Aureus, Argentum Atque Oleum

by Richard Daughty

  












***Paranoia Alert: Enemies Everywhere, With Precious Metals Our Only Friends***

Okay, I admit I was, you know, kind of "over the edge" a little bit the other morning, but my wife interrupted me just as my raging madness was peaking, almost out of control, I mean really cranking loud and long that "Anyone NOT buying gold, silver and oil, Right Freaking Now (RFN), especially at these bargain-basement prices when the evil Federal Reserve is creating So Freaking Much (SFM) currency and credit that inflation in prices will rage out of control, is a complete and utter butthole who ought to be dragged in here, kicking and screaming, so that I can yell in their faces that they are, as previously stipulated earlier in this very same sentence, buttholes!"
That – that! – was when she gently tapped me on the arm and asked "Dear, did you take your pills this morning?"
Well, that’s the pivotal moment when I really lost it. Suddenly, in a kind of weird, out-of-body experience, I could see myself saying "No, I didn’t take my damned pills this morning! Why else would I be acting like this, you moron?"
Now, there are a couple of things that my wife doesn’t like, and one of them is me calling her a moron. Although I liked it when the kids snickered and tried not to laugh, so it wasn’t ALL bad, because usually they laugh when my wife is reminding me, with overwhelming embarrassing evidence, how I have, personally, been a moron.

Well, the morning started out innocently enough, but then I my bloodshot eyes fell across a quote from Steve Eichler, C.E.O. of TeaParty.org. He said "The efforts of tens of millions of Tea Partiers have inflicted a serious blow to the Washington bureaucracy and have helped to cripple the activities of global communists, slowing their American coup d’état."
Being a proud, live-and-let-live libertarian, standing in awe of the profound wisdom of the Constitution of the United States, I am naturally revolted by the Democratic and Republican Parties. Thus, I am, by default, a Tea Party kind of guy.
So, understandably, this instantly got me going, abruptly accelerating to warp speed, spewing forth about Barack Obama, whose parents were both proud to be communists, and whose grandparents, with whom he grew up in the USA, proudly and openly called themselves communists.
"So," I wondered aloud with a really deep, nasty tone to my voice, which is a signal meaning "Don’t dare disagree with me, or you will regret it, in that way the odious Gene Sperling threatened trustworthy and noble newspaperman Bob Woodward, only worse!"
Now going hyperbolic at a metaphorical Warp 8, I bellowed, with all the pent-up venom and vilest vituperation I could muster, stupid-yet-gratuitous alliterations notwithstanding, "So of course Obama has communist sympathies! He wants his mother to be proud of him, like everybody else! Why else would Obama raise taxes by eliminating the Bush payroll-tax cuts, and keep insisting on more taxes, now at the worst possible time? Whoever heard of trying to get out of economic and unemployment doldrums by raising taxes? Nobody! It’s stupid! As if the huge Obamacare is not going to be enough new taxes and economy-killing expenses ripped out of the economy as it is!"
My strong words rang loudly, echoing off the refrigerator, as my bellowing of outrage continued "Why now? Why now when the economy is circling the toilet bowl from years and years of mountains of new fiat currency created out of thin air to accumulate backbreaking, bankrupting debt to finance a misshapen, malignant, bloated government-centric economy not based on real demand, that is now dying of its own idiotic inflationary excesses, just like what happened every OTHER time in history when every OTHER dirtbag government and moronic populace tried this insane crap?"
"And," my voice rising to a clashing, crashing crescendo of anguish and anger, "why else would Obama permit the Federal Reserve to monstrously create so much excess currency and credit so that we are doomed to crushing, terrifying inflation that will produce suffering and scarcity on a colossal scale that will destroy the USA?"
Actually rising from my chair in my overwrought heat, gesturing wildly with my arms, I thundered aloud, "Now you ask me why? Why? Hahahaha! I laugh scornfully!"
So you wanna know why? Then listen up, and I’ll tell you why! Vladimir Lenin, one of the inventors of communism, famously said "The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation."
And who is this bourgeoisie that Lenin hates so much? It translates as the middle class!
I must have been screaming so loud that it was heard at Zerohedge.com, as they write "as Bloomberg's Richard Yamarone summarizes, the consumer health picture in January was ‘grim’ and ‘after adjusting for inflation and taxes, is simply insufficient to sustain the expansion.’"
How much taxes does it take to make a millstone with which to grind the bourgeoisie? The government already taxes away, in one way or the other, almost a full third of GDP. So I figure it is probably around here, someplace.
And how do you get a millstone of inflation? From increasing the money supply, as is clearly explained by Milton Friedman, who famously said "Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon."
So how much money is being created? Tons of it, as seemingly unbelievable as that sounds, but how else to describe the fact that in the 28 short days of February 2013, starting with $16,433,791,850,294.04 of national debt on February 1, the debt had grown, by February 28, to $16,687,289,180,215.37, making for a staggering, heart-stopping difference of a whopping, eye-popping, head-stomping $253.5 billion of new government debt! In 28 lousy days! A quarter of a trillion bucks!
I am aghast! Another $253.5 billion of new debt, and thus undoubtedly another $253.5 billion in new currency pouring into the economy to bloat the money supply, in ONE FREAKING MONTH (OFM)! OFM!!
Please note the use of two – count ‘em, two! – exclamation points which provide particular emphasis, which is a vital clue that there is something seriously, seriously amiss here.
"So," you are probably wondering, "exactly how much more taxes and over-regulation are coming, and how much inflation, which together are the two millstones to grind up the middle class to crush it?"
Don’t ask. For one thing, as the quote goes, "You can’t handle the truth."
Just be afraid. Ruination is coming because it mathematically must, thus explaining why every other instance of this "create lots and lots of money" insanity ended Just That Way (JTW).
Except for – except for! – the people who owned gold, silver and energy. These intelligent, educated people always made out wonderfully when their prices rose to astronomical heights, which they did because the purchasing power of the currency fell so low due to such massive over-issuance of it by, in our case, the horrid Federal Reserve, with which they turned around and used to directly buy new government debt ("monetizing the debt"), which is a monstrous monetary mistake of such horrific proportions that, as Junior Mogambo Ranger (JMR) Charles C. reminds me, We’re Freaking Doomed WFD!
Perhaps this is why the ancient Romans said, or could have said, or would have said, if they used the same English-to-Latin dictionary I did to cobble something together, "Aureus, argentum atque oleum", which translates directly as "Gold, silver and oil."
Thus one can argue, with iron-clad logic:

1. To buy gold, silver and oil when your government is allowing the money supply to constantly increase has been Extremely Good Advice (EGA) since before the time of the Romans.
2. It has now been proved by the rigors of modern statistical methodology that if something happens every time over thousands and thousands of trials, then the probability of it happening this time is 100%.
3. Thus, you gotta conclude "Aureus argentum atque oleum to the moon, baby! Whee! This investing stuff is easy!"

March 8, 2013

Richard Daughty (Mogambo Guru) is general partner and COO for Smith Consultant Group, serving the financial and medical communities, and the writer/publisher of the Mogambo Guru economic newsletter, an avocational exercise to better heap disrespect on those who desperately deserve it. The Mogambo Guru is quoted frequently in Barron’s, The Daily Reckoning, and other fine publications. Visit his website.