Sunday, November 4, 2007

Good Thing The Mogambo Doesn't Watch CNBC



The Tremors of Economic Calamity


By: Richard Daughty
I was thrilled to see that Junior Mogambo Rangers all over the place sent me the AP news article by Anne D'Innocenzio titled "Living Paycheck to Paycheck Gets Harder", which shows how attuned their delicate Mogambo Economic Senses (MES) have become to the tremors of economic calamity (inflation in prices).
Check this out: "Gas prices hit a record nationwide average of $3.23 per gallon in late May before receding a little, though prices are expected to soar again later this year. Food costs have increased 4.5 percent over the past 12 months, partly because of higher fuel costs. Egg prices were 44 percent higher, while milk was up 21.3 percent over the past 12 months to nearly $4 a gallon, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics."
The result is that when prices go up faster than income, then people start suffering, as is proved by Rev. Melony Samuels, director of The BedStuy Campaign Against Hunger, which is "a church-affiliated food pantry in Brooklyn." She says that, "The pantry scrambled to feed 5,000 new families over the past 12 months, up almost 70 percent from 3,000 the year before."
Up 70% in one year! And this is 5,000 new families in dire need, right there in that one place in Brooklyn! Multiply that times the number of all the places in America that are suffering the results of higher consumer prices, which is the inevitable result of the filthy, despicable Federal Reserve creating the money and credit to cause the higher prices, and this is so intolerable that what we ought to do is rise up in open rebellion and install Emperor King Mogambo (EKM) on the throne to rule with an iron fist in one hand and a tasty Taco Supreme in the other, smiting and lashing out in unrestrained fury at Congress, the Supreme Court and the Federal Reserve until all the people are horrified and are begging, "Please stop punishing them, Merciful And Handsome Mogambo (MAHM), as they have been cruelly whipped and beaten for their sins, and now they must languish in the infamous Mogambo Dank Dungeon Of Dread And Despair (MDDODAD)!"
Apparently, Ms. Samuels is not particularly fond of putting such awesome power in the hands of a vicious psychopath like me, and as I make a quick note to myself to put her on the Official Mogambo Enemies List (OMEL), she instead says, "I am shocked to see such numbers, and I am really concerned that this is just the beginning of what we are going to see."
And to show how inflation in prices drags down the lowest members of the "middle class", the article says that, "In the past three months, Samuels has seen more clients in higher-paying jobs - the $35,000 range - line up for food."
And to help prove that the problem is universal, "The Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York, which covers 23 counties in New York State, cited a 30 percent rise in visitors in the first nine months of this year, compared with 2006"; and Boston "reported a 30 percent increase from January through August over last year."
And all of this misery about the higher prices is the result of the Federal Reserve, America's horrid central bank, and to show that even The Economist magazine can be idiotic sometimes, their latest issue has the banner headline "Lessons from the credit crunch" with the subhead, "A special report on central banks and the world economy".
"Hmmm!" you think to yourself. "Central banks, eh?" So you look at the cover art showing a bunch of piggy banks standing on barren earth that is cracking apart, giving way beneath their little piggy feet, and the little pink bank in the foreground is actually starting to shatter, too! Exactly!
So you think to yourself, "Hey! These clever Economist guys understand the enormity of what is happening and how the damned central banks of the world are creating the destructive beast of inflation by creating so much money and credit, especially the loathsome Federal Reserve of the United States! So this ought to be good!"
So imagine my dismay when I got to the idiotic essay titled, "Only human", which contains this absolute gem of abject ignorance; "the Great Inflation of the late 1970s gave way to an age of low, steady inflation thanks in large part to the skill with which central banks learnt to steer policy." Hahaha!
What this clueless 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, mostly thanks to the nefarious machinations of the despicable Michael Boskin (who is a professor of economics at Stanford, which apparently has a "hire the amoral and evil" policy as some sort of weird "diversity" program), performed at the behest and assistance of the utterly loathsome Alan Greenspan, then chairman of the Federal Reserve, who is even more amoral and more evil.
Naturally, this brings up a delicious quote from Michael Barone and immortalized by Investmentrarities.com; "America's colleges and universities have become, and have been for some decades, the most closed-minded and intellectually dishonest institutions in our society."
To keep from getting into a "personality conflict" thing, I will merely point out that these new ways to calculate inflation in prices were specifically designed to eliminate evidence of price inflation from the official statistics of the government and the Federal Reserve, such as not calculating M3 money supply, because growth in the money supply IS the traditional freaking definition of inflation!
Thanks to JMR Jon R., I can quote Dr. Stephen Leeb of the Complete Investor newsletter as saying that, "The Fed will embrace any inflation indicator, so long as it doesn't indicate the existence of inflation." Hahaha! Exactly! Good one!
And it is even more bizarre that The Economist magazine is so astonishingly ignorant because, despite not having heard of these blatant statistical frauds by the Federal Reserve and all the other central banks of the world, all their writers have to do is turn to the back of their own damned magazine and scan down the column where we can see consumer prices in most of the larger countries in the world!
When you do, you see that in the United States, we have 2.1% "official" inflation. In China, "official" inflation is 6.2%. In the Euro area as a whole, it is 2.1%. In the whole of South America, the best is Mexico, with a deplorable 3.8% rate of price inflation, while Venezuela has a staggering and terrifying 15.3% inflation problem!
Inflation is roaring everywhere! Central banks are a huge, huge, HUGE failure!
If you want to see how well this works when left to fester like a big old zit on the end of my bulbous nose, oozing yellow and green pus until everything is all gangrenous and diseased, then Zimbabwe is the place for you, as we read the latest email report from Cathy Buckle, who lives there.
She writes, "Earlier in the week the official inflation rate was announced to be 7,892%. With virtually no food to buy in the shops, it's impossible to try and understand just exactly how the food part of the inflation calculation is made. However it's done, it is a world away from what's happening on the ground. When you've gone without a basic household product for three months or more, you grab it when you see it and just hope you've got enough money to pay for it. This week it was margarine. The last time this was openly on sale, it had been $100,000. On Monday a friend said she'd seen margarine, but it was $400,000 for a 500g pack. By Tuesday it was gone. On Wednesday it was back, same brand, same size, but the price had gone up to $620,000. By Friday there were only four or five packets left on the shelf, and the price had gone up again - this time to 720 thousand dollars.
As a result, the average lifespan of a man in Zimbabwe has now dropped from 62 to 35 years. How do you like inflation now?

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