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September 19, 2007

Welcoming the End of the World
by The Mogambo Guru

"Higher prices in winter?...'Sounds miserable,' I think to myself, 'but not the end of the world!' This was...contradicted by Doug Casey... He writes, 'Let me cover the big picture. I do think we're approaching the end of the world as we know it.' Haha!"

Junior Mogambo Ranger (JMR) David B.C. was amused at a blurb from AP, which read, "The dollar, which is often treated as a hedge against gold prices, was mixed in afternoon trading." Hahaha! Fabulous! What a world! The dollar as a hedge against gold prices! Hahaha! Too much! And getting spookily correct, too!

But then, lots of spooky things are off the charts lately, such as Kevin Kerr in the Resource Trade Alert newsletter saying, "Kernel counts for corn are poor, and with all this wet weather, many soybean crops are underwater or will get hit by mildew and disease. Not to mention the fact that farmers simply can't get equipment into the fields. Heck, you'd need a combine on pontoons in some places. High hopes from planting intentions in April now seem like a distant memory. I expect bean yields will be awful and corn to be much lower weight and quality than projected."

Always looking for an opportunity to be the center of attention, I quickly realized that this was another perfect opportunity to demonstrate the delicate dance of the Supply-Versus-Demand Dynamic, and how that determines price in the free marketplace. So I started gathering up my charts and graphs, but before I could get ready, a horrified Mr. Kerr quickly sums it up as, "All this means even higher prices, especially this winter."

Higher prices in winter? Brrr! "Sounds miserable," I think to myself, "but not the end of the world!" This was immediately, directly contradicted by Doug Casey in his essay, "The Greater Depression" at DailyReckoning.com? He 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!

Apparently, Mr. Casey and I have the same general sense of humor, as this is the same gag I used on the family last September, as a sort of "early Halloween" trick. I sat them all down and somberly told them how I was sorry that we were in big financial trouble and how we were approaching the time where, to survive, I was going to have to kill them all for the life insurance money and bravely start over.

Well, they did not think my little joke was funny at all, even when I took the time to explain the humor in it, like if I were REALLY going to kill them, I sure as hell wouldn't tell them about it beforehand! Jeez! What morons!

Then, horrified, I saw that Mr. Casey was telling the truth; he thinks we ARE approaching the end of the world as we know it! After thinking about it, I realize that this may be good news, as I was getting pretty tired of the "old world as we know it", which is the one where my job is hanging by a thread, the traffic is always heavy and backed up, where everybody is out to get me, and the neighbors are always accusing me of things, like trying to shoot them if they step over onto my property, and I have to tell them that if I wanted to shoot them, I'd have shot them, either between their stupid little beady eyes or their stupid fat butts, depending on the circumstances, and the reason I shot a hole in their stupid garage door is not because I missed them, but as a reminder about stepping onto my damned property! Jerks!

Anyway, I was just joking with the family about the insurance trick, but now I am thinking ("Hmmm!") that maybe I ought to look into this insurance thing a little more closely. Mr. Casey is too savvy to be drawn into my weird, ugly little world, and sticks to the economics of it all by saying, "I think there is such thing as the business cycle."

Me, too! So there are TWO of us that can stand, shoulder to shoulder in solidarity, outside of the Federal Reserve building in Washington, D.C., heroically shouting, "The Austrian economists were right, and there IS such a thing as the business cycle, all caused by you Federal Reserve weenies creating the money to buy a boom, which sets up the bust! So tell Bernanke to come on out here so my buddy Doug can kick his butt!"

Mr. Casey, obviously alarmed at being arrested for making a stupid point that nobody seems to care about, immediately gets the conversation back on track, namely about the business cycle with its booms and busts, by saying "We've had the longest expansion - and the strongest expansion - in world history. But we're at the end of a 25-year boom. It's gone on more than a full generation now. And I'll tell you how it's going to end: It's going to end with a depression, and not just a depression; not just another Great Depression; it's going to be the Greater Depression." Boom! Yikes! Mega-yikes!

Then he asks, out of the blue, "What's a depression, incidentally?" Instantly I am alarmed and feeling cornered, as I figure that he is talking to me, and I have no idea how to define "depression", and the last thing I want in this world is to have another person tell me what an idiot I am, especially someone of Mr. Casey's stature. So I pretend to get an important, important call on my cell phone, and it works! He immediately defines a depression as "a period of time when distortions and misallocations of capital are liquidated; that's called a depression."

The use of the word liquidated makes me think of how the movies had old-style commies, Nazis and various unsavory other bad guys going around "liquidating" people, and that's pretty depressing, so I can see how capital being liquidated would classify as a depression, as your portfolio, your house, your retirement accounts, your "collectibles" and damned near everything you own goes to squat, including your stupid little job and your stupid little life, which may be what prompted him to say, "Another general definition of a depression is this: a period of time when most people's standard of living goes down significantly".

And I already knew that people's level of anger about having to "make do with less" changes in reciprocal lockstep with the fall in the standard of living, more and more, year after year, until some tipping point is reached and one day people are so angry and so miserable that things suddenly explode, and history has another huge discontinuity, and then after awhile they will be so miserable that they will try to break into the Fabulous Mogambo Bunker (FMB) in search of items to relieve their suffering, which turns it into tragedy before they even got close. That's how you define "depression." Ugh.

Mogambo sez: The official Mogambo-Approved Investment Portfolio of holding nothing but gold, silver and oil has again vaulted to the top in terms of sheer investment performance, as precisely calculated The New Government Way; by taking a rough estimate, fudging a few numbers in my favor and disregarding anything that would tend to prove that I am lying by head off.

Of course, the media is in a frenzy, and wants to know things like, "What now?", and "What should we do?", and "Do you know you have coffee stains all over your shirt and that your zipper is down? We can see your Scoobie-Doo boxer shorts, dude!" and they all laughed and laughed, until I informed them that I had pulled my zipper down on purpose ("Not all poems are written with a pen!"), and that my Scoobie-Doo undergarment was not a pair of boxers, but a thong of the especially tiny variety, and they all went "Eeewwww!" like they'd never seen a thong before!

But as for the question "What now?", the answer is obviously "The trend is your friend", so prices of gold, silver and oil will keep rising.

And as for the question "What should we do?", the answer is "Buy more gold, silver and oil, you moron! What in the hell did you think you should do?'

But you won't, because you haven't, and you won't until it is too late, if then, and that is why you will always have to work at a stupid job, all your life, doing crappy things like interviewing a leering lunatic who got lucky in the market, and whose zipper is down, for crying out loud, as if he was not disgusting enough to start with.

So don't let this happen to you. But gold, silver and oil today!

P.S. To get The Daily Reckoning sent directly to your inbox, sign up for our free email newsletter, or if you prefer to use RSS, subscribe to the Daily Reckoning RSS feed.

Richard Daughty, the angriest guy in economics
The Mogambo Guru

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.

The Mogambo Guru is quoted frequently in Barron's, The Daily Reckoning and other fine publications.

Copyright © 2005-2008 Richard Daughty

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