03/12/10 Tampa, Florida – The Money Morning newsletter bills itself as “Essential investment news & insight from MoneyWeek.com” which makes me suspicious right away because of all the times I have been lied to over the years by people telling me that something is “essential”, which it seldom is, and it usually turns out to be a code word for, “It’s gonna cost ya, buddy!”
Like today, for example, when I am told that it is “essential” that I curtail my frenzied buying of gold, silver and oil this month so that one of the whining kids can go to the doctor (or dentist, I forget which) for some real or imagined discomfort, ache, pain, open wound, bloody discharge, festering sore, oozing abscess or gangrenous limb, like I am made out of money or something.
Normally, I would explain, with the patience of a saint, for the thousandth time, how the Federal Reserve is creating waaaaAAAAAaaaay too much money and credit so that the federal government can borrow and spend waaaaAAAAaaaay too much money, which is this selfsame “waaaaAAAAAaaaay too much money and credit” created by the Federal Reserve in the first place, which is a kind of strange circular logic, I admit, but which I think only serves to prove the bizarre, incestuous nature of the whole thing, but without any bodily fluids being exchanged.
And I told them, “If you don’t think so, just wait until the inflation in food and energy prices really gets here, good and hard, and when you look at the horrors this will create, you can tell me again how you don’t believe that inflation in the money supply leads to inflation in prices when all this new money enters into the marketplace, like a flood, adding massive amounts of money to the bidding for goods and services, which makes prices rise”, but they just kept whining, “No, daddy! I need to go to the doctor now, not when inflation is raging so that the cost will be higher and you will not want to pay those higher prices! So you want to send me now, when prices are lower!”
So you can see that there are two sides to every story; on the one hand this whole incident with crybaby kids and their whining, and complaining, and blacking out, and getting blood all over everything, and on the other hand there are “essentials” in the world, as in “essential insights”, which, in the case of Money Morning, is apparently true, as we note with surprise that David Stevenson writes in the newsletter that, in the United States, “Prices of commercial property – real estate – are down by 43% overall since the October 2007 top, says Moody’s Investors Service. Retail rents have plunged by a third from the peak. For offices, rents are down 40% and vacancy rates are as high as 18%.”
Now, most people, like me, and maybe like you, too, look at that paragraph and say, “Whew! That seems like a lot of numbers, which are already confusing by their very presence, which explains why I don’t understand!”
Being the peach of a guy that I am, I am going to show you – free! – the essential information in there, which is: If you own commercial property, you are screwed, and if you do not own commercial property, then it is getting cheaper and cheaper.
In the meantime, just keep buying gold, silver and oil stocks, not because I say so, which I do, and you should, too, but because we have no other choice, because if we did, I am sure that I would have read about, or heard about, someone buying it to successfully protect themselves against governmental stupidity at least one (pause) freaking (pause) time (pause) in the last 4,500 years of the economic history of the Whole Freaking World (WFW), especially since the whole thing seems to be about economic stupidities that flow from continual, ever-worsening government fiscal malfeasance, just like we have all over the world today and all over the world in all of the rest of history, but, in a word, I ain’t.
And, so, investing doesn’t get easier than that! Whee!
The Mogambo Guru
for The Daily Reckoning
The Mogambo Guru
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. For podcasts featuring the Mogambo, click here.
The Daily Reckoning is your premier source for making sense of the news Washington and Wall Street generate. Each business day, The Daily Reckoning calls on its stable of world-class writers and thinkers to show you how to get ahead.
Start your 100% FREE subscription to The Daily Reckoning today and you’ll get a free research report, “How to Survive the Fall of Social Security.” Simply enter your email address below to get your free report and join over 495,000 worldwide Daily Reckoning subscribers!
We Respect Your Privacy and We will
Never Share or Sell Your Email Address
“waaaaAAAAAaaaay,” to many idiots are buying gold, silver, and oil. It is for those that see no other choice. Blinded by their own short sightedness in what the world has become and what it could be.
Like .99 cents is so much lower than $1.00. Pitiful
Gold did a better than average job protecting the buying power of people in Zimbabwe, the Wiemar Republic and France after John Law’s fiat money plans ended so badly.
Perhaps 99 cent Nation knows of a way to protect our buying power when inflation kicks in. Please do tell us 99 cent Nation, we would all like to know.
99 cent:
What the world could be?
How about what the world actually is: BANKRUPT.
BUY GOLD, SILVER, AND OIL!
Why not buy commercial real estate if it’s so cheap?
Reply to Lewis:
Even if commercial real estate is cheap, can you find enough business tenants to lease it? Otherwise one can go broke real fast in this recessionary period!
“Perhaps 99 cent Nation knows of a way to protect our buying power when inflation kicks in. Please do tell us 99 cent Nation, we would all like to know.”
I realize that most the readers of the guru are true believers and only true consumers would be so worried by their buying power. How about production power? Your only true wealth is what you personally can produce. Not what you can buy.
like .99 cents is so much lower than $1.00.
The real secret is to own something that the government does not know about, but which can be used in private exchanges. Real estate doesn’t qualify.
@Gernot: well said. Also, real state without tenants is a bottonless well of expenses. You have insurance, taxes, maintenance etc. Try paying all that for an empty office and see how quick you go bankrupt.
@99 cent: goog thought, but the regular citizen has very little chances of buying “production power”. Can you buy a factory? A farm? An airline? Even a cargo truck is way too expensive for most. You can educate yourself, but in that way all you can sell is your services, with very little power to scale up. if you can get a good education, I higly advise you to. Knowledge is better than gold, as they say.
JMR. It all depends what you want to produce and what quantity. The feeling I get from your thoughts are that we are in a situation now that the only way to success is to think big and bigger and then rely on credit to produce everything. To scale up in your words obviously means growth and growth to many is the mantra that is slowly choking us to death. Production does not mean big and bigger at all. Or have too nor does education have to be used as a tool to produce more than you need. Your thinking is good and yet your belief system and concepts of life might need some tuning. Or not, some just simply cannot imagine life without growth and even sometimes overproduction.
Although I do not really know what a “goog” thought would be. Nor what you are meaning when you refer to a “regular citizen.” A regular citizen can produce much except in your way of thinking not capable of very much. I will overlook the little jab at a “good,” education considering the subject matter and your reply.
Like .99 cents is so much lower than $1.00. Pitiful
Nice. I’ve been buying silver for years now, probably because I’ve been reading you for years. lol. my 401k is heavily waited in oil stocks thanks to you as well.