By The Mogambo Guru
To show you that the level of disgusting corruption at the end of long booms created by an excess of money and credit extends beyond the obvious slimeballs at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Congress, the Federal Reserve, the banks, and damned near everywhere else you look, a headline in last Monday's Wall Street Journal adds to the total tonnage of crud with the page one headline "Companies Tap Pension Plans To Fund Executive Benefits", which let companies use the pension plans of the regular employees to "pay for executives' supplemental benefits and compensation."
Now, I will note for the record that every time I try that crap with the employee pension plan or the petty cash account at work, everybody starts running around screaming about what a thieving, lying, despicable crook I am, and then everybody else starts adding to the accusatory din by saying how I'm probably the one who stole the cookies out of their stupid sack lunches, too, which weren't all that good (and kind of stale, too), so I don't know what all the fuss is about.
But everybody wants something for free, and since I look and act like a real earthling human, don't I bleed, too? So who is the real victim here, you hateful bastards?
But the desire for free stuff is pandemic, and Frosty Woodbridge at NewsWithViews.com talks about this very point when he says that "Our US Senate along with Obama and McCain protects the interests of 20 million illegal aliens that take jobs from American citizens! Has either man stepped up to stop 400,000 annual illegal alien anchor babies and their mothers from sucking out of the US taxpayer's pocket? Even while 86 hospitals in California and Arizona are bankrupted out of existence because of millions of illegals using services for free?"
See? Everybody wants something for free! And the governments (federal, state and local) are there to give it to them and charging me for it!
Well, Peter Chamberlin, author of The Planned Collapse Of America, doesn't mention me specifically as the patsy who pays the taxes and the inflation in prices that comes because the damnable Federal Reserve creates so much money and credit so that the damned government can borrow it because the government can't get any more from me (as the archetypical American tax-paying worker, only more lazy and undependable) to spend on their little friends.
And by "everybody else", I mean the connected insiders, as Mr Chamberlin writes, "Our economy [is] based on parasitic capitalism, where the small elite sits atop the heap of men and gorges on their lifeblood." He says that this "is destroying the social fabric of America" and that it "is based on a stacked deck, where the top elites always reap the profits that are made to rise to the top through the corporate profits-based system".
To add presidential gravitas to the whole thing, 321Gold.com had the perfect quote from Ronald Reagan, which is that "government is not the solution to our problem ... government is the problem. It is no coincidence that our present troubles parallel and are proportionate to the intervention and intrusion in our lives that result from unnecessary and excessive growth of government."
And we are going to pay a hell of a price, and as Junior Mogambo Ranger (JMR) Skip G reminds us, "Jay Leno says on the air quite frequently, 'You have the government you deserve.'", which I amend to say, "And will yield a result similar to what the old Soviet Union got when they tried that Same Silly Crap (SSC)!!!!", which I punctuate with four exclamation points to indicate just how sure I am about that because that is the way economics works and what history has consistently shown.
And all of this getting busted out and ruined makes us little guys angry, in my case because I am too broke to afford drinking myself into oblivion. And it gets even worse when I read the essay at Oftwominds.com by Charles Hugh Smith, who titled his essay as, "Yes, There Will Be Armageddon: Government Goes Bankrupt", wherein he writes, "One financial Armageddon is entirely, easily predictable: the bankruptcy of government in the USA, at every level: federal, state, county and city. The prediction follows from very simple mathematics: entitlements which grow at 8% a year cannot be supported by an economy which grows at 3% or less."
In case you are wondering, I say that the money supply expanding recklessly, so that the government can borrow and spend and cause more and more debt, means that inflation in prices will lead to a catastrophic implosion of the economy, just because that is what always happens.
And what is the antidote? Four thousand years of history answers loud and clear, "Buy gold!" To which I will add "And silver! And oil!"
After the expected applause dies down in appreciation of getting such good advice, I will say, "And speaking of buying things, who wants to buy me a drink?" Apparently, people in line at the supermarket don't like good advice or they don't like to buy me a damned drink. Or both. And then they wonder why I hate them so much!
But at this point, nobody wonders why I love gold, silver and oil so much. And you should, too.
Richard Daughty is general partner and COO for Smith Consultant Group, serving the financial and medical communities, and the editor of The Mogambo Guru economic newsletter - an avocational exercise to heap disrespect on those who desperately deserve it.
(Republished with permission from The Daily Reckoning. Copyright 2008, The Daily Reckoning.)
