-- Posted Tuesday, 25 September 2007 | Digg This Article
Last week we set a new record in the national debt, which has now officially breached the $9 trillion mark.
We are also setting records in sheer, slimy corruption, as the limit on that debt (as last set by Congress), was only $8.965 trillion, and is now overspent by Congress (except Ron Paul) and they are all pretending not to notice! What absolute dirtbags!
And speaking of dirtbags, I cannot believe that Christopher Dodd, longtime chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, has not resigned in disgrace at this subprime fiasco (which, lest we need reminding, originated in the banks, as do all economic crises). I mean, he was THE guy in the Senate Banking Committee position to look at this crap and say, "Whoa! Maybe That Idiot Mogambo (TIM) is onto something here, because these insane degrees of money and credit expansion by the banks are obviously wrong, and if we keep this crap up we are going to be freaking doomed!"
Even more amazing, I can't believe that he is actually running for President! Hahahaha! The most provably economically clueless weenie in Congress now wants to take his worthless act to the White House! Hahaha!
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.
If fact, this is now the punch line to one of the jokes in my new, fledgling Vegas act! The actual line is, "Well, you certainly stepped in a big pile of some real stinking dog crap and ruined your shoes when you came out of the doctor's office after being told that the tests confirm that you have a terrible disease that will kill you in less than a month because there is no cure, but at least you are not from Connecticut, and thus had nothing to do with electing the ruinously incompetent Senator Christopher Dodd from Connecticut, and thus who directly authorized by the sin of omission the economic mess we are in today, and which will cause misery and suffering undreamt of in your nightmares! So rejoice that you can die with a clear conscience, and hopefully in a different pair of shoes!"
Now, I don't know if John Stepek in the Money Week's Money Morning magazine was making a comment about my new career as a boffo stand-up comic in Vegas or what, but I notice that he took this opportunity to report that "Planned redundancies by U.S. companies rose by 85% in August", which is such a nice term, as I would be much happier being fired because I was "redundant" rather than being just "worthless human garbage who thinks he is funny, but he isn't, and should have been fired long ago, but wasn't."
Not only that, but employment is falling everywhere, and Addison Wiggin at The 5-MinuteForecast says that even "temp jobs are falling off faster than expected." The laughable thing about employment is that regardless of fewer people working, the latest report is that the unemployment rate FELL! You are probably rubbing your eyes in disbelief, as if to say, "How in the hell did they do that?"
Easy! They first reduced the estimate of the number of people in the total workforce, and then subtracted the reduced number of people still working to calculate how many people are unemployed! Hahaha! What a scam!
As usual, jobs were lost in the manufacturing sector, which has been going down for decades, no matter how they redefine "manufacturing" jobs. The latest wheeze was to define "hamburger cook" as a "manufacturing" job because it took raw materials, applied capital and labor, added some pickles and a dab of mustard, maybe a little cheese or a "special sauce and a sesame seed bun", and created a delicious protein-packed staple of the American diet when properly combined with a large side order of french fries and the extra-large sugary carbonated drink.
It's not much of a surprise, then, that Mr. Stepek reports, "the OECD is now worried that recession is a real possibility in the US."
Normally, one would think this to be alarming, but to show you the incompetence of the OECD, Mr. Stepek says that Jean-Philippe Cotis, chief economist of the OECD, actually said, "Downside risks have become more ominous. What we had not forecast was the extent of the spread of this financial risk beyond the US." Hahahaha! What a moron!
He didn't know that all things are connected to all things, as proved by Chaos Theory, and he actually thought that one large financial entity could go literally bankrupt and yet have no effect anywhere else? Everything would merrily continue along just as it was? Hahahaha! I leap to my feet and shout, "Chump! Chump! What a chump!"
Mr. Stepek tries to calm me down by saying that it was not just Mr. Cotis, but that "Everyone in any sort of position of financial authority seems to have been caught out by that one." Hahahaha! They were? Then I say that they're all morons! Morons, morons, morons! Morons everywhere! Hahahaha!
Again, Mr. Stepek is unimpressed with the light side of my dark humor, and changes the subject by saying that everyone believed, "U.S. subprime is contained, they said, not so long ago. And then in the same breath, they added that financial derivatives were a good thing, because they spread risk around." Hahaha! Now I am laughing anew at being reminded of that stupidity, too! Paraphrasing the Ancient Mariner, morons, morons everywhere, but nary a slob can think! Hahahaha!
I am embarrassed that nobody is joining me in my laughter, and so I decide that if they don't want pleasant, then I'll just be unpleasant, and so I ask with a little edge of petulance to my voice, "And how did anyone get so stupid as to think that, huh?" Well, not even the illustrious John Stepek knows that, even though it is completely obvious to me, and anybody else that can see profound conspiracies everywhere; mysterious rays are being beamed into our heads from outer space to make us so stupid that we actually believe that the Federal Reserve is the least bit competent to "keep prices steady" and "manage the economy" when they are actively pumping out the raw sewage of excess money and credit every hour, of every day, of every week, of every year, and now the U.S. dollar has lost 97% of its buying power since the despicable Federal Reserve was authorized by the idiotic Woodrow Wilson in 1913, replaced by fiat money by the arch-commie bastard FDR in 1933, and finally severed from gold by Nixon in 1971.
I had to laugh at the look on Mr. Stepek's face at being handicapped by the lack of a good conspiracy theory, as he has to resort to describing the actual behavior of the parties in the subprime fiasco, which was that they did it "because everyone in the chain thought that they were passing their risk on to someone else," and "they took on a lot more of it." Exactly! Hahahaha!
Then he turned the tables on me and showed me how childishly simplistic I was in that I was not even thinking about the knock-on effects around the world, like "And where have all those whopping bonuses been coming from that have been pouring into London's economy? From the financial sector. So if you're a believer in 'trickle down' economics, then you have to be worried about the turmoil in the markets just now."
And since profits from the financial sector produce over half of the profits made in the United States, then yes; I actually AM worried now! Yow!
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Editor's Note: 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.
-- Posted Tuesday, 25 September 2007 | Digg This Article
