Verbosity is the Soul of Financial Fury

I have to admit that I get awfully tired of people writing to me and asking, “Are you as stupid as you look and sound?” mostly because I have truthfully answered “Yes” to this question so, so many times that I thought it was, you know, common knowledge by this time.

I mean, people usually refer to me as “stupid” all the time, as in, “Shut up, stupid!” and, “Get out of my way, stupid!” which is not to mention all the times I overheard my wife telling one of the kids, “Tell your stupid father that dinner is ready.”

I liked it better when my parents used to look at me and shake their heads in disapproval over something I did, and they would exasperatedly ask, “For the thousandth time, what in the hell is wrong with you, boy?” and I would reply, “The same thing that was wrong with me the other 999 times you asked me that question, I assume! What in the hell is wrong with you that you ask me the same question a thousand times, when it’s obvious I don’t know the answer?”

Well, I never did find out what is “wrong” with me, although there are a lot of theories besides stupidity, and mostly in the vein of genetic mutation, hormone imbalance, iron-poor blood, or “spawn of Satan” types of diagnoses.

So, perhaps subconsciously looking for clues, I was recently going through some old Mogambo Guru pieces that I wrote, but never used, and I ran across a nice synopsis done by Atimes.com on one of my columns.

I saved it because it was so good, in that pithy, “brevity is the soul of wit” sort of way that I hope to one day master, although it won’t be anytime soon because I can never seem to be brief, in that the outrageous over-creation of money by a destructive, idiotic Federal Reserve and the outrageous deficit-spending of that over-creation of money by an idiotic, corrupt Congress makes me wax Loud And Long (LAL) about how we are doomed – doomed, I tells ya! – by the inflation in prices that all of this new money will cause – and is causing! – and how there will be rioting in the streets by the starving poor and the erstwhile middle-class people who had all their wealth tied up in ridiculous dollar-denominated assets which lost their market value when the dollar went to crap thanks to the despicable Federal Reserve creating so much excess money that the buying power of each of their dollars was lost and now they are Freaking Wiped Out (FWO), and angry that they did not listen to The Wisdom Of The Mogambo (TWOTM) and bought gold and silver.

See? I told you I couldn’t be brief! You thought I was fooling?

In contrast, Atimes.com distilled my whole essay down to, “The great secret to being poor is to believe that a money-creating government, like the present one in Washington, is going to preserve the value of your income, pension and savings. The secret to being rich in such circumstances is steadily but surely to accumulate gold!!”

Exactly! Perfect! And, I notice with satisfaction, correctly punctuated with double exclamation points, too! Wow! I did not realize that it could be done! Thanks, Asia Times, for showing me how!

And right next to that piece, The Financial Times, apparently anxious not to be outdone, printed the letter of a reader who pointed out, in a “letter to the editor” on July 6, 2010, that George Bernard Shaw said “You have to choose between trusting the natural stability of gold and the natural stability of the honesty and intelligence of the members of the government. And with due respect for these gentlemen, I advise you…to vote for gold.”

And with that kind of great advice, and with the ease with which you can buy gold and silver (“Here’s my money, give me gold and silver!”), sometimes it takes rummaging around in old Stupid Mogambo Guru Crap (SMGC) to remind oneself that, “Whee! This investing stuff is easy!”

The Mogambo Guru
for The Daily Reckoning

The Daily Reckoning