Jim Sinclair of jsmineset.com had a link to the essay "Before Saving the US" at
ChinaStakes.com, written by a guy named Xiang Songzuo, which starts out, "The
nature of the current global financial crisis is the biggest debt crisis in
America's history", which is certainly not news.
Then the article gets right in our American faces and keeps hammering at us:
"Statistics show that America's internal and external debt exceeds $60
trillion, over 400% of the country's annual GDP of a bit over $14 trillion. Of
that total, family debt (including mortgages), financial and non-financial
firms' debt, and municipal and national debt come to about $15 trillion, $17
trillion, $22 trillion, $3.5 trillion, and $11 trillion, respectively, though
it is
hard to tell how these debts have been split up among foreign governments,
financial firms, companies, and individuals."
Naturally, as a proud American, I take the aggressive approach and sneer,
saying, "So? Tell us something that we don't know! Hahaha!"
In an apparent response, he goes on, "To relieve the crisis, the US must repay
its debts, and to do that it needs to live a more frugal life instead of asking
others to continue lending it the money to maintain its over-consumption."
So, still being a smug American, I say, "Says who? You? Hahaha! We're
Americans, and we have a fiat currency, and we can just print up all the money
to pay you off! And everybody else, too, suckers! How do you like them apples?
Hahaha!"
Apparently, Xiang is unimpressed with my typically American solution to the
debt problem, as with all problems, and continues, "The first thing the
government needs to do is reduce spending and the deficit. Correspondingly, the
US needs to cut military disbursement, stop its global expansion and the
robbing of oil resources from other countries."
Again, I am instantly indignant, and my anger shows through when I say, "Hey!
Deficit spending like profligate morons while running around the world taking
what we want and killing anybody that gets in our way characterizes The
American Way! You are proposing to destroy our native culture, you insensitive,
genocidal, racist bastards! I'll sue you all!"
Apparently, even Chinese people know that I am just a big blowhard, and instead
of insulting me and calling my bluff, we are given some sinisterly interesting
advice - namely, "Families and individuals should stop anticipating their
income to buy houses and travel globally. Instead, they should warmly welcome
foreigners to travel to and spend money in the US. "
Boinggggg! Proving once again that being a paranoid lunatic has its upside, I
am able to instantly decipher this to mean that the "Secret Chinese Plan" is
for us to sell them everything we have to pay our debts, and then act as
courteous hosts and hostesses as they travel the country, inspecting their vast
holdings and indulging in various, ummm, indulgences involving our women-folk
and enslaving us all on vast rice and pig farms where we will be given
pork-fried rice to eat, as much as we want, which is the only upside to this
whole mess, as far as I can see.
And these Chinese may be onto something with this commodities thing, because I
am betting that commodities will be soaring from here on out, as Dailytech.com
reports that "All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley,
NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past
year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously."
The article goes on with the specifics, namely that "The total amount of
cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C - a value large enough to wipe out most
of the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year's time. For
all four sources, it's the single fastest temperature change ever recorded,
either up or down."
This explains the subhead: "Twelve-month long drop in world temperatures wipes
out a century of warming", although it does not explain why such a momentous
piece of news does not have at least one exclamation point! Hell, I'd give it
two, and I don't know anything about it!
The Bad, Bad News (BBN) is not just that this kind of poor punctuation is
rampant, but that this abrupt dropping of global temperature has a nasty habit
of portending "little ice ages", and this, along with the mysterious and
ominous disappearance of sunspots, has me running outside, yelling at some kids
playing down the block, "Hey! You stupid kids! Run home and tell your parents
that they should be buying gold, silver, oil and commodities of all kinds
because crop yields in the future will be catastrophically low, and if they
don't, then they are stupid! And when they don't follow your advice, you can
remind them a few years from now about how you warned them, but they were too
stupid to listen to you, which is what all parents like to hear from their
teenage children! Hahahaha!"
Well, I hope they do, not that it will do any good, but at least I made their
children a little more obnoxious, which makes me smile in smug satisfaction.
And I bought some more commodity plays, which made me smile ditto! Whee! This
investing stuff is easy!
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.
(Republished with permission from
The Daily Reckoning. Copyright 2008, The Daily Reckoning.)
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