenure as Federal Reserve chairman. (Aug 19, '08)

A big stinking economic heap
How will this inflation end? When the central bank is no longer able or willing to extend credit, or consumers and businesses figure it no longer makes sense to borrow. Things will get rough in the months ahead. (Aug 18, '08)

Gold and the out-of-whack economy
Things that are out of whack tend to get back into whack, or put another way, things that sell for half their value end up costing full price. Take gold as an example. Or silver. It is enough to make you scream "Bargain!!!" (Aug 15, '08)

The world on its head
The shambles of the US economy, from banking crisis to chaotic housing sector, hasn't prevented the strongest showing in years of the US dollar. And us poor folk, it seems, are not so poor after all. You can't make this stuff up! (Aug 14, '08)

The US dollar on Roman steroids
The governmental idiocy of permitting - and encouraging - inflation is catching on and impoverishing citizens from the US to Europe to the heart of Russia. This is economic suicide on a grand scale. It is utter madness. Just ask Nero. (Aug 13, '08)

Fractional-reserve banking at its finest
The money mills at the US Federal Reserve, which has now dedicated about 11% of GDP to keeping financials afloat, are churning ever faster, spewing out more cash that multiplies and multiplies - until the economy will collapse from ruinous inflation. All that money, yet we are getting poorer by the day. (Aug 8, '08)

Monetary joyride
What's with this discrimination? The cop still wrote a ticket when it was clear the car broke the speed limit of its own accord and I only had my foot on the accelerator. Yet there's no ticket for central bank chiefs when global commodity prices soar. (Aug 7, '08)

Nowhere to hide
The rich aren't as rich as they thought they were, and even the Brits are catching onto the idea that there is an alternative to seeing their wealth drain away as inflation climbs around the world. (Aug 6, '08)

Election time, and then ...
There's so much bad news oozing out of the US economy you might be wondering why things haven't collapsed? The entire US House of Representatives and a third of the senate are up for reelection come November and they need your vote. Until then, they improvise. After that, the bills come in. (Aug 5, '08)

Betrayed by the village idiot
The US House of Representatives, which has raised the country's debt limit by a further US$800 million, an indication that we have not learnt the obvious lesson that we have been betrayed by Congress again and again as it screws up everything it touches. We, the voters, get what we deserve. (Aug 4, '08)

Inflationary horror movie
Even if we take the US inflation figure of 5% at face value, the interest on our hard-won savings should be about 8%, yet it isn't even half that on a five-year certificate of deposit. That means there is nothing to hold back prices and your savings are doomed soon to be worthless. (Aug 1, '08)

Too little, too late
It should be a cause for some sort of celebration when the US Federal Reserve stops increasing money and credit and so is not increasing inflation in consumer prices. But it is not, because so much debt has already been created that it is impossible to pay it back. We are doomed!! (Jul 31, '08)

Reward time for the incompetent
It is a crazy desperation of a new kind when investors drive up share prices even as earnings slide. But it gives a great lever for us useless workers when we next put in for a pay rise. (Jul 30, '08)

Nothing but pain
The squeals of pain from the squeeze on the US economy are about to get louder after three months of contracting bank credit, with wages falling off a cliff and jobs heading in the same direction. (Jul 29, '08)

The problems-solving Paulson package
The Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac rescue package from US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson solves all of our problems, with unlimited funds to be spent with total secret discretion and the option to whack enemies with utter immunity. (Jul 28, '08)

Blind to the obvious
When the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank president warns that running the printing press to pay today's bills leads to much worse problems later on and says the Fed will never, ever, allow the perception to take root that it is pursuing a cheap-money strategy to accommodate fiscal burdens, you are driven to ask, "Why the hell are we here?" (Jul 25, '08)

Strippers jockey for pole position
The rising price of everything and general declining standards of living are apparently prompting ever-more women to give pole dancing a try to entertain the low-class jerks still with a buck to spare. Inflation is ugly, and getting uglier. (Jul 23, '08)

The power of the Chinese credit card
As US consumers discover the horror of what happens when they can no longer live on borrowed money, the Chinese are just starting to enjoy the beauty of plastic money and consumerism. With prices rising, that's great news for commodities - and buyers of real stuff like gold. (Jul 22, '08)

Inflation slime all over
Like a slow build-up of some life-sucking slime, inflation numbers are appearing everywhere and getting more monstrous by the day. Start with an innocuous 1% gain in something like US export prices, you soon have a 45% somewhere else. Doomed? We are freaking doomed!!! (Jul 21, '08)

Riding it out to rock bottom
Against a staggering load of liabilities and liabilities masquerading as assets equivalent to a third of the annual United States GDP, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have only US$80 billion in capital. The companies may "ride out the storm", but their investors will probably lose everything. (Jul 18, '08)

Stamps issuers join inflation farce
It was unlikely that a 30% rise in food-stamp applications was budgeted for by US states but that is the price to be paid when the Federal Reserve churns out too much money and allows too much credit. (Jul 17, '08)

Highway to the danger zone
World Bank president Robert Zoellick's warning that the world is entering a danger zone through surging food and energy prices raises the question of how it got to such a dangerous spot, if not through his central bank buddies for decades creating too much worthless money. (Jul 16, '08)

Retirement cash put to work
Hauling money out of your retirement funds prematurely is a never, never thing to do. Unless you look at the falling returns on those funds, look at the declining dollar, look at inflation, look at the price of gold and do the sums. Getting your hands on that cash now may be the best decision you could make. (Jul 15, '08)

Forget those retirement plans
US consumer prices have gained sevenfold since 1967, and wages have climbed by exactly the same amount. In other words, per hour earnings have not increased a single penny. No wonder you can't afford to buy a new car - let alone retire!! (Jul 14, '08)

An eternal Minsky moment
Fear that a gut-churning recession is even now following the US's decades-long orgy of monetary and fiscal gluttony could be misplaced. A perpetual, spiraling collapse into instability and chaos could be in the offing. That calls for total panic!! (Jul 11, '08)

To hell in a currency basket
Raise interest rates, lower them, or leave them the same - the US Federal Reserve and chairman Ben Bernanke can do nothing to avoid the deepening financial crisis they have created for the rest of us. And banks elsewhere that believe fancy currency pegs are helpful escape tools - they are wrong. (Jul 10, '08)

Credits in a swirl of insanity
From dumb to pure moronic, things can hardly get more stupid than proposals to give tax credits to folk in the US who cannot afford to buy homes to buy homes. So they spend the money, get it back, spend the money, get it back - all to save the banks that should not have lent it in the first place! Mad! Utterly freaking. (Jul 9, '08)

Purchasing power blown away
Anyone sold a retirement plan by some fancy-suited sharpie must be looking at share prices with horror, even as central bankers inflate currencies at ever-more alarming rates and blow away whatever value is remaining. Investment for the long term? Losers all! (Jul 8, '08)

From the bad to the really sinister
The grim facts of what happened to retirement funds in the first half will soon be hitting letter-boxes around the US and elsewhere. And that will be the year's good news as even more sinister events, really sinister, are yet to unfold. (Jul 3, '08)

Inflation under the covers
Talk of nipping inflation in the bud is leaving things a little late. As measured in 1974, price inflation now is at 13%, which is to say in full flower and spreading its tendrils ever wider. As for the supposedly non-existent wage-price inflation - it's all around. (Jul 3, '08)

More bats and a bigger budget
US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's claim that "our nation has come to expect the Federal Reserve to step in to avert events that pose unacceptable systemic risk" is entirely, entirely wrong. It is supposed to protect the dollar - and has failed. So why give it more power? Do you smell corruption? (Jul 2, '08)

Funding the Bacchanalian excess
Ancient Romans knew all about excessive indulgence in life's pleasures, but where for the Romans death was preferable to abandoning a lifestyle they could no longer afford, today's gorgers at the government trough will elect politicians to continue the feast, regardless of the cost. (Jul 1, '08)

Softball policy quizz
Only more stringent monetary policies can apparently save emerging markets, even already-savaged Shanghai, from taking a pummeling. What monetary policy is the best and most stringent? Easy one: the gold standard! (Jun 30, '08)

Love and hate
We love inflation as it drives up prices for assets like stocks and hate it as goodies we also love are driven out of reach. That means more aggro from the kids and the rest of our nearest and dearest who want to get their grubby hands on our wallets. (Jun 27, '08)

Economics to scare the kids
Even our children can quickly understand the horrific manner in which the US Federal Reserve has abused its position and wrecked the economy by churning out too much money. Understating inflation is only part of it. You hear those screams? (Jun 26, '08)

Economic egomaniacs
With the US Federal Reserve creating money at a cancerous rate and total US government taxation consuming half of all incomes, how can a country with so many schools and universities be so brain-dead as to believe such idiocy is even possible? That is something for those well-educated to think about as they lose their jobs.
(Jun 24, '08)

Inflation in spades
The latest US producer price index data were enough to make blood run cold, if it wasn't already frozen in fear at the thought of stagnant wages, government spending out of control and record debts of every kind. And if you thought we looked doomed, now we are also technically bankrupt. But we still have a choice. (Jun 24, '08)

Too much for a fiat currency
US central bank chief Ben Bernanke was stretching more than a point by claiming higher oil prices were driving up the risk of inflation, but rectifying the Federal Reserve's absence of moral commitment to maintaining the value of money is not a solution. The constitution had it right all along - no fiat currency. Oil as a monetary base will do, but gold is less messy. (Jun 23, '08)

Nothing to be done
As United States and European Union central bankers make noises about bringing down inflation they sit back and do nothing for one simple reason - nothing can be done! If something could be done, somebody would have thought of it in the last 3,000 years of idiotic governments destroying themselves with creating too much money and credit. (Jun 20, '08)

umbers and greed without limit
The arrival of quadrillions in derivatives mathematics means US$10 million is being bet for every private sector worker in the US! That's scary enough to distract anyone from the ugly silver tricks being operated by banks. (Jun 18, '08)

Investing made simple
As most "investors" in the stock and bond markets get back less buying power than they invested, thanks to dollar depreciation, investment choice is utterly simple. And it is even simpler when you know that precious metals are the only asset class that moves opposite to stocks and bonds. Or put another way - every cloud has a silver lining. (Jun 13, '08)

Golden horizon
The little drop in the gold price over the past few weeks cannot last, as inflation is driving up the cost of producing the stuff to the extent that it needs to trade between US$1,000 and $1,500 an ounce to compensate. If that wasn't enough, surging general inflation means interest rates are going to climb sky high. It's a ravishing prospect. (Jun 12, '08)

Paid-up crude ignorance
If oil company chief executives don't know why the price of oil is soaring and US Congressmen don't know, they should get out of their chairs and hand over their jobs to your's truly. Oil costs are rising so much because of irresponsible government spending and irresponsible creation of money by the Federal Reserve to feed that spending. Simple. (Jun 11, '08)

The declining quality of menus
McDonald's risible comment that it would not tamper with its "highly successful" menu, implying it would sacrifice profit by not raising prices to offset higher costs, could make a sensitive reader throw up. Yet those costs are soaring amid some of the best growing weather the US has had in millennia. So keep what you have in your stomach - you'll need it!! (Jun 10, '08)

Economic lessons from Pope
Columbia University's decision to sign up US Federal Reserve Board member Frederic Mishkin makes you wonder what on earth he is going to teach his students, unless it is the art of creating bubbles, or the incestuous arts of oversight. Or perhaps he could branch out into poetics, and wax wisely on the doubtful pleasures of "lucre's sordid charms". (Jun 9, '08)

Containerized horror
The worldwide climb of inflation is set to get even worse, not least because of the surging price of shipping stuff around the world in containers - while people can still afford to buy it. (Jun 6, '08)

Sounding the government debt alarm
Total US Fed credit has shot up again, inflation is higher than it has been for decades, and now we are looking at US$622 billion more debt this year? Gaaaahhh! We're freaking doomed! (Jun 5, '08)

Howling at the moon
Mr and Mrs Average Joe would have made a paper gain over the five years from 2002 if they had followed the establishment advice to buy and hold stocks for the long term - but they would have made a real, inflation-adjusted loss of 25% in the period! What a way to get rich! What a way to fund your retirement! A 25% loss in buying power every five years? Ouch!!!! (Jun 4, '08)

A paralyzing rise in money supply
The US Federal Reserve is pumping out money that will mean general price levels will probably almost double in the next five to six years. Double! That is sheer madness. (Jun 3, '08)

A worrisome understatement
Monetary policy is so loose worldwide that real interest rates are less than zero. Does anyone actually, really believe that interest rates will always stay below the rate of inflation? They are going to rise - and some people are going to hurt! (Jun 2, '08)

The dollar-aligned dollar
Economies that link their currencies closest to the US dollar are seeing the biggest price increases as a follow-on from lower interest rates in the US. That means the home of the US dollar will take the biggest inflation hit of them all. (May 30, '08)

Pawning for the payroll
The US economy is in a downturn, so it is no surprise that garage sales are on the increase and pawnshops are doing a roaring trade. But business owners pawning stuff just to make their payrolls? This is gloom indeed. (May 29, '08)

Inflationary insanity
Europe's poorest are hit by higher prices because their governments racked up debt for a decade or more. And now the governments propose more of the same? Insane! (May 28, '08)

Applauding the ridiculous
For 25 years, the US Federal Reserve has kept inflation at an average of 3.2% a year and some people out there think the Fed deserves applause for that? You will go a long, long time before you hear something so ridiculous! (May 27, '08)

Banking on incompetence and theft
German President Horst Kohler has it in a nutshell when he says international financial markets have developed into a monster that must be put back in its place. We could start with the US central bank, which has cut the value of the dollar by almost 40% in six years. (May 22, '08)

Golden experience to relish
The US Federal Reserve has one very good reason to continue nudging life into a decaying economy - not to please the consumer but to keep tax dollars flowing to the government. Consumers are the mugs whose savings are drained to pay the higher prices created by the Fed money machine. Gold buyers excepted of course. (May 21, '08)

Cheap oil? Dream on, brothers
Investment bank Lehman Brothers wants you to believe that the price of oil will slump about 45% in two years, even as developing countries demand more of it faster than ever before and production is shrinking in almost two thirds of the places that supply the stuff. Demand up, supplies down means one thing, and it is not cheaper oil. (May 20, '08)

The Earthling economics experiment
Even John Maynard Keynes said that markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. That means if you are going to bet, you have to go with the fundamentals, and even with an intellectually bankrupt US Federal Reserve perpetually lowering interest rates, using a fiat currency, using literally zero reserves in the banking system, with a complicit Congress, it is just a matter of time. The payoff is knowing HOW much time. (May 19, '08)

The economic sky has fallen
Inflation is no longer just a nasty little thing that might or might not raise the "concern" of the US Federal Reserve, it is a horrible storming fact of life, climbing out of low single digits way up into the roaring 20s for key stuff such as imports. It isn't Zimbabwe yet, but it is heading in that direction. (May 16, '08)

A deficit of intelligence, insanity in surplus
The swing in US trade figures in March from a monthly surplus of US$63 billion to a deficit of $58 billion, a negative turn of $121 billion, and the stock market goes UP? Investors think this is good news? They are mad! How else can the Dow Jones Industrial Average now trades at a P/E average of 85? This is beyond stupid. It is insane!! (May 15, '08)

'Unemployed' now a valid job description
Not only are close to a quarter of a million more people on the US government payroll than a year ago, the number on that payroll is more than the folk out there making real things - not even counting the thousands so utterly jobless they have signed up to government programs. And don't even think about that "hospitality" headcount. This is inflation hell!! (May 12, '08)

Stranger than fictional balance sheets
The US Federal Reserve is taking a whole lot of potentially dodgy assets from banks as security against Treasury bonds. So far so horrible. Now, Standard & Poor's has cut assumptions for how much will be recovered after defaults on some of those assets. So where does that leave the value of the Fed's "security"? Or put another way, how big is the hole in the Fed's balance sheet now?
(May 9, '08)

A nightmare of magic tricks
The US government's latest version of that great statistical trick called a deflator means we can fall asleep peacefully knowing that inflation is still less than 3% - and dream of where US banks magically and silently "disappear" US$49 billion and dream of why folk are buying Dow Industrial stock that won't pay back in seven decades. And ... aagh!! Wake up! Wake up!! (May 9, '08)

A fear of falling Fed credit
Increasing a country's money supply by raising debt is unwholesome, bizzare and utterly discredited, but that is how it works, which means that when total Fed credit stands still, as it has just done, that is worse than bizzare and incredibly unwholesome. The ramifications are terrifying. This is what is meant by "doomed". (May 8, '08)

Downsizing on the menu
The ghastly mess that is the US economy is giving consumers plenty to chew over - such as how producers mask inflationary horrors by cutting portion sizes while pushing up the cost-per-mouthful of your breakfast favorite. Even so, eat while you can before your local state government starts figuring out how to plug the gaping hole in its finances.(May 7, '08)

Massage for number crunchers
Few things beat a massage for making one feel better, especially if you're a politician or central banker with a bunch of numbers that would put you out of a job if the public saw their naked form. Unemployment? Give a squeeze here. Inflation? A dexterous bit of pressure will make it look less life-threatening. And for the really ugly bits, try some hedonic adjustment. (May 6, '08)

Gold price suppression scheme
How long the present relatively low price of gold will stay that way may depend on whether the US Federal Reserve has sold half the country's gold and if it is prepared to stop at half. At least that would give us the opportunity to buy more gold cheaply for a while longer yet. (May 5, '08)

Funny numbers are no joke
There's something funny happening to the money that the US Federal Reserve actually has under its direct control. It is not just that a bigger and bigger chunk of this is going overseas. One set of figures has the country's monetary base rising steadily over the years, which at least is positive. Other data show it actually falling. That's a reason to press the panic button. (May 2, '08)

Banking on a house of cards
Investors in Swiss bank UBS have found out the hard way that putting your cash in the hands of investment management "professionals" is as good a way as any to ensure you get back less than you put in. Now just wait and see what happens to American banks ... and then to American shares ... and houses, and bonds. Doomed? Absolutely. (May 1, '08)

At the center of a flood of debt
Look out any US window and the view is nothing but a sea of unpaid bills, with all that subprime mortgage panic a drop in the ocean of woes facing a low-IQ nation that thinks it can painlessly borrow and inflate its way out of any debt. It can't. And if you want to survive the threat of drowning like your neighbors, sell everything and buy that golden lifeboat. (Apr 30, '08)

Fried in the financial sun
Any thoughts that the decline in bank holdings of derivatives means all is now well can be thrown out the window when you consider just who exactly bankers are, and if you didn't already know who they are the latest interbank lending claims will tell you. Yet you still want to hold stocks? At a price-to-earnings ratio of 57 and climbing? Hahaha! Suckers. (Apr 29, '08)

Big, bad, and the bill is rising
The idea that the US is suffering from some sort of credit crunch is now so familiar that it is almost banal. But banal it is not. The reduction in short-term commercial loans outstanding indicates that nothing less has happened than a rupture in the system. And the bill for fixing this is going to be big. Very, very big. (Apr 28, '08)

Funding the food price fiasco
Is there no end to the blithe ignorance, the sheer insanity, the blind arrogance of the powers that be when they wonder what to do with other people's money? Such as the International Monetary Fund "tackling" rising food prices by having donor economies give other people money to pay those higher prices! Duh! (Apr 27, '08)

Magical money from thin air
Don't be fooled by the slowdown of the magic money printing machine smothering the US in increasingly useless dollars. The Federal Reserve goons have been busy elsewhere, piling up more assets in the past year than the Fed amassed in the previous 95, while flogging off in a mere three months a third of the Treasury bonds it had accumulated over the same nine decades. We are doomed!!! (Apr 24, '08)

Glitter among the debt depths
The credit crisis consuming the brightest and best of our financial brains has drawn comparisons with the Great Depression. Far-fetched? Not if you look at US debt figures, already way past levels seen seven decades ago. And large chunks of new debt created courtesy of the Federal Reserve this year will start coming due in about three months from now. That means fun for some of us (Apr 23, '08)

Disproportionate derivatives
The idea that the financial world, built on crumbling stacks of derivatives piled high to the tune of US$700 trillion, could replace its foundations with real stuff like gold is a non-starter, given how the porcine US Congress gets fat on the present setup. But something horrible is happening, and the lifeboat is shiny, metallic and definitely yellow. (Apr 21, '08)

Inflation of the third kind
As if it wasn't bad enough that food prices are soaring along with numerous other commodities, thanks to the profligate behavior of central banks and their minions, we now hear that Russian oil production has peaked. That's right - we are looking at diminishing supply and rising demand. And that means one thing - yet more inflation (Apr 21, '08)

Heart attacks and tax codes
Beset by demons warning of deteriorating mental and cardiac capacity, the idea that the capital gains tax was already 5%, let alone was about to be cut to zero, and hadn't even been noticed, is enough to induce panic. What else is happening out there that we are not aware of? (Apr 18, '08)

The monetarist school of economic assassins
In the mad, mad world that is Milton Friedman's insane legacy, a world where we are discovering that debt does in fact matter, here's some food for thought. Wheat-farming land has declined for more than 30 years and food inventories are the lowest in six decades. And where do you think food prices are going to go? To the heavens. (Apr 17, '08)

Melting a Grammy for gold
Anyone who still thinks these are normal times is either on holiday outside the solar system or hasn't opened their mail recently. Things are so abnormal that amid the worst crisis since the Great Depression, US stocks are priced way above normal when they should be way below normal. It's time for some heavy metal lyrics; better still, make that precious metal music. (Apr 16, '08)

Cursing the loss of purchasing power
Bond prices and the number of jobs lost to the United States economy climb ever upwards while home values and company earnings pick up speed in the other direction. As the Fed floods the system with fool's gold, that spells misery all round, unless you hold the real stuff. (Apr 15, '08)

Government spending burns the toast
With the US financial sector in a Deeper and Deeper hole and folk get Drummed out of their jobs as Debt-burdened companies go bust, tax revenues are also going Down, even as the government spends ever more of that tax money. That means the increasingly ubiquitous D also stands for "Default", "Darkness" and "Despair". Aaagh! (Apr 14, '08)

Not-so-quiet food riots
Life can be a riot, and when the kitchen boss wants more coins in the food kitty and the beer fund is threatened by 10-fold jump in the cost of the stuff that makes liquid happiness possible, there's only so much you can do - go thirsty, hit the streets, or buy gold. (Apr 11, '08)

Perched on an economic fault line
Weird things are getting ever weirder as the US financial system cracks and crumbles - and we're not just talking about plans to give the economy-wrecking Federal Reserve even more sweeping powers, even as the gravy flows and flows through its emergency lending spigot. There's this: Wall Street's big guns are now booking gains on the declining value of their own debt! (Apr 10, '08)

Trillions to go, and buyers wanted
Collapse of the US housing boom requires effectively squeezing US$12 trillion out of the sector. Is it coincidental that Joe Public can now buy Treasury paper in $100 chunks, down from $1,000 previously? Is that because someone must come up with the cash as foreigners tire of bankrolling US profligacy? Are we doomed? Yes! (Apr 9, '08)

The government genie flips a coin
The awesome power of a fiat currency makes anything possible - negative interest rates, tax rebates, tax cuts and increased government spending all at the same time! Even a negative lease rate for gold! Weirder and wonderfully weirder. But all the US Federal Reserve is doing right now is fighting for another day of economic reprieve. (Apr 8, '08)

A crude source of welfare
Food stamps are all the rage in the US as inflation digs its claws deeper into the guts of the economy. And the cost of welfare handouts in the world's oil-producing countries (think food riots!) means prices will keep on rising. And if you don't understand what the solution is, dust off your old Monopoly board. Every family should have one. (Apr 7, '08)

Another bar of golden idiots
The man in the street - or in this case Frank at the bar - just doesn't get it. Not yet. But he will. The fires of inflationary hell will see to that, and before much more booze passes over the counter. With broad money supply growing at an annualized 20% pace as the US Federal Reserve reliquifies non-liquid assets, things are going to get ugly. (Apr 4, '08)

Insane economic news of the day
Where do you start when there is so much insanity around, the US Federal Reserve is churning it out as if the doors of every insane asylum in the country were being thrown open. "Free reserves" in the banks are a negative US$75 billion! Almost twice "total reserves". What is going on here? And the price of gold falls? Utterly, utterly insane. (Apr 3, '08)

Financial humor isn't funny
The US may pay a steep price to free itself of its present woes: bigger government, faster inflation and a poorer country. That's the good news. Savers - and that is a lot of people - are losing money to prop up the big Wall Street brokerage houses. And that's only part of the bad news. (Apr 2, '08)

The voyage of the Economic Enterprise
Nowhere in the history of Earth, nowhere even in this entire galaxy, is there an instance of a healthy economic boom that started after the biggest orgy of speculation and debt creation the planet had ever seen. We are done for - except of course for those who steered us into the mess in the first place. (Apr 1, '08)

Kids go to gold camp
Profligate creation of money and credit leads to complete collapse of the monetary system and the US Federal Reserve's touches on the tiller do not mean that after last week factors that have pushed gold higher since the turn of the century have evaporated. Increasingly useless money is still going to pour into the economy. And that means one thing - and its shines ever brighter. (Mar 31, '08)

Ingesting the polluted ocean of commerce
Like they were sucked into some sort of vast, sucking, gaping whirlpool of economic insanity, US families blew US$74 TRILLION in extra household debt in a mere eight years and that money ain't coming back, no matter that the Fed has just created $9.6 billion in extra cash to bail out its Wall Street pals. That's extra liquidity for you - and it is worse than poison. (Mar 28, '08)

Inflation in heart-attack territory
It makes you choke on the breakfast cereal - not just that wheat prices are up by a third in one year or that things cost roughly 10 times what they did 48 years ago. The US national debt is 32 times higher than it was in 1960! Our only prayer is that gold can rise faster than everything else - and we know that just isn't going to happen. (Mar 27, '08)

Risk management addiction
Former US Fed boss Alan Greenspan claims amid the worst financial crisis in 50 years that he eliminated "distressing inconsistencies of the unsophisticated forecasting world" in that very period. How? By putting together a bundle of half-witted assumptions that ignore what actually happens in the real world - which is that gamblers lose. (Mar 26, '08)

Economic stupidity is no solution
The International Monetary Fund surprises nobody with its call for taxpayers to bail out everybody caught in the subprime crisis. But it's another matter when a Financial Times editorial urges inflation. Don't folk understand that keeping the existing structure intact requires the same degree of economic stupidity all over again! Only one thing can be done - keep money supply and debt levels constant and constrained by gold. (Mar 25, '08)

A bunch of government gobbledy-gook
Liquidity crisis? When extra money is entering the US economy at a pace not seen since a few weeks before president Richard Nixon imposed wage and price controls? We are awash with the stuff - unless you are one of the unemployed, whose numbers are already half way up to Great Depression levels. (Mar 20, '08)

Stepping up the spending surveillance
US consumers blew twice as much on their credit cards in January as they did a month earlier, so the American way of life remains blissfully blind to the impending doom all around. Yet inflation-adjusted spending actually stalled for a second month. So nobody bought more! Things just cost more! A lot more. And those suckers weren't buying gold. (Mar 19, '08)

Borrowing is a doubtful bargain
Borrowing cash to buy now before things cost more tomorrow is a great idea if your job is guaranteed for life. Which it isn't. And it's a good idea if you can pay your bills in the absence of one month's pay, which most folks can't. The end of the world as we know it is nigh and there is only one thing to do - buy gold. Or two - buy oil. (Mar 18, '08)

Bad news for tax revenues
As over-bought, over-promised, over-leveraged, over-the-top idiocies collapse all around us, losses on this scale are the worst kind of bad news for tax revenues and governments and recipients that depend on them. The Fed has created so much fiat money, so much credit for so long, that you must be brain-damaged even to hope that it will not end badly. (Mar 17, '08)

The dinosaur gold-standard economy
The dinosaurs had a monetary system based on gold, which is why there was no inflation in prices during the entire Jurassic period, and anyone who says otherwise is lying. Only a moron would attempt to inflate the money supply when the entire history of economic mankind shows that has ruined everyone who has ever, ever tried it. (Mar 14, '08)

In phony-baloney money we trust?
A Ponzi scam is the essence of most bonds these days, in a market predicated on pure idiocy. With M3 money supply inflating at 17% a year and 10-year bonds yielding under 4%, buyers are losing purchasing power at 10% a year to lock in a return of less than 5% a year. Time to yell out: "Caution; professional money manager at work." (Mar 13, '08)

Golden lifeboats flee the Titanic
Is their anyone apart from Fed-hired economists still wondering whether the purchasing price of their pay packet is crumbling? Or why people always turn to gold at such times? If you're fleeing the family it sure beats trying to carry around bags of wheat, even when their prices have tripled in a matter of months. (Mar 12, '08)

Bernanke gets it backwards
When Ben Bernanke implies that the whole monetarist school of economics was wrong and that inflation is caused by rising commodity prices, especially the rising price of oil, why does nobody ask the one question burning a hole in the brains of Mister, Miz and Missus America, namely, "Why do you believe that?" High prices are the result of the ridiculous excesses of the Federal Reserve, not the cause. (Mar 11, '08)

An apple a day will kill you
An apple a day keeps the doctor away, but the cost of munching that pomaceous health-strengthener is rising and not just by a pip or two but to the very core. Not just crunchy fruit. A commodity prices benchmark is rising at its strongest in 52 freaking years! The Hesperidian joy in all this is that the inflation-adjusted price of gold is also soaring. (Mar 10, '08)

Worthless money - guaranteed!
There is no known example, in the history of the world, where a fiat currency was debased in a wild fractional-reserve multiplication by the greedy banks that did NOT end badly. And 100% of the time is as close as you can get to guaranteed. It is time to be frightened. Really frightened. (Mar 7, '08)

Drunk with absolute purchasing power
If people could buy oil with gold, the price would have been unchanged for 60 years! Now you see the beauty of gold as money; your purchasing power is absolute! Prices never change! Now when will those suckers earning a measly 5% interest on financing US spending sprees demand a yield that offsets inflation ... ? (Mar 6, '08)

Silver medicine for inflationary ills
The scourge of inflation is sweeping the land, but fear not. The ideal prophylaxis measures are at hand, not least shiny, solid and still cheap-at-the-price silver. Cheap? With the US dollar falling, falling, falling and demand rising, rising, rising, even $135 an ounce won't look expensive. (Mar 5, '08)

A world without demand
The amount of money that has been lost in the derivatives business is worrisome, as sales tumble 93% from the year before. Without demand, supply overwhelms supply, prices plummet, and without new derivative sales to finance the existing clot of derivatives, things go from bad to worse! (Mar 4, '08)

Food for thought in larder price claim
It doesn't take a food hawker, least of all one from the summit of his profession, to tell us food prices are going up. But at rates "never seen before"? Food for thought indeed, unless like The Mogambo you have digested the risks of compounded inflation and stocked the larder with gold. (Mar 3, '08)

Heads I win, tails I break even
It's bad enough that fewer than a third of workers aged 36 to 43 have any pension plan coverage. Now folk who have coverage are bankrupting their retirements to keep up payments on a house that they couldn't afford in the first place, that they can't afford now, and is worth less than they owe! And it's going to get worse! (Feb 29, '08)

TFC goes down on the upside
Growth in Total Fed Credit is slowing even as the absolute amount climbs towards the trillion-dollar mark. That is no comfort to hungry folk in Yemen getting wasted as they riot in protest at the rising cost of bread. But then they didn't have the foresight to build a bunker and stock it with that essential of inflationary times - gold. (Feb 28, '08)

Every clause has a gold lining
When can inflation in an "all items" commodity price index be "only" 15.6%? When it's in euroland, and the dollar equivalent is 30.7%! And how is a 65% hike in iron ore prices good news? No wonder folk are rioting from Jakarta to Milan, panicky governments from Argentina to China are imposing price freezes - and the "gold clause" is making a comeback. (Feb 27, '08)

Nearly perfect data
Take a 15% expansion in US money supply, mix in a near-perfect partnership between money supply and rising prices, spice up with gibberish from the zombies in charge of US banks and economy, and what do you have? Yikes! A sweat-inducing brew that means we're doomed! Long term. (Feb 26, '08)

Economic miseries by the second
Fed chairman Ben Bernanke may have sermonized a stunned Senate into shocked silence but he had the Mogambo revved up to shrill-shriek mode. You can get it all on video, but get those checks sent out right now before the price soars - along with everything else!!! (Feb 25, '08)

Boozed-up Brits can beat the blues
As the Western world follows Zimbabwe down the hangover path of hyperinflation and the US model of zero savings, boozed-up Brits have the lifeboat for staying afloat right there in their waste bins. Get canned and survive! The way to go. (Feb 22, '08)

Sensible is out, inflation insanity rules
One of the US government's really smart cookies quits his day job to go support "sensible policy solutions"? In this insane world in which The Mogambo can't get drunk behind the garage at 6:30am without his wife yelling at him, and power suppliers tell folk to use power only at night to save costs, you are looking for "sensible"? Only one thing is sensible, and it shines. (Feb 21, '08)

Squeeze along as inflation bites
There are no prizes for guessing who ends up paying the bill for the US tax-rebate handout. Yes - its you! But there is still room in a tight squeeze to find the perfect antidote to this painful, painful event. (Feb 20, '08)

The quicksand of deficit spending
The insanity of the $168 billion so-called economic stimulus bill was bad enough - now we have Nancy Pelosi raving over its so-called benefits. That other tortured cry in the night? It's The Mogambo, weeping at the sheer stupidity of "gift" economics. But at least he's not behind the curve like the rest of those poor suckers. (Feb 19, '08)

Prehistoric problems with fiat currency
Not only is all the money that has been lost - trillions in January alone - borrowed and has to be paid back, commodity prices are up 61% in five years. If that ain't case closed on the failure of the Fed's mission to maintain price stability, grits ain't groceries. (Feb 15, '08)

Saddled by electronic pixie dust
Yes! The Great US Way of deception is catching on. Secrecy inflation is sweeping the world from Washington to Britland to Iraq along with magic credit creation and rising prices. Like ordinary citizens are too stupid to notice that prices are always going higher, much higher? (Feb 14, '08)

Add another trillion
You thought a $3 trillion budget was monstrous? How about $4 trillion? And while we're talking about guns, maybe a recession will force folk in the US to stop acting like murderous buttheads and get down to creating a real economy. (Feb 13, '08)

Oil crisis rush hour
Get your hand out of that cereal packet and look at the price tag - it's going up - along with everything else, including oil, except the value of your dollar, which is going down, down, down, down. (Feb 12, '08)

Enough claptrap
Lower interest rates may boost the stock of Mogambo Global Enterprises, but risk is unchanged as the management is still the same halfwit who has us on the brink of disaster! Things are rapidly deteriorating, and you don't need equations to prove that Ben Bernanke is wrong. (Feb 11, '08)

Ephemeral hell
Who knows what in the hell is going on? Bank reserves stagnant for a decade and bonds the Fed bought by creating money to buy them are disappearing. It's bad, it's blatant corruption. Worse - an even fresher hell is on the way. (Feb 8, '08)

A 'big budget' tragi-comedy
The funniest thing about the new movie I.O.U.S.A. is the title. The tragic thing is that the US's national debt of $9.1 trillion is already $500 billion more than when the director was interviewed. (Feb 7, '08)

Golden prices from falling supply
The price of gold must equilibrate lower supply versus higher demand at a higher price. To those who own gold, or plan to own gold before things get kicked into high gear, this means, "Wheee!" (Feb 6, '08)

Freaking doomed by doubling power
Take a blank piece of paper and write down a 1, double it to get 2, double that to get 4, and keep doubling until the numbers reach a point where you suddenly leap to your feet and say, "That Stupid Mogambo Moron (SMM) is right; we're freaking doomed!" (Feb 5, '08)

A trillion-dollar smile
The shock of learning that US$-based mortgage bond losses will amount to $3.2 trillion takes The Mogambo to the brink of cardiac arrest. But a golden angel of mercy restores him to his normal, serenely smiling self. (Feb 4, '08)

Keynesian quackery
A piddly US$150 billion is going to make a big difference in preventing the overdue bust at the end of the biggest boom the world has ever seen? Hahahaha! The Mogambo is laughing so hard his stomach hurts, but he'll spend his $800 on a pizza - a big one. (Feb 1, '08)

Tragic tale of the last fool in line
Look at how high stock prices are, they say. The people who own stocks must be making money. But according to The Mogambo's math, the majority must lose so that a minority can gain, as it is a zero-sum game. And that minority is usually Wall Street insiders, banks and government-parasite industries. (Jan 31, '08)

Indicators signal turn for the worse
There is reason to think that the yen will get really strong, which means that the dollar will get really weak, which means that gold will really go up in price, and The Mogambo has already told you what to do about that, but you don't listen. Bozo. (Jan 30, '08)

Drooling mad
The Mogambo is heavily sedated, in a straightjacket, and tied to a chair - the minimum precautions for watching US Federal Reserve chairmen appear in public, especially in front of a clueless bunch of congressional yahoos. While Ben Bernanke pulls the wool over Congress's eyes, The Mogambo attempts a gallant, defiant gesture of contempt ... (Jan 29, '08)

Bank-robbery index turns bullish
Bank robbery is 40% more popular than last year, and the FBI is too busy saving America from terrorism to do anything about it. But the irony is that the real crooks are the banks themselves. (Jan 25, '08)

A $4.4 billion drop in the bucket
Of course $4.4 billion is not enough! The economic system has to absorb trillions of dollars of current and future losses! Never mind! Life will get even sweeter for holders of gold as the Fed et al concoct even more stupidities to save the economy. (Jan 24, '08)

Passing the buck
If you want to know why America is doomed, the St Louis Federal Reserve boss can tell you. It's because the Fed is a pit of vipers that cannot be trusted, and the ratings agencies are even worse, and only an idiot would trust these organizations to tell you the correct time of day. (Jan 23, '08)

Oil battles gold for investment supremacy
The price of gold doesn't matter, as all The Mogambo wants is a little gasoline. And a pizza. And some beer to wash it down with, too. (Jan 22, '08)

Today's forecast is ... hey, it's lunchtime!
US Fed chairman Ben Bernanke is ready to take "substantive additional action", which the media and markets take as "Rates are going down, dudes!", and The Mogambo interprets as "Inflation in prices is going up, dudes!". Anyway, don't look out the window: if inflation hasn't taken the food off your table, The Mogambo will. (Jan 18, '08)

Let gold yell for you
Heard the joke about "investing for the long term" to "fund your retirement"? The Mogambo's throat is raw and sore from yelling and calling people idiots for believing such nonsense, so now he justs points to a chart that shows the Dow adjusted for inflation since 1925, and laughs. (Jan 17, '08)

The Metaphor Bandit on the prowl
Diets are like Santa Claus and Santa is like excess money, and saying that the falling US dollar has nothing to do with inflation is like nominating The Mogambo for "Father of the Year", or saying the UAE central bank governor is not an ass. (Jan 16, '08)

Free money to the rescue
The Mogambo reveals to Regis and Kelly, all the viewers at home, and ATol readers everywhere the Big Freaking Lesson gleaned from 4,000 years of economic history. And it is ... come closer ... closer! ... (Jan 15, '08)

Gold in the time of economic cholera
There are those of us who wonder aloud, and say, "Is the last 25 years truly indicative of gold's seeming long-term $1,500 per ounce value? Perhaps not! Let The Mogambo speak about this and other matters!" (Jan 14, '08)

Incredible inedible ethanol
An entire third of the grain output of the American farm system will disappear from the world's food supply as it is turned into ethanol, and that's on top of the terrifying increases in food prices we are already seeing. Starvation leads to nastiness, writes The Mogambo (see also Big Mogambo Book Of Economic Stuff, Chapter 10, "The Lesson To Be Learned From The French Revolution And Several More Since Then"). (Jan 11, '08)

Free money popular? Surprise, surprise
The Fed, patting itself on the back for providing new loans for cash-strapped banks, is now increasing by 50% the amount it is throwing away to these poor, subprime-benighted lenders. Success? Disastrous! And yet another sign of the Fed's dismal failure to do its job. (Jan 10, '08)

Will work for taxes
Has it come to this? That we are now ravenous vampires sucking the life-blood of aging citizens by driving septua- and even octogenarians out to seek part-time work to pay off property taxes! Their not-too-menial contribution might help cover school budgets, but it is Evil! Evil! Evil! and all part of the government ruining your life, the dollar and the economy of the USA. (Jan 9, '08)

The cornered rat defense
When confronted by a compelling argument that contradicts your own, don't hem and haw and cast personal aspersions, attack, like George Armstrong Custer, without mercy. Get right in THEIR stupid little faces and demand that THEY come up with some cash, you deadbeat losers, and right now, or I'm calling the cops! (Jan 8, '08)

Courting disaster
The judges of the US Supreme Court want a pay rise, no doubt because price inflation is killing them. Yet it was the Supreme Court that traitorously overthrew the constitutional requirement that money had to be gold or silver, and in so doing set the wage-price spiral in motion. The Mogambo is spitting mad.(Jan 7, '08)

Solid gold silver surge
Gold at $1,200 an ounce by the end of 2008? That's nothing - look for silver to hit $30. The stuff is selling for 15 bucks right now. Can anyone lend The Mogambo $15?
(Jan 4, '08)

Well worth the 20 bucks
The total US national debt is over $9,120,000,000,000.00 and the nation's financial statements are such a torrid mess that the top auditor balks at giving an opinion. Inflation-stoking idiocy means we're all doomed, but the people with gold - and the bunkers - will be the last to go. (Jan 3, '08)

The Santa Cigarettes Caper
Santa brought me a carton of cigarettes for Christmas, which is a lot like the US Federal Reserve giving money away; it is widely appreciated and craved, even though it is obvious that the money is poisonous. (Jan 2, '08)

To negative infinity - and beyond
American banks have loaned every additional dime of the trillions of dollars that they have taken in over the past eight years. No additional reserves at all have been added. Not a freaking additional dime of reserves has been added in a decade or more. (Dec 20, '07)

Economics ain't pretty
It's rising prices that make it look like US factory orders increased, and are the reason why I am gagging up blood, and if any of it gets on your shoes, don't blame me - I never said economics was pretty. (Dec 19, '07)

Brave new Mogambo
The news is so terrible that I'm thinking I should not be out here in the open, but securely locked down in the Mogambo Fortress Of Angry Solitude against the inflationary horror that is descending upon us. I cry and whine and beg them to stop telling me these things. Then they hit me with: "Things can clearly get much worse." (Dec 18, '07)

Mogambo noir
What is wrong with Dashiell Hamett's economics, why the country is really "on the bum", and how not to go on the bum with it. (Dec 17, '07)

An economic law of physics
I was thinking about doing a little research to find out if there has been any time, ever, when stocks selling at a P/E of more than 18 had ever, EVER had a huge drop in earnings like this when the stock market and the whole economic thing did NOT go to hell. Then I realized that this would entail a lot of work. Luckily, a little-known law of physics arrived to save me. (Dec 14, '07)

Living the nightmare of Hamiltonian economics
We have finally overruled the Jeffersonian republic that made America into the world power that it became, in favor of that Hamiltonian nightmare of a huge, powerful, dictatorial, fascist federal government. (Dec 12, '07)

Subprimed to lose lots of money
The US Conference of Mayors says that the US housing slump is going to slash tax revenue by more than $6.6 billion. Then there's the multiplier effect, which means that actually between five and eight times that much will be lost income and lost taxes. (Dec 11, '07)

Weak dollar induces a dream world
The Cold, Cruel Laughter Of The Mogambo (CCLOTM) is mocking and scornful at the stupidity of people still buying into that "buy and hold", "investing for the long term" nonsense. Hahaha! (Dec 10, '07)

Bulls for bullion
No certificates. No accounts. No receipts. Just heavy chunks of gleaming yellow gold in your sweaty little hand. However, if you are happy to take someone's word for it that they are holding gold for you, then there is exciting news for you: the Mogambo Gold Bullion Storage Service is now in operation. (Dec 7, '07)

Lost in the wage-price spiral
It's not just us Americans. It is reported that "Money-supply growth in the euro region accelerated to the fastest pace in more than 28 years, adding to the European Central Bank's inflation concerns." "Adding to concerns", they say! Also adding to concerns may be the fact that while German inflation is at a 13-year high, unemployment is near a 15-year low, and the wage-price spiral is spiraling. (Dec 6, '07)

The shock of a thousand trillion
We are talking about a quadrillion freaking dollars! This, we are told, is the size of the black hole in the world economy ... When I regain my senses, my colleagues demand that I get back to work. Little do they realize that real, inflation-adjusted wages today are one fifth less than they were in 1972 ... I pass out again ... (Dec 5, '07)

Traumatized by inflationary gunfire
We are not talking about The Mogambo or his closet of bullion, or even how some snotty "mental health professionals" think his stupid kids are now "scarred for life" because of a little gunfire and vague death threats for trespassing in the Mogambo Forbidden Zone. Instead, we're talking about inflation and oil. (Dec 4, '07)

Just desserts aren't so absurd
Zimbabwe is to get new bank notes as the old ones are obsolete due to inflation of 15,000%. And it is highly instructive that President Robert Mugabe has a master's degree in economics from the University of London. (Dec 3, '07)

Commodities benefit from megaforces
Why you should be buying gold right now, instead of reading this stupid Mogambo column. And why The Mogambo should be buying gold, instead of writing about it. (Nov 30, '07)

The cold comfort of economic collapse
We're talking $3.6 trillion in subprime-related losses. The entire gross domestic product of the United States is only about $14 trillion. So we're losing, at a stroke, the equivalent of 26% of everything we make in an entire year? (Nov 29, '07)

Never enough gold jewelry
Investment demand has replaced jewelry buying as the major driver of gold sales. So now women will be saying, "Don't buy me any more jewelry! Buy gold bullion as an investment, instead!" (Nov 28, '07)

Economic hell to pay
The Fed steadfastly believes that there is always a level of interest rates that will lead to more borrowing, and more economic growth and more wonderful economic splendor. Like me getting drunk and surly, and then thinking that getting drunker makes me more convivial. It does - for a while. And then, as in economics, there is hell to pay. (Nov 27, '07)

The debt-ridden tooth fairy
My surly son has just concluded his daily ritual of asking me to give him some money. Today he's whining about how his stupid abscessed tooth is now so painful that it can't wait a few more lousy days until my cash flow gets back in its groove. He even volunteers to pay me back! So I tell him, as a way of changing the subject, about the insane levels of debt in the world. (Nov 26, '07)

Twilight Zone buying power
Using real - as opposed to Fed - inflation data, it turns out that a 1980 barrel of US$39.50 crude oil is the equivalent of over US$200 per barrel in today's anemic dollars. Oil at $100 suddenly looks cheap. (Nov 21, '07)

More than 'sheets' hitting the fan
We're talking about banks' balance sheets, and the numbers seem so horrific that we are suddenly thinking about banks going bankrupt. (Nov 20, '07)

Franken Berry needs an inflation-free diet
What is the sound of one hand clapping while the other hand reaches for a box of breakfast cereal and then having to pay more for it in dollars-per-ounce, which means having less money for everything else including going to a bar to get away from children whining that they are hungry? (Nov 19, '07)

Criminally irresponsible deficit spending
I put up ten bucks to borrow a hundred with which to buy this debt, and now I am down by 50%? I have lost five times as much money as I put up! My God! My prostate involuntarily quivers in shock, proving that there is life in the old boy yet! (Nov 16, '07)

The dark side of the Mogambo
It surprises me, as I look out of the periscope of the Mogambo Bunker, that the world is not in flames, and the idiots collectively known as "the American public" are not out rioting in the streets. Then I remember the old adage that "ignorance is bliss". Then I remember that I am pretty ignorant about a lot of things, too, and wonder why I am not blissful. (Nov 15, '07)

Cash and the commodity craze
Look at me! I am suddenly in the trigger swap business! I get to charge you a fee to float a dollar's worth of bonds backed up by a dollar's worth of your own money? Hahaha! And there are investors who will voluntarily do this? Hahahaha! What a racket! (Nov 14, '07)

More generous inflation protection
"By the way, you stupid employees, you're all screwed! Now get your nasty butts back to work! Work harder AND faster, you worthless proletariat factor-of-production scum! The central bank has forced you to work all of your life ! Arbeit macht frei! Work until you die!" (Nov 13, '07)

Spending more and getting less drunk
The world is full of neo-Keynesian trash, although there are plenty enough people who comprehend the lessons of economic history, and thus gold has barreled above $820 an ounce. Even stupid guys like me can buy gold and prosper. (Nov 12, '07)

Painted rock predicts the Dollar Index
"Hold the rock in an outstretched hand, making sure the rock is well away from your body, then say aloud 'Oh, Magnificent Mogambo US Dollar Index Predictor, what will the dollar's value be over the long run?' Then let go of the rock." (Nov 9, '07)

GDP lies and statistics
US inflation was at a four-decade low in the third quarter, because import oil prices rose! The reason one plus one equals zero, we are told is that, "Most of the time, the government's formula doesn't produce any weird numbers, because the mathematical quirks all cancel each other out. But in the just concluded third quarter, it did produce quirky numbers that don't accurately reflect reality, even though they are correct from an accounting point of view." (Nov 8, '07)

Caught red handed killing the dollar
Mr Frederic Mishkin of the Fed has joined Alan Greenspan, running around saying, "It's not my fault! It's not my fault!", when the whole world spent all that time watching him and the Fed bludgeoning the dollar, then standing over the prostrate, bloody body of the dollar, holding the murder weapon in his hands. (Nov 7, '07)

Dinner roll model of Yale economics
A famous-yet-laughable Yale economist bonehead thinks the Fed can "mitigate" the US housing bust by taking "aggressive actions". This guy is saying that there IS such a thing as a free lunch! Hahaha! Bigshot Yale economist! (Nov 6, '07)

Gold-flavored Napoleon complex
I read somewhere that the money supply in China is growing at 20%, which proves that the Chinese government is every bit as stupid as everybody else's governments, in that they allow the money supply to grow at such a horrendously appalling rate. (Nov 5, '07)

The ticking of the oil clock
Oil prices will be rising higher and higher with every tick of the clock, higher and higher, month after month and year after year, until sometime after you get old and die. We're all freaking doomed, anyway. (Nov 2, '07)

Drowning in inflation is never popular
We Americans are no longer exporting inflation with our strong dollar, and the tide has just started turning. The "tide" imagery is intentional, and I am happy to report that this also describes part of the script of my next film, which is going to be XXX-rated. The working title is The Sins Of The Flesh And The Pain Of Inflation.(Nov 1, '07)

The tequila model of exponential growth
Inflation, by law, inflates exponentially. I'm kind of getting freaked out here because "continually worse" is a nightmare from which you never awake - as you'll find out if you try to drink a bottle of tequila exponentially. (Oct 31, '07)

The sole inflation creator
I am beside myself in anger. If it had not been for the damnable Federal Reserve, we would all have a rising standard of living, as prices would be declining in line with productivity increases. We would be approaching Nirvana. (Oct 29, '07)

The tremors of economic calamity
"What this little putz of a 'journalist' doesn't understand is that the central banks are not a success, but are a gigantic failure, and they fooled everyone for a few years with their new calculations ('lying with statistics') of inflation in prices …" (Oct 26, '07)

Cheaper to freeze to death
"He is saying that you can get a free lunch with 'appropriate policies'! Hahahaha! And this guy supposedly teaches economics at Harvard!" (Oct 25, '07)

The red herring of dollar decline
The Fed and the Treasury have decided that they are going to set up a huge special fund, with untold billions of pretend dollars, drawing in more investors to which the banks will sell short-term paper to finance the bailout, so that the banks can trade derivatives around amongst themselves, thus establishing their "market price". This remarkable idea has given me a terrific business idea! (Oct 24, '07)

Dollar bears unite
"As soon as I open my Fat, Stupid Mogambo Mouth (FSMM) about how all of these new dollars are such bad news, here comes Peter Schiff with his essay 'Are There Too Many Dollar Bears?' I immediately think to myself, 'If Mr Schiff is going to repudiate what I just said, then I am really screwed! Am I ever going to be right about anything my whole pathetic life?'" (Oct 23, '07)

'Paltry' is a laughable distinction
A bank loans some underpaid loser too much money to buy too much house, on which the bank will make some minimal profit even if he manages to pay the mortgage, and now the government wants the bank to take a loss to bail him out? Hahaha! (Oct 22, '07)

Werewolves of inflation
"The government simply budgeted more borrowing ˇ and so the budget deficit appears lower on paper, even though they borrowed and spent more than they budgeted! At that ugly news, I found my hands clenching into Powerful Mogambo Fists Of Outrage (PMFOO)!" (Oct 19, '07)

Inflation is scarier than skimpy pizza
No more! Please! No more bad news about price inflation, the one thing to be feared above all things, except maybe skimpy pizza! But almost as bad! (Oct 18, '07)

Trading your paycheck for a coin purse
"The damned government has now ruined the money so badly that the little bit of metal in the old coins is now worth more than the face value of the coin, but the government can't wiggle out of paying for their sins by letting people not pay...taxes!" (Oct 17, '07)

Jobs fight to the death
"I could tell by his tone that when he said, 'This is not good,' he meant that, 'Running that close to the bone means any systemic shock - a hurricane that damages drilling platforms in the Gulf, a terrorist attack on oil pipelines in Nigeria, an unexpected cold snap in the northeast - could cause prices of everything to skyrocket.'" (Oct 16, '07)

The Mogambo Theory of Currency Relativity
I bring this up because the Nobel Prize for economics is coming out this week, and I sure could use the huge wad of cash that comes with the Prize, and I finally deserve it this year, as I have just neatly connected Einstein's Theory of Relativity with money. (Oct 15, '07)

Gold hoarding greedy pigs
The majority must always be wrong. It is crucial that they remain clueless at this stage of the coming gold, silver, oil and commodities boom, while we wily, scheming, greedy pigs buy the stuff at bargain rates. (Oct 12, '07)

Did he say, "Tighter monetary policy"?
It looks like about $15.4 trillion in bank assets and liabilities is being backed up by a minuscule $40.2 billion. That's a microscopic 0.0026%. Hahahaha! Fractional reserve banking at its finest! (Oct 11, '07)

The Rodney Dangerfield of commodities
"As for the apparent disrespect for silver, it's the vector you get from history ... and the suspicion that comes from an enigma, wrapped in a mystery, wrapped in a corrupt, stinking, filthy Comex/Nynex/government mess, so that now we are freaking doomed." (Oct 10, '07)

Take my buying power ... please
"And all of this money was created so that the American government could slide into the stinking swamp of communism, as over one-half (the majority) of Americans get their income from government ... " (Oct 9, '07)

Oil produces expensive Caesar salad
"Then, last Thursday, I was pretty well 'adjusted' and could barely hold my head up off the bar, when ˇ Wham! The oil future shot up over $2.79 to $83.09! Hahaha! I was right! Absolutely correct, from an investment perspective ..." (Oct 5, '07)

A potent inflationary cocktail
Incompetence and inflation is what a central bank is all about. According to the Inflation Calculator, it takes US$21 in 2007 dollars to buy the same stuff that $1 would have bought in 1913 when the monstrous Federal Reserve was created. (Oct 4, '07)

Demand sacrifices quality packaging
"This, then, is how the rich get richer! And the poor get poorer because they are the ones paying the 'silent tax' of higher prices caused by the inflation in the money supply, which was created to buy the bonds in the first place!" (Oct 3, '07)

The not-so-tragic tale of dollar/oil disparity
Oil exporters don't want dollars, see? They want units of buying power that they can use right now (like ordering some pizza and liquid refreshments for everybody), or to use in the future (to order some pizza and liquid refreshments as soon as The Mogambo goes home) ˇ" (Oct 2, '07)

The indeflating sub-feral government
"I took the box of porn and pizza mess and put it all over the office of my assistant, and HE got canned when I fired him! You should have heard him scream about how he was innocent! Hahahaha!" (Oct 1, '07)

Educating morons about the margin
If a billion bonds sold all day at $10 apiece, but the last (1,000,000,001st) bond of the day sold at $11, all the rest of that whole billion bonds are, now, also worth $11. It's all happening at the margin! (Sep 28, '07)

Down to the last grain
"If you actually think that food production as we know it can be constantly increased geometrically so that it offsets exponential population growth, then not only will I laugh at you, but I am willing to take your money via the commodity markets as you are proved wrong!" (Sep 27, '07)

Inflation leads to bigger bullet biting
"'If Fed cuts rates and results in higher inflation - it would be the lesser of two evils.' I can't believe my ears! What a moron! I bellow, 'There is nothing worse than inflation! Nothing!'" (Sep 26, '07)

The economic boffo comic
"The only saving grace in this whole stinking mess is that I am not from Connecticut, the weird little state that actually elected, and consistently reelected and reelected, this selfsame Christopher Dodd, and who now must live with the shame of having done so." (Sep 25, '07)

Silver and gold salvation
"Suddenly, my heart jumped into overdrive, and I felt a cold chill that could only mean that I did not have enough silver stashed away, and leapt up to go out and get some more ..." (Sep 24, '07)

The wages of economic stupidity
We are going to learn that while the 'wages of sin' may be death, the 'wages of economic stupidity' are where actually dying is taking the easy way out, as the economy is a living hell in which it makes sense to poke holes in one's rusty water pipes so as to bring down the plumber's charge per leak. (Sep 21, '07)

The pinecone currency of Camptown
"Even kids playing a simple game can show us the ways of inflation. Monetary inflation begets price inflation. Pinecones or your favorite paper currency, the fate will be the same." (Sep 20, '07)

Welcoming the end of the world
Higher prices in winter? "Sounds miserable," I think to myself, "but not the end of the world." I am immediately contradicted by Doug Casey, who writes, "Let me cover the big picture. I do think we're approaching the end of the world as we know it." Hahaha! What a card! (Sep 19, '07)

A peek at the peak oil problem
"However, this is not about another one of my psychotic episodes concerning world domination in a Reign Of Mogambo Terror (ROMT), but instead about 'the race for energy in the Arctic' and how the Russians have recently claimed the North Pole as theirs ..." (Sep 18, '07)

Toying around with toxic exports
"As far as I am concerned; things bought from China will cost more, and things that we will be importing from other places will cost more, too, because of all the new demand made possible with more Chinese money." (Sep 17, '07)

Money won't supply your soup spoon
Investment advice from someone old enough to have seen it all before: obtain a favorite cup and spoon. At the soup kitchens of the Great Depression, you had to bring your own. (Sep 14, '07)

Dollar index can't flex its puny muscles

"Now the poor old buck has broken the 80 level on the dollar index, a milestone of sorts, as there are rumored to be lots of big bets using that level as the dividing line between breaking even and getting killed by the exchange rate of the dollar." (Sep 13, '07)

Ups and downs in an economic black hole
"Infinite variance! I damn near choked on my burrito at the very concept! Infinite variance! What in the hell could this possibly mean? In my Tiny Mogambo Mind (TMM), I see bell curves suddenly appearing out of nowhere ..."(Sep 12, '07)

Subprime meltdown finally affects beer drinkers
"There are probably a lot of theories why St Pete customers aren't going to restaurants to swill beer like they used to ... sales may be down because 'people are consuming at home' because of 'declining real estate values' ... Gosh! Ya think so?" (Sep 11, '07)

Know your gold
"Analysis of the data from these Mogambo Research Associates' (MRAs') forays into the field has shown that test subjects readily and consistently reveal that they don't know anything about gold ..." (Sep 10, '07)

Inflation attacks the newsstand
"No, the particular thing that set me off in a rage was that she said Barron's rose in price from $4 an issue to $5! A 25% jump! Overnight! Naturally I assumed that the stupid cashier deliberately overcharged me, the little vicious brat ˇ" (Sep 7, '07)

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